China plays dirty cards with Vietnamese agricultural products?

After warning about some fruit shipments violating quarantine, China again criticized Vietnamese confectionery for not ensuring food safety.

Retaliation scenario

At the end of June, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ) sent a letter to the National Administration of Agricultural, Forestry and Fishery Products Quality Control (Nafiqad - Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) announcing that some Vietnamese food products exported to China from 2013 to April 2014 did not ensure food safety, including coconut-flavored bread, tapioca flour, cookies, cream cakes, egg cakes, sponge cream, lotus jam... which are products under the management of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Vietnamese dragon fruit exported to China has been warned to contain pesticide residues exceeding the permitted level.

Previously, on June 23, 2014, Nafiqad also received a notice from the Vietnamese Embassy in China that AQSIQ had issued a letter announcing that some shipments of Vietnamese fruits such as bananas, dragon fruits... exported to China were found to be contaminated with plant quarantine objects.

According to some experts, the reason China made this move is because Vietnam had previously announced that 8 types of fruits and vegetables imported from China contained chemicals exceeding the permitted threshold. These shipments included 126 tons of fresh tangerines (8 batches), 54 tons of carrots (2 batches), 40 tons of apples (1 batch), 20 tons of fresh grapes (2 batches), and a number of other items weighing from 6 to 15 tons. The pesticides found to exceed the threshold include: Carbendazim (used to kill fungi), Difenoconazole, Thiophanate, Propargite (used to kill spiders) and Methomyl.

Mr. Nguyen Xuan Hong, Director of the Plant Protection Department (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) said that the 17 violating shipments were discovered in the first months of 2014, and all of the goods had been sold out. Nafiqad has requested AQSIQ to notify the Chinese authorities to investigate the cause, trace the origin of the warned Chinese fruit shipment and apply appropriate remedial measures, and notify Nafiqad of the results to avoid the above situation from recurring.

In an official dispatch sent to the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Industry and Trade, Mr. Phung Huu Hao, Deputy Director of Nafiqad, requested that the Ministry of Industry and Trade investigate and notify China of the results of the investigation into the cause, remedial measures and avoid China from applying strict control measures on Vietnamese food products exported to China.

Along with that, Mr. Tran Ngoc Hiep - Vice President of Binh Thuan Dragon Fruit Association said that the association is checking the information to re-evaluate the situation before making further announcements to dragon fruit growers. Binh Thuan has about 20,000 hectares of dragon fruit, of which nearly 6,000 hectares meet VietGap (good agricultural practices).

The trap has been set?

Assessing information from a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that China may temporarily close some border gates with Vietnam, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Nam, former Director of the Institute of Trade Research, once warned that China may "play" Vietnam.

"There is a possibility that they will "play" Vietnam at times when there are seasonal products. They will cause obstacles for Vietnam, which has happened before, and maybe in the future it will be more extreme," Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Nam said.

Sharing the same view, Mr. Bui Ngoc Son - Head of International Economics Department, Institute for World Economics and Politics also said that China will use the "trick" of regulating this, restricting that, temporarily closing at the time of harvesting seasonal fruits, because of inspection, so it only takes 10-15 days for vegetables, fruits, and agricultural products to be discarded. "Therefore, Vietnam must be careful," he warned.

Commenting on this issue, economist Pham Chi Lan said that this is not the first time China has caused difficulties for Vietnam. China’s actions do not come from a good policy or perspective, whether it is for food safety or for consumer health.

The proof is that most Chinese products exported to Vietnam as well as other countries in the world are always complained about their quality, containing many toxic elements, but China has no tools to prevent them.

China's sudden increase in quality control shows that China only sees it as a commercial tool to make things difficult for partners who are already dependent on their market, not for consumers.

For Vietnam, the obvious lesson happened with Luc Ngan lychee (Bac Giang) many years ago. With the trick of pushing up prices and buying massively, when seeing that 90% of Luc Ngan lychee was exported to the Chinese market, China turned around and asked Vietnamese traders to produce a certificate of goods. However, it was not a normal certificate but a certificate of purchase from the garden. That is, when wanting to sell lychee to China, Vietnamese traders had to certify which garden the lychee came from, then China sent people to buy directly from the garden in Vietnam.

Or the Chinese traders "play dirty" by inciting to mix dirty things into tea to discredit Vietnamese tea. That said, in fact, this is just a way to make things difficult for Vietnamese goods, not to control the quality of the goods.

"I don't see China's move for consumers. It should be considered a trap, a trap of cheap and easy buying that has been set... when dependence on China comes back to squeeze farmers to death."

Ms. Pham Chi Lan said that Vietnamese producers must change their careless and irresponsible habits and have technical barriers to improve quality in order to hope to expand their export markets to other countries.

"In fact, because Vietnamese people have been doing business with Chinese traders for too long, they have developed a very bad habit of doing business without a methodical approach, being irresponsible, and being easygoing in production even though the seller knows it will cause a lot of harm to the economy. The mindset of always aiming to produce cheap, low-quality goods is a trap that China has set up, but Vietnamese people are not aware of it. That is bitter, and the fault lies with Vietnamese people who are too complacent, unwilling to change, afraid of difficulties, and unwilling to move forward," said economic expert Pham Chi Lan.

According to VOV.vn