Between the lines: Help hard to find for China exporter

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Affco's investment in China has shown the meat company that the Government's encouragement of exporters is more words than action.

In western China, where the company has set up shop, residents could tell a similar tale of their own Government.

Affco's general manager of business development, Peter Wethey, cannot understand why the company failed to get a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade business development grant three years ago, when it began investigating the prospects for beef processing in China.

While there has been ambassadorial support, Mr Wethey criticises Tradenz' efforts, which he says diminish with every kilometre a project is distant from its Beijing base.

A Tradenz representative in China, Jim Tait, did not deny a lack of input into Affco's and other ventures in the vast country. He said other commitments, including fostering educational exchanges, kept him tied to his Beijing office.

The education emphasis does not wash with Mr Wethey, who believes schooling Chinese in New Zealand is no big earner, especially with the strain it places on the education infrastructure.

The potential for returns from exporting meat and technology and the chance to reap profits from a burgeoning beef industry in Asia are more to his liking. As they should be for Tradenz, he believes.

Affco has taken a leap of faith into China, albeit one that is backed by impressive research. Having weathered the 1998 Asian economic crisis, the company will be in no doubt of the fragility of the region.

As well, just two days after it officially opened its joint-venture beef-processing plant in Chengdu, in the western Chinese province of Sichuan, veteran China commentator Willy Wo-lap Lam warned of Beijing's ambivalence toward its "go west" development programme.

Already huge by New Zealand standards, Chengdu and its surrounds look like a region under construction, with skyscrapers and motorway extensions being built at every turn.

Yet, Mr Wo-lap Lam said that six months after the Communist Party announced moves to boost the nine underdeveloped western provinces, including Sichuan, in what was billed as "this century's first mega-project," the party leadership was "surprisingly vague on definite measures."

Beijing had earmarked $13 billion for the project this year, but how and where most of the funds were to be spent was murky, and no details had been released on what each province should specialise in nor how the Government could ensure the requisite foreign funds and technology.

One sino-specialist suggested that the develop-the-west programme could be a ploy to divert public attention from Beijing's failings in economic and political reform.

Affco can only hope that China's inscrutable political climate does not affect it in a way which would make any of Tradenz' shortcomings look exceedingly small fry.