HANOI: A bevy of workers are carefully sorting and grading an enormous pile of litchis at a packing house in northern Vietnam. The best of the bunch will go to China.
“China is by far our largest market,” fruit trader Tran Van Sang, 42, told AFP at his warehouse in Luc Ngan — a small town just north of Hanoi which is taken over by litchis during the tropical fruit’s short six-week season.
Some 60 percent of Vietnam’s litchi crop is exported to China, according to official figures. But the trade is highly vulnerable to political bickering between the two countries, driving a shift into new markets with Vietnamese litchi exported to Australia and America for the first time this year.
Last year, peak season arrived in the middle of a bitter maritime standoff, sparked after Beijing moved an oil rig into waters in the East Vietnam Sea.
“It was difficult — we had a bumper crop but the Chinese buyers didn’t come,” said Sang.
China is Vietnam’s largest trading partner and the countries’ volatile relationship typically doesn’t impact overall trade and investment links.
But it has a dramatic effect on some sectors, like the litchi, a fruit native to northern Vietnam and southern China. Last year, traders said whole unsold consignments of litchi were simply left to rot in border areas.
This year, although maritime tensions remain high over Beijing’s island-building projects in disputed waters, the Chinese buyers are back in Luc Ngan, with exports up 50 percent year-on-year to 40,000 tons, according to official figures.
