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Chinese goods quietly inflltrating Vietnam’s market
Chinese-made goods distributed by Vietnamese petty merchants are reaching every corner of the market and quietly, step by step, are cementing firm positions in Vietnam.
The trade route
A ‘silk road’ has been established on which people travel to and from China, bringing back Chinese goods to sell. People are inviting each other to go trading Chinese goods, and sharing information about trading on online forums.
A person just returned from a business trip to Guangzhou burst out “You are really foolish if you do not trade Chinese goods now.”
As the trade of Chinese goods has become profitable, a lot of ‘supporting businesses’ have also appeared. Currency exchange, ticket booking, telephone cards and interpreter hiring all can be arranged at representative offices with no name plates in Hanoi and HCM City.
For example, the so-called ‘Vietnam-China Trade Promotion Agency’ is located in an apartment on Hau Giang Road in district 6 of HCM City. It specialises in serving the demand for low cost commodities from local residents in the Mekong Delta area.
In general, a trip to trade Chinese goods by air costs some 12 million dong, including air tickets (nearly 10 million), expenses on meals (four days), traveling, interpretation and introduction of factories and wholesale markets. The agency said it can provide everything from selecting partners to placing orders to carrying goods.
Just having several ten millions of dong in start-up capital, a Saigon college student related that he returned from Guangzhou with one bale of clothes and half a bale of kitchen ware that were advertised as having ‘South Korean technology’ and ‘Japanese standards’ for resale in Vietnam.
He was very successful when he offered to sell the commodities online. Then he decided to borrow more money and trade more commodities. The university student now wants to discontinue his studies because he is keen on trading Chinese goods. He cherishes the hope of setting up a company specializing in importing Chinese goods.
The quiet advance of Chinese-made goods
Participants at a meeting of the High Quality Vietnamese Products Club recently discussed how Vietnamese manufacturers can cope with big inventories and the skyrocketing cost of electricity, petrol and business premises. With everything going up but consumers’ purchasing power, a lot of businesses have had to stop operation, lay off workers, outsource products in China and then bring them back to sell in VIetnam.
Businessmen have been whispering to each other that ‘N brand’ fashion products or ‘V brand’ shoes are in fact made-in-China goods.
“What will happen if every company outsources production to China? Will the Vietnamese production be killed?” someone asked.
“If Vietnamese enterprises outsource to Chinese enterprises, they will have good business, while consumers can purchase low cost products, but the domestic market will become a place for consuming Chinese goods, and the national economy will suffer,” said Vu Kim Hanh, Director of BSA Centre.
China-made goods are showing up everywhere in the domestic market, from fashionable clothes and footwear to consumer products and cosmetics.
Big traders specializing in trading China’s goods have been selling products at the Dong Xuan wholesale market in Hanoi and An Dong market in HCM City. Ninety-nine percent of the children’s toys available on the pavements are China made products. Confectionary shops in Hanoi and Da Lat are flooded with the imports brought from the northern border. Vendors are also selling coloured balls and candies made in China.
Pham Chi Lan, a senior economist, related that a producer, after expressing his idea of importing some machines for production, was told to go to China. After meeting persons who said they worked for many years in factories in the US and Japan to learn technologies, the producer agreed immediately to import these machines, at a price just 1/3 of the prices of machines made in other countries
Lai Kim, General Director of Nhat Tan Garment Company, sadly admitted that China fashion proves to have very ‘reasonable prices. “I once joked that in winter, Hanoians become more beautiful with China’s fashion,” she said.
VietNamNet, SGTT
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