Kiwi wars: the golden fruit fuelling a feud between New Zealand and China
The efforts of one company to regain control of illegal farming show Wellington's powerlessness than its biggest trading partner
It is the story of the great power of the world, the work of smuggling, pestilence, and the fruit of little hair.
Available on the shelves of supermarkets and lunch boxes, the humble kiwi is an important horticultural export in New Zealand. The recent fruit control wars, however, have highlighted the tensions between New Zealand and China relations.
In the mid-2010s, a kiwi farmer took the lucrative New Zealand gold mine and smuggled it into China. Thousands of hectares of illegal gardens have emerged, and New Zealand has spent years struggling to protect its intellectual property. Now the tough decisions facing the country's farmers also present broad challenges to the country's relationship with its major trading partner.
Sacred grail of kiwis(ads2)
The Kiwis are big business in New Zealand. Zespri, the country's largest kiwi cooperative giant had a net worth of NZ $ 3.9bn (£ 1.9bn) last year. Perhaps most importantly Sungold, a new type of gold kiwi that has helped save the local industry from disaster. By 2010, the country's kiwi orchards had been destroyed by a new disease called PSA. The vines brought back red liquid, the flowers rotted and the fruit fell off. It was a nightmare of farming and economy worth about NZ $ 900m, and the newly popular gold varieties were among the worst hit.
Zespri has joined other sponsors and invested millions of dollars in search of alternatives. It brings down 50,000 varieties in a short list of 40, four of which perform fruit tests. In those experiments emerged Gold3, a type that would eventually affect the shelves of supermarkets like Sungold.
Its properties represented a sacred number of kiwifruit properties: they are sturdy and attractive on the shelf, delicious with a delicious tang, rich in vitamin C, cheap and plentiful to grow. Seriously, it was against the backbone of the vine that destroyed the industry in New Zealand and Italy. Sungold was Zespri's gold goose, and the company quickly moved to register its ownership only in countries around the world. Gold has surpassed the green in kiwi exports, and the New Zealand kiwi industry is being rebuilt in part on Sungold's back.
It may have been the end of gold in the years of the Zespri conflict. But in 2016, an unpopular rumor spread to headquarters: Sungold was seen growing up in China. The company hired independent investigators and found the rumors to be true.
The investigation followed the source to Haoyu Gao, an amazing man who had bought a kiwi orchard in Opotiki, a small town on the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand. According to court documents, he smuggled the precious price of branches to Sichuan, where he sold women's shoots for just over $ 60,000. In the end, however, gambling did not pay off. He denied wrongdoing, but a New Zealand high court ruled in his favor and ordered him to pay NZ $ 14m in damages.
Zespri won a court battle, but lost the battle to control the spread of Gold3 through China. Attempts to take legal action later failed without strong support from the Beijing government, and at the moment the Gold3 vines have spread. In a recent farmers' report, Zespri wrote that the area under illegal cultivation doubled between 2019 and 2021 to more than 5,200 hectares.
"From the path we see, it is clear that unauthorized Gold3 is rapidly catching up in China," the report said, and the country is in the process of producing between 30 to 90 trays of Gold3 fruit per year. At the low end of those ratings, it will produce much of New Zealand's imports from China, which were in the 30m trays to China last season.
Awesome suggestion
It is not uncommon for New Zealand to have kiwi species selected from China. The fruit was, in fact, Chinese, and arrived in New Zealand in 1904. It thrived in the local climate, and the country began shipping it in the 1950's. In a moment of marketing ingenuity, exporters have coined the word "kiwifruit" after the mysterious New Zealand bird, which shares with it a dark brown outcrop. To European and American eyes, the fruit is gradually becoming more like New Zealand.(ads1)
At the time, China had little or no control over the fruits of locality that were sold in large quantities as a foreign motive. Today, however, it is New Zealand who finds itself in a difficult situation and Zespri has signed a firm agreement with farmers: if you can beat 'em, join em - or at least buy em. Instead of pursuing illegal fruit gardens, they suggested an annual trial to buy and sell counterfeit fruit grown in China under the Zespri brand.
The question will come to mind next week, as farmers vote to follow a strategy to combat or work with a new generation of Chinese farmers.
Zespri's suggestion "could suggest that the horse is probably overweight," said Jason Young, an associate professor at Victoria University and director of the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Center. "Zespri's question really is what happens when you fail to control your assets in the Chinese market?"
Pragmatism or principle
The fruit dispute also highlights the competitive ways of pragmatism and the process, at a time when New Zealand is accused of slowing down to avoid offending Beijing. It also shows the difficulties a young politician faces when facing Goliath, as well as New Zealand's lack of promotion with his big business partner.
“The word 'little' is an overstatement,” says Andrew Gillespie, a professor of international law. "It's a dot."
Pushing the issue further could have angered Beijing, saying: “It's the same with all legal cases. You can win with an idea, but often the winning price is higher than you can afford… They may find themselves in a severe storm and the consequences will be much greater than this one of the goods used. ”
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That storm is a danger that the New Zealand government and industry are well aware of. Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta used the same word when warning exporters of their dangers if New Zealand were to provoke Beijing's outrage.
"This is really a relationship test," said Dr Hongzhi Gao, a fellow professor at the International University of Victoria Business School who specializes in China's provincial government. "There is also an opportunity here, for the New Zealand government to make a very serious case against the great Chinese government."
On the Chinese side, "it is a question of political will more than anything else," Young said. The central government "is very politically focused on development, especially rural development, as well as addressing the problems of poverty in China". That would mean that Beijing would not like to break the law for rural farmers who have embraced the new and productive kiwivine.
Zespri has used this hypothesis to challenge many counter-measures, but experts say the same power could work against it if it could take a gentle approach and try to force licensing agreements down the line.
The company declined to comment, but said in a statement that "seeking a trade solution, and perhaps compliance with the Chinese sector, gives us a much better chance of a successful outcome". Such a solution “will have to work for both parties to succeed,” it said.
"It's very misleading," Gao said. “You rely on the local authorities to protect your interests. And if they don't, what do you do? ”
It is clear that the planting of Sungold in China took place with the consent of local governments, he says:
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