The dragon fruit market in the south-central province of Binh Thuan, home to Vietnam’s largest area of the delicious tropical fruit, is now fully controlled by Chinese nationals, who work behind local confidants to manipulate supply and prices.

Many of the major wholesaling facilities that collect and trade dragon fruit in Ham Thuan Nam and Ham Thuan Bac Districts are owned and operated by Vietnamese residents, who follow decisions made by Chinese nationals behind the scenes.

The facilities are large enough for several trailer trucks to dock for loading at one time, and hang big banners that contain both Vietnamese and Chinese texts.

Binh Thuan is home to Vietnam’s biggest crops of dragon fruit, a red-skinned fruit having tasty white flesh, with some 22,000 hectares utilized for its cultivation.

According to the provincial police, 12 Chinese nationals have been caught entering the province and conducting illegal activities, particularly trading dragon fruit, in the first half of this year.

Police have booked all twelve cases, levied administrative fines on and informed the foreigners of their violations.

However, many Chinese nationals are still manipulating the market. A local official from the Ham Thuan Nam administration said it was hard to detect if a Chinese national is behind a facility lawfully registered by a Vietnamese.

“Some local traders, lured by profit, have leased their licensed facilities to the Chinese,” he added.

Chinese-only business

On June 9, a Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporter visited the Nga Minh dragon fruit trading facility in Ham Thuan Nam, requesting shipment of the fruit to the central city of Da Nang.

However, a Vietnamese manager rejected the order, saying that they only ship the produce to China.

Two nearby establishments, Tam Huong and Xuan Thinh, also asserted that they do not trade the fruit domestically, but export exclusively to China.

The three facilities are run by Vietnamese employees, but the real owners are a Chinese father and son, with local names of Phu and Quy.

As requested by the Chinese owners, the Vietnamese employees use tricks to source the dragon fruit from local growers at cheap prices.

“They come in the morning and offer to buy at one price, before returning later with a much lower price,” said Nguyen Thi Phuoc, a dragon fruit grower who recently fell victim to the Chinese-employed Vietnamese traders.

Phuoc said she was forced to accept the lower price, with the fruit already collected after the traders had made the first bid.

The traders will normally say the fruit does not look good in order to force farmers to accept the lower offer.

“If we refuse to sell, they simply return the following day with an even lower price, and so on,” she said.

On June 13, one Tuoi Tre correspondent followed a local grower to Kien Kien, a facility actually run by Chinese national Luo Zheng Yun, to experience first-hand how farmers are forced to sell their produce at a loss.

After the farmer said he wanted to sell at VND7,000 a kg, the Vietnamese employee of the facility made a counter-offer of VND6,000 per kg, saying that the fruit was “of the lowest quality.”

Refusing that would mean the growers had to take the fruit home and see them rot.

“You can sell your dragon fruit to no one but the Chinese,” Thanh, a Vietnamese fruit broker, revealed.

Thanh used to source the fruit directly from local plantations, but has reluctantly switched to working for the Chinese.

“Local brokers could not compete with the Chinese-backed traders,” she said.

Like Thanh, many other local traders and wholesalers have had to shut down their own businesses and become employees for the Chinese nationals in their homeland.

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