Professor Vo Tong Xuan, a leading rice expert, said that Chinese businessmen had been cheating Vietnamese farmers in farm produce deals thanks to support from greedy Vietnamese merchants.

He also said that it was the merchants who helped Chinese bring low-quality and harmful products to Vietnam. 

Taking full advantage of the cross-border trade policy, the products are carried across the China-Vietnam border every day, penetrating the domestic market and competing with domestically made products.

Dr. Nguyen Ngoc De from Can Tho University said Chinese businessmen always work  with Vietnamese merchants because they understand Vietnamese laws. 

“Under the laws, foreign businessmen are prohibited from collecting farm produce directly from farmers. They have to buy farm produce through Vietnamese trading companies,” he explained, adding that this allows Chinese dodge the law. 

De spent time surveying how Chinese collect sweet potato from Vietnamese farmers in Binh Tan district in Vinh Long province. He said Chinese businessmen did not buy sweet potatoes from farmers, but instead through Vietnamese merchants in the material growing areas. 

Chinese deposited 30 percent on the deal and urged merchants to collect products in large quantities.

If they anticipate profit, Chinese will buy the farm produce, but ask for deferred payment for the remaining 70 percent of the deals. 

If losses are anticipated, Chinese businessmen will disappear, leaving the products unsold.

Why haven’t local authorities investigated these cases and arrest the swindlers?

“Local officials told me that they could not do anything to help farmers in these cases, because the deals were made on the basis of verbal contracts,” De said.

“Farmers did not know Chinese merchants’ addresses. They only had contact phone numbers,” he said.

Dr. Nguyen Van Nam, a renowned trade expert, noted that Vietnamese farmers and merchants were swindled because of their greed. However, he pointed out that the problem shows state mismanagement.

“The cumbersome state management apparatus, the unclear policies and the mismanagement are behind the current problems,” Nam said.

“I believe that Vietnamese businessmen in China cannot go everywhere to collect goods like Chinese businessmen can in the Vietnamese territory,” Nam said.

Xuan agreed with Nam that local authorities have to take responsibility for the losses incurred by Vietnamese farmers in trade deals with Chinese businessmen.

Dat Viet