Advancing China's Sustainable Blue Economy 2025

3Table of contents Contributing authors 2 Foreword 4 Executive summary 6 1. Context 2 1.1 Status of the ocean’s economic sectors 2 1.2 China’s need for a sustainable blue economy and ambitions to develop on 4 2. The evolution of the sustainable blue economy narrative in China 6 2.1 SBE in Chinese policy and planning 6 2.2 Policy gaps and areas of improvements 9 3. Improving ocean accounting to support sustainable development 17 3.1 Overview of global ocean accounting 17 3.2 China’s ocean accounting progress 19 4. Unlocking blue finance to facilitate the blue transformation 22 4.1 The global blue finance ecosystem 22 4.2 Major types of blue finance instruments 24 4.3 China’s blue finance taxonomy development and future applications 26 4.4 Challenges and policy gaps 27 5. Recommendations 28 5.1 SBE definitions and principles 28 5.2 Ocean accounting 28 5.3 Blue finance Appendix 1 30 1.1 Definitions of blue economy 30 1.2 Definition of SBE and regenerative blue economy 31 1.3 Definition of ocean economy 31 Appendix 2 32 Overview of China’s Blue Finance Standards Practices 32 Abbreviations 35