VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese economists have discovered some dirty tricks Chinese businessmen play on Vietnamese farmers.

Chinese businessmen have flocked to Vietnam, where they seek to purchase everything Vietnam has. Ten years ago, they hunted for buffalo and cow toenails. Some years ago, they tried to collect dry cashew leaves, pepper roots. And most recently, they have been looking for cassava and sweet potato leaves.

According to experts, there are two kinds of farm produce Chinese want.

The first group includes sweet potato leaves, cassava sprout, or herbs…, which they clearly have a demand for. However, it is not clear about the consumption market

The second group includes the odd produce with unclear trade purposes. It is unclear about the value of the produce and their functions. They could be buffalo and cow toenails.

There are a lot of products Chinese hunt for, but there is one trick they have been using in the collection campaigns. They come to rural areas and order to buy the products in big quantities at high prices. However, after making payment for some consignments of products, they would vanish into the air, leaving Vietnamese farmers with their unsold products.

Professor Vo Tong Xuan, a well-known agriculture expert, has pointed out that Chinese businessmen, when collecting odd farm produce, aim to make big money and sabotage Vietnam’s economy.

In the first phase, Chinese businessmen state they want to buy big volumes of dry cashew leaves, for example, at VND500 per kilo. The price would be raised to VND1,000 per kilo some days later and VND2,000 a couple of weeks later.

Dry cashew leaves have been used by Vietnamese farmers as the garbage which helps keep the humidity and improve the humus of the soil. As the leaves now can be sold for money, they would try to collect all the leaves they can to sell to Chinese.

After buying leaves in the first and second phases, Chinese would raise the leave price to the sky high level in the third phase, but would not buy leaves. It is the time for Chinese to sell the leaves they bought before in the first and second phases at low prices and earn big money.

After that, Chinese businessmen would “disappear” after one week of selling leaves. As such, the dry leaves would become worthless products which farmers would throw away.

With the tricks, Chinese can not only trick Vietnamese people out of money, but also can sabotage Vietnam’s agriculture and national economy.

Chinese collected dry cashew leaves because this would lead to the lower productivity of cashew crops. When farmers killed buffalos to sell toenails to Chinese, they would lose the means of production. The bloodsuckers and yellow nails Vietnamese farmers collected, but could not sell to Chinese as they had vanished, would pollute the environment. Once the sweet potato leaves are taken away, farmers would not have many bulbs left.

Nguyen Dinh Bich from the Trade Research Institute, have found from the customs’ reports that Chinese businessmen did not bring the farm produce they collected to China across the border lines. Only small amounts of herb roots have been exported to China, much lower than the collected amounts.

According to Bich, Chinese businessmen create “virtual demand and virtual supply.” They can push the prices up to sky high levels, because no one knows the actual values of the strange goods like bloodsuckers.

Once Chinese can control the market prices and make profits, they would disappear. Meanwhile, Vietnamese farmers would spend money and time to buy the worthless products they once sold to Chinese.

Lao Dong