A Side-Effect of China’s Strict Virus Policy: Abandoned Fruit
By VKB Uyen, Sui-Lee Wee & Muktita Suhartono, Feb. 5, 2022, NYT

At Pham Thanh Hong’s dragon fruit orchard in Vietnam, most of the
lights are turned off. All is silent except for the periodic thud
of the ripe pink fruit falling to the ground.

Mr. Pham, 46, is not bothering to harvest them.

The farmer watched dragon fruit prices plummet by 25 percent in
the last week of December to near zero, pushed down by what
several officials in Vietnam say is China’s “zero-Covid” policy. “I’m too disheartened to use my strength to pick them up, then
throw them away,” Mr. Pham said. Selling fruit to China in the
coronavirus pandemic is not for the fainthearted.

China has gone to great lengths to keep the virus out of its borders.
It has screened mail and tested thousands of packages of fruit and
frozen foods despite little evidence that the virus can be transmitted
through such products. It has locked down entire cities, leaving
Chinese citizens stranded without medicine or food.

That strict virus policy has also had alarming consequences well
beyond China. Southeast Asian fruit farmers are especially
vulnerable because so much of the region’s exports are directed
toward the country. In 2020, the total fruit exports from Southeast
Asia to China stood at roughly $6 billion.

“If they buy, we’re alive. If they don’t, we’re dead,” Mr. Pham said. “We are growing dragon fruit, but it pretty much feels like gambling.”

Long lines of trucks arriving from Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos are
now backed up on China’s border crossings. Dragon fruit farmers in
Vietnam, who export mostly to China, have been pushed heavily into debt.

In Myanmar, watermelon exporters are dumping their fruit on the
border because truck drivers have been told to quarantine for 15 days
before they can bring the goods into China.

The restrictions appear to have especially hurt Vietnam’s dragon
fruit farmers. After nine cities in China said they had detected the coronavirus on dragon fruit imported from Vietnam, the authorities
shut down supermarkets selling the fruit, forced at least 1,000 people
who had come into contact with the fruit to quarantine, and ordered
customers to be tested.

Then, in late December, China closed its border with Vietnam for
the first time during the pandemic.

“China did not tell Vietnam anything in advance,” said Dang Phuc
Nguyen, general secretary of the Vietnam Fruit and Vegetable Assn.
“They acted very suddenly.”

More than a million Vietnamese dragon fruit, mango and jackfruit
farmers have been affected by the curbs, according to Mr. Dang.
China accounts for more than 55 percent of Vietnam’s $3.2 billion
in fruit and vegetable exports, chief of which is the dragon fruit.

Pham Thi Tu Lam, a farmer from Vietnam’s Vinh Long Province, said
she decided to switch from growing oranges to dragon fruit in 2015.
At that time, she could fetch $1.22 for one kilogram, or a little
over two pounds, of the fruit. Now, because prices have plunged to
a tenth of that, she has had to abandon 1,150 of the concrete posts
where the plants are typically grown.

Unable to find any buyers, she gave most of last year’s harvest to
her neighbors, used it for chicken feed or tossed it. She had
invested more than $1,300 and three months into growing the dragon
fruit. “All of which is now gone, with nothing left,” she said.

The ripple effects of China’s zero-Covid policy have accelerated
discussions about Southeast Asia’s dependence on the world’s second- largest economy. They have also coincided with growing anxiety in
the region over Beijing’s presence in the South China Sea, disputed
waters that many Southeast Asian nations claim as their own.

“Until Covid, it seemed to me that the economic influence of China
was so great in Southeast Asia that all those countries, notwith-
standing the political tensions, were gravitating more toward the
Chinese orbit,” said Bill Pritchard, a professor at the University
of Sydney who has studied Southeast Asia’s fruit trade with China.
“I think this has been some sort of a road bump on that. Whether
it’s permanent or whether it’s temporary, I don’t know.”

For more than a decade, fruit farmers in Southeast Asia have
capitalized on a rising Chinese middle class that has become
increasingly health conscious. They also benefited from a robust
road and highway network linking their countries to China.

Many of them had high hopes for the Lunar New Year, during which
plates of cut tropical fruit are common features at dinner tables
across China during the weeklong holiday.

Chinese authorities reopened the border with Vietnam last month,
but they have not relaxed their screening measures. In late
January, roughly 2,000 vehicles were stuck at the border, down
from 5,000 in mid-December, according to Mr. Dang of Vietnam’s
Fruit and Vegetable Association. Vietnamese officials have told
businesses to avoid the crossing for now.

Nguyen Anh Duong, a director specializing in economics at
Vietnam’s Central Institute for Economic Management, said the
Vietnamese government is trying to help farmers find alternative
markets, including diverting dragon fruit to local supermarkets
in Vietnam.

But diversifying from China will be difficult. Using planes and
ships to send fruit to other countries would drive costs higher.
Several of the fruit-growing regions in Southeast Asia are not
close to airports. For now, fruit farmers are bracing for
greater hardship.

Aye Myo Kyi, a watermelon farmer in Myanmar, said he had to
throw his watermelons away when China clamped down on the border
with Myanmar in April 2021.

“I've never lost money like this before,” said Mr. Aye Myo Kyi,
who has been selling watermelons since 2010. He said he has now
switched to selling beans domestically.

Thai exporters who usually ship their fruit through Vietnam and
Laos, which share crossings with China, have been frustrated with
government leaders for not helping them manage their losses.

Worakanya Panyaprasertkit, a longan exporter in Thailand, said a
shipment of her fruit was stuck at the border with Vietnam for
60 days. By the time China announced it would open its border
crossing with the country in January, most of the fruit had
already gone bad.

“We have complained to different agencies, they know about our
problems, but even then we haven’t seen any progress,” she said.
“They are leaving us to fight for our own lives.”

The exporters do not expect the situation to ease until after
the Winter Olympics end in Beijing on Feb. 20. China is also
trying to stamp out several outbreaks of the Omicron variant at
home, which could lead to even more stringent border screenings.

Patchaya Khiaophan, VP of marketing for the Thai Durian Assn,
said she expects China to continue to periodically open and
close its borders in the coming months. Thailand is developing
disinfectants to spray on containers of durian for export and
tightened the safety and packaging standards for the spiky fruit
in time for the harvest in April.

“We have to reassure the Chinese side that Thai durian is free
from Covid,” said Ms. Khiaophan. “We have prepared our farmers
and business people,” she said. “For me, I don’t have high hopes.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/world/asia/virus-vietnam-china-fruit.html

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