The windfall is transforming entire regions, but some are starting to worry: What if China stops buying?
4 min
EA YONG, Vietnam—In the verdant highlands of central Vietnam, warehouses the size of airplane hangars dominate small farming towns, bristling with mounds of tropical fruit. The bounty is destined for a colossal market: China.
Farmers are felling coffee trees traditionally grown in this cool hilly region to plant spiky durians, pungent fruits that have become wildly popular in China. They are reaping the windfall to buy new irrigation systems, pay off loans and build shiny marble facades to their homes.
“We locals aren’t just doing well, we can even be considered rich,” said Pham Van Trung, 54, as he ate a late lunch of pork and rice wine. Trung made $81,000 this year selling durian, and said the region was swarming with Chinese buyers.
China’s appetite for foreign produce has grown in recent decades along with the wealth of its consumers. The amount of food the world’s second most populous nation imports has risen to over $200 billion a year—more than any other country—from about $15 billion two decades ago, according to the World Trade Organization. Avocado farmers in Kenya, shrimp cultivators in India, soy producers in Russia and banana growers in Cambodia are all cashing in.
While economic growth in China has slowed recently and its population is shrinking, demand for nutrient-rich foods such as beef and tropical fruit has remained high.
Last year, the Chinese noshed through more than 800,000 metric tons of imported durian and nearly six million metric tons of imported meat—both world-leading totals. It bought 90 million metric tons of soybeans from overseas last year, accounting for roughly 60% of global trade, for use in making tofu and to feed the country’s hundreds of millions of pigs.
Feeding China’s massive middle class presents a historic opportunity for countries seeking to boost the incomes of people in poor, rural areas. But it also poses a quandary: how to tap in to its huge market without becoming dependent on a trade partner that can be fickle.
In recent years, China has restricted imports of Norwegian salmon, Taiwanese pineapples, Philippines bananas and Australian lobsters. It usually cites contamination, pests or issues with quality—but Beijing’s curbs have also often coincided with political disputes.
China slapped hefty antidumping duties on Australian wine exports in 2020 after Australia called for an independent probe into the origins of Covid-19. In 2012, China halted purchases from banana growers in the Philippines, saying mealybugs had been discovered in shipments, after a flare-up between the countries in the South China Sea.
“With the size of the Chinese economy, it can always use trade to punish an exporter,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Selling to China is “an opportunity, and it is a risk,” she said.
The risk is higher because when the chance to export to China’s massive market opens up, often entire agricultural belts go all in. This can lead to what Sun calls “singularification,” or the concentration of a local economy around one product, making it vulnerable to disruption.
That is what appears to be happening in Vietnam’s central highlands. The region is famed for its Robusta coffee, which is sold around the world. But last year, Beijing opened the gates to large-scale imports of Vietnamese durian—and farmers here began uprooting their coffee crops. Traders flocked to snap up the produce, causing local prices to more than double this year.
Be Duc Huynh, a 26-year-old farmer who got rid of his entire coffee crop, said he makes about five times as much from a hectare of durian as he earned from coffee. He harvested four tons of durian this year, up from one ton last year—all of it destined for China.
China buys around 90% of durian exports from Vietnam, which also sells much of its dragon fruit, bananas, mangoes and jackfruit to its giant neighbour. In recent months around 60% of Vietnam’s fruit and vegetable exports have gone to China, up from one-third a decade ago, according to official figures compiled by data provider CEIC.
During the autumn harvest time, the village air carried the sharp smell of the fruit. Families stacked mounds of durian in front of their homes to entice traders, who thwacked the durian shells with knife handles to test for quality. Hard means it is too young; soft means it is ripe and can sell for a higher price.
On a recent afternoon, durian trader Nguyen Thai Huyen dug into the flesh with her painted-pink fingernails, tasting bits of durian to determine their ripeness. Huyen posts snappy videos on TikTok of her visits to plantations and the mountains of durian she has on offer.
“A few years ago people considered durian a crop to reduce poverty,” she said. “Now it is the million-dollar crop.”
She has tried selling to Japan, but said buyers there only take small amounts. She isn’t especially worried about being too reliant on China, though. She says durian’s popularity has room to grow in the country, where many are still unfamiliar with the fruit.
Vietnam’s government is less certain. Earlier this year the agriculture ministry issued a warning about what state media called reckless durian cultivation, saying many farmers were abandoning traditional crops such as coffee and rice and planting durian in areas unsuited to it. Agriculture experts cited in state media have encouraged farmers to develop alternative markets to China and try to sell more of their produce locally.
Traders say that is easier said than done. The fruit has few takers outside of the region, and recent high prices put durian out of reach of many local Vietnamese.
Still, farmers say they want to be careful. In September, some fruit exports including durian were halted after Beijing complained about mealybugs and other pests. It reminded farmers of a major disruption in January 2022 when truckloads of Vietnamese produce rotted after China sealed off its southern border to contain the spread of Covid-19.
H’Meng, a farmer who goes by one name, has planted hundreds of durian trees in recent years. Now, she said, she is planning to grow more coffee. The prices are more stable, she said, because the market for coffee isn’t focused on one nation.
“I’m worried about becoming too dependent on China,” she said.
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Rugged coastal drives and fireside drams define a slow, indulgent journey through Scotland’s far north.
A haven for hedge-fund titans and Hollywood grandees, Greenwich is one of the world’s most expensive residential enclaves, where eye-watering prices meet unapologetic grandeur.
The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
