Zhanjiang
China's 'shrimp capital' breeds 160 billion fingerlings annually while hosting BASF's €10B complex and Baosteel's hydrogen steel — r-strategy at city scale.
Three out of every five shrimp consumed in China were born in Zhanjiang. The city on the tip of the Leizhou Peninsula, home to roughly 7.4 million in the prefecture, produces 160 billion white-leg shrimp fingerlings annually, commands 67% of the domestic shrimp market and 15% of the global one. Wikipedia leads with Zhanjiang's history as a French concession and its deep-water port. What it undersells is that this single city operates the most concentrated aquaculture-to-heavy-industry supply chain in southern China.
The shrimp economy alone generates nearly ¥30 billion ($4.2 billion) in annual aquatic output from 1.29 million tonnes of production across 557,000 hectares of shallow coastline. China's largest breeding base for parent white-leg shrimp sits here, producing 100,000 breeding pairs and 8 billion fingerlings per year. But Zhanjiang is not just a fishing town. BASF chose it for a €10 billion Verbund chemical complex — the German company's third-largest integrated production base globally. Baosteel ignited China's first million-tonne hydrogen-based vertical furnace here, cutting carbon emissions by 500,000 tonnes per batch of liquid iron. Zhongke Refinery processes 14.55 million tonnes of crude oil annually, generating over ¥100 billion in output value.
Industrial investment surged 56% in 2024 as projects from BASF, CNOOC, and Baosteel reached completion. Manufacturing is projected to reach 30% of GDP by 2025. Smart aquaculture platforms like Havwii 2 — requiring only three operators to manage what previously needed dozens — are cutting labour costs by 60% while increasing yield. The city exports aquatic products to 40+ countries.
The biological parallel is the shrimp itself — specifically the white-leg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) that Zhanjiang breeds by the hundred billion. Shrimp are r-strategists: they reproduce in enormous quantities, grow fast, and form the caloric base that supports entire marine food webs. Zhanjiang's economy follows the same reproductive logic. The shrimp fingerlings feed China's domestic market; the port feeds BASF and Baosteel's raw material needs; the refinery feeds the petrochemical chain. Everything in Zhanjiang is designed to produce at volume and distribute widely — the economic metabolism of an r-selected organism scaled to a metropolitan level.