China

This analyst had been coping with cultural shock at the extent of China’s smart highways and broad, greened boulevards along the coast. There are glass skyscrapers, and hotels and guesthouses catering for an annual 10 million (mainly) Chinese tourists to Yantai for its beaches and seafood. There had been heavy snowfall two days before but there was a constant fleet of snowploughs and trucks clearing city and out of town roads, backed by shovel- and broom-wielding citizens. This was efficiency on a scale I have rarely seen even in Scandinavia, never mind the UK’s disaster prone efforts after a few snow-flakes.

Friends had set up a dinner meeting with Yan Yuan, a man of some political power in this region. An appointment with a marine research specialist had overrun. We sped 15km back into Yantai city centre, along a four-lane highway, past modern plants on either side, fronted by landscaped gardens, producing car and spare parts, machinery, electronics, pharmaceuticals and processed food.

Later, 59-year-old Yan Yuan told me that that economic development zones and others had been his main career preoccupation and responsibility over the last two decades. He also confirmed they had become a key way of closing down old, polluting industries inside Yantai city itself. This analyst had seen the evidence earlier in half demolished, coal-fired district heating plants, dismantled steel enterprises and illegal workshops, and the clean-up is still going on.

Yan Yuan pointed out a dish holding pride of place on the large, revolving glass dish server on the table in the dining suite. Through an interpreter he said he had wanted to make me feel at home so he had the chef prepare something from the UK – fish and chips, but with a prawn twist. It also meant he could chat about his economic cooperation visits to the UK and the inevitable…cod and chips. The other seafood dishes served were as far from a UK “chippy” as caviar from fish paste.

Sea apples

Large, sweet, crispy apples from around Yantai and the neighbouring seaport and holiday resort of Penglai, have long been on Chinese families’ shopping lists for high holidays. But, said Yan Yuan “while we always knew that good things could be produced on the land, after two decades of investment we have found the ‘apples from the sea’ are worth three times the apples from the land”.

The dozens of small eateries and big restaurants which this analyst had seen (and eaten in some of them) during four weeks criss-crossing today’s China, had already proved Yan Yuan’s point. Banks of glass tanks, holding fresh wild and farmed fish and shellfish (a dozen different crabs) of a bewildering variety were standard everywhere. Up to 50 crafted sample dishes (fresh and saltwater products) with a dozen different dressings of sea grasses might be laid out by the cooks to help diners choose from a numbered menu list with as many as 150 items. The best squid in sauce was sampled in a family cafe in Jinan, Shandong Province’s capital and cost about €0.75. In many hotels and fish restaurants, you can walk across glass floors with your supper swimming around below waiting to be chosen. Or a street cafe will have trays set out on pavement stands for examination.

This is also theatre, including the fish restaurant in a hanger sized building on the seafront in Penglai, where 10 sat down to eat among the palm trees and man-made streams in an almost tropical jungle setting. And all this is apart from the national and international commercial seafood traffic at the big fish handling warehouses in Yantai’s central fisheries exchange market behind the large ferry terminal.

“The gross domestic product (GDP) of Yantai [population 6.5 million of Shandong Province’s 90+ million] is 200 billionYuan (ca. €30 billion) and fish and agriculture account for one third of that”, Yan Yuan said.

So was the local economy threatened by the central fisheries ministry decision to slash the national fishing fleet in the long term and cap the wild catch at 12 million tonnes? World Fishing had reported this in early 2006 and the government’s plan to halt the wild catch of small breeding stock at present destined for large sea and land fish farms. All this is part of a national move to make farmed nearly 70 per cent of Chinese fish production over the next decade.

Yan Yuan was not fazed at all. “Most of the seafood produced, like many of the dishes on the table, are from farming instead of wild fish,” he said. I said the port had seemed a bit thin on trawlers. Yan Yuan explained that the deep-sea fishing fleet was away, working waters from southern Africa to the Atlantic, in Russia and Alaska, bringing back product such as cod for value-added production. He explained that the dozens of artisanal boats seen bobbing on the water in front of kilometres of Yantai’s designer-style sea promenade, were for servicing hectares of lines for kelp, mussels and beds of scallops.

He said there was no government policy at present to limit the operations of the deep-sea fleets. As for coastal and economic zone fishing, there were certainly policies in place to limit catches and, for example, part of July was a closed season to protect spawning.

But could Yantai resist moves by Beijing which would hit Yantai’s important fish economy? “There is no significant impact on Yantai because it is mainly supported by fish farming,” he said.

So did the Chinese consumers prefer, and were they ready to pay higher prices for, wild product? “The quality of seafood is really good here. Not only the wild fish but the farmed too.” The fact that people were eating both, floated away in more toasts and was overtaken by the importance of choosing the appropriate, sorghum-brewed Yantai drink to match the particular merits of a local “yellow fish”, in a rich plum-like sauce.

East v West

Between mouthfuls of abalone we tried to work out why countries such as the UK had so little on the fish menu for the consumer and could not remotely match Chinese seafood tourism. Part of his response was that cities such as Yantai were developing a whole economic development package, with each sector supporting and feeding the other.

As for market branding, weren’t they being used simply for their cheap labour to produce value-added seafood products for foreign companies?

“You talk about the cheap labour force in China and you are quite right. But China is a developing country…and in many aspects we need to develop our abilities. It needs some time for a company to change. Right now they may not have the financial strength to buy fish or the raw material. Of course they would like to do it that way. And if they do have the money then they would. Some Chinese companies are already doing this, but too few Chinese are promoting Chinese branding abroad” and this was now a an area for action, he added.

These issues touch the core of the globalisation debate and how rich-country consumers benefit from low-paid workers’ output. A shop assistant in a posh department store in a city such as Yantai would earn around 600 Yuan (€60) per month.

Yan Yuan was right on the ball, and knows the level playing field for developing countries remains some way off. “I think it is a good idea for Chinese people to set up companies overseas, and get involved in trading. This could be very good business. Now that China is in the WTO, there should be more free flow of products between countries.” But we could not define how far Chinese products suffered from foreign brands moving into the Chinese market. The whole of China was involved in a campaign at the moment, he said, for a harmonious society because of the rich poor, city-rural income gap. The question we could not answer together was how far that harmony applies to the international arena.

Rich man - poor peasant

Of course rural producers and fishermen can now sell on the open market and many are clearly doing well. But the growing income gap is causing fear of social revolt. The public security ministry reported that local conflicts are at an all time high, many over land and water disputes and more than 80,000 ‘mass’ incidents took place in 2005.

“You have to remember,” he said, “that Yantai’s development has only happened in the last 20 years. This year we expect Yantai’s GDP to go up to 240bn Yuan. We rank 30th among the leading cities in China”, he added. Foreigners think of cities such as Xian and the terracotta warriors with tens of million of tourist visits, but Xian’s GDP is far less than Yantai’s. Yantai has been awarded the title of being China’s most civilised city to live in,” he said. “Last year we won the UN Habitat award for the renovation of the old city. And Yantai is also known as one of the three safest cities in China.

And Chinese do worry. A week before, friends in the IT megalopolis of Shenzhen, just above Hong Kong, clutched their bags to their chests and warned us to do the same as we headed for a street restaurant in the evening.

“The World Bank last year also awarded us the top marks for the most investment-friendly region in China,” he added. He has reason to be proud of what has been done when one compares it with the often shabby and run-down trading districts of ports and fishing towns in many parts of Europe.

“I think, honestly speaking, that the Chinese people are very smart,” Yan Yuan said, “and they will accomplish anything once they are into it and doing it in earnest. Probably China has been exploited in the last hundred years, but it would take time to change,” he said.

“Talking about the timetable, I don’t think we can do it overnight. For a person like me, maybe I can do it, because I am educated. For example, my son, who is now working Germany as a department manager, [shows] a younger generation can make a good life and not be exploited. However, given the fact that China has a population of 1.3 billion people, a lot of people in rural areas are not educated and cannot even afford to go to school. How do you change that reality?” he asked.

The proposition was put that the Communist Party, in allowing economic ‘reform’, had led to farmers and small-sector fishermen losing free health cover and free education for their children. Yet people in the cities and government were covered either by the state insurance or their companies.

The response was one indication that China is not as monolithic as it is often portrayed. “From 2007, Yantai farmers and fishermen will be covered by a free health care scheme. The Yantai government [has decided this]. Yantai is an advanced and rich city in China so we can afford to do it, but some other cities could not afford it.”

So was Yantai moving faster than Beijing? “Maybe Yantai can do it better than Beijing because we are not so populous. And I can tell you that in 2007, all children in Yantai will be exempt from school fees, although for the whole country this would mean an investment of billions. In China things happen slowly and it is a vast country,” he said. “China has had a fast rate of growth in the last few decades [but] we lag behind the UK and the US and we have to learn…..”

That may be more the crafty politician speaking than the town developer promoting, but he is right. There is much to be learnt – by Europe’s fishermen. Maybe it is time for them to take an educational break along this fascinating fish food coastline, and bypass the throat-searing pollution of the Beijings and the Wild West atmosphere of the Shenzhen megalopolises.