Chinese rush to Vietnam to collect rubber wood

Chinese businessmen have flocked to Vietnam to collect rubber wood and control 80 percent of rubber wood market share in the Central Highlands.

Nguyen Thanh Son, the owner of a 3 hectare rubber plantation in Vinh Cuu district of Dong Nai province said he feels regret as he sold the rubber tree and land to a real estate company last year.

Son made the decision after seeing the rubber price falling down for three consecutive years and the revenue from the plantation was not high enough to cover expenses.

Son’s neighborers chopped down rubber trees and sold rubber timber to Chinese businessmen.

Le Thi Nguyet, the owner of a 8 hectare rubber plantation in Bu Dang district of Binh Phuoc province has also sold her 15-year-old rubber trees. The land has been leased to a household to grow cassava.

Nguyen Su Son from Dong Phu Rubber JSC in Binh Phuoc province said as the rubber price falls down dramatically, people decide to chop down rubber trees to grow other crops.

Meanwhile, Do Xuan Lap, chair of the Binh Dinh Timber & Forestry Product Association, affirmed that Chinese businessmen flock to the Central Highlands to collect rubber wood, trying to eradicate domestic enterprises.

The association has expressed its concern about the ‘strange behavior’ by Chinese businessmen and the signs of the businessmen evading tax.

According to Lap, the rubber price may increase from 2017 as China has announced the closure of natural forests, which means that the materials for Chinese manufacturers will get short.

“We know this very well as we are competing with Chinese wooden furniture manufacturers,” he said.

“They (Chinese businessmen) come to workshops and factories in Vietnam with briefcases of money and ready to pay hundreds of thousands of dollar in deposit,” he said.

He went on to say that Chinese businessmen told Vietnamese workshops to lower the class of timber so as to lower the prices for easier tax evasion.

To Xuan Phuc, a policy expert from Forest Trends in Vietnam, also said China has recently increased the import of wood, especially rubber wood, from Vietnam.

According to Phuc, Vietnam’s total export turnover of wood and wooden product exports to China was $965.8 million in 2015, an increase of $121 million over the year before.

In the first three quarters of 2016, the export turnover reached $725.3 million, equal to 75 percent of total export turnover of the whole year 2015.

Vietnam’s rubber farming has been heavily relying on China. Some years ago, when Chinese flocked to Vietnam to collect rubber latex, Vietnamese farmers cleared tens of thousands of hectares of natural forests to get land for rubber planting.

Nam Lich / vietnamnet