VietNamNet Bridge – Analysts have summarized some of the more popular tricks Chinese businessmen play on Vietnamese farmers. They maintain that, in the aggregate, these tricks harm not just individual farmers, but the Vietnamese economy as well.

Only buying special products in remote regions

This has proves to be the golden principle many Chinese businessmen follow when approaching Vietnamese farmers.

Rat tails, young mango leaves, litchi leaves, yellow snails and dragon fruit flower buds – the things Chinese order are all very odd, and have no real value in the eyes of the people in remote areas. Therefore, the locals are more than happy to gather and sell off these items which only the Chinese seem to see the value of.

Chinese businessmen have proven to be very cunning when trying to collect odd things in remote areas.

It is because in the remote areas, where people lack information, they more easily fall into the Chinese traps.

Paying high for worthless things

The most special characteristic of all the Chinese business deals is that they buy worthless things.

They came to Binh Phuoc Province to collect young cashew leaves at prices equal to or even higher than the raw cashew nuts.

In 2012, they came to Nghe An Province to seek to buy bloodsuckers at high price of VND200,000 per kilo. Nghe An’s people said they’d rather catch bloodsuckers and earn VND50,000 a day than till fields, hard work with low income.

However, the Chinese businessmen who ordered the bloodsuckers never returned to collect them, leaving Vietnamese farmers in distress.

Where did the bought things go?

As analysts could not imagine what Chinese businessmen were buying bought worthless items for, they tried to investigate where the goods ended up

However, the trail led to a dead end. The locals and agencies at the Tan Thanh, Mong Cai and Thanh Thuy border gates all said they had never seen such goods going through the border gates.

Chinese buy worthless things to throw away in Vietnam

A “project” on collecting young cashew leaves in Vietnam’s Binh Phuoc Province was a hot topic of discussion of businessmen in Guang Xi, China. At first, they came to some communes in Binh Phuoc and told local farmers they wanted to buy leaves in large quantities, and at high prices.

Then they came to the other localities and similarly informed the locals that they were in the market for leaves. However, they offered to pay two or three times more than their initial offers in the first set of communities.

Vietnamese merchants in the second set of localities then set about collecting young cashew leaves to provide to the Chinese businessmen. They soon found, however, that they could not collect the goods in large enough quantities, as local farmers just didn’t have enough supply.

At that time, a mysterious merchant appeared with leaves to sell. The Vietnamese merchants rushed to buy leaves from the mystery man, despite his high prices, because what they had been offered from the Chinese businessmen still guaranteed them a nice profit.

But the Chinese never returned. And, in fact, the mysterious merchant was himself a Chinese businessman, who had bought the leaves in the low-price areas, earning a handsome profit for himself and, undoubtedly, his cohorts, when he unloaded them at the higher priced areas. With the big money pocketed, no Chinese ever returned to make good on the promise to buy the expensive leaves.

Dat Viet