Xinhua Insight: Importing the fruits of China's success

Zhang Jingyun often starts her work day in a bomb shelter, half an hour from the main office of her family company in downtown Dalian. The old cement fortification, built in the 1960s during the Cold War, is now a banana store.

A minute's walk from the entrance into the dim tunnel, more than 200,000 boxes of bananas and other fruits are neatly piled, with some reaching the arched ceiling. Forklifts bustle between the stacks. Workers in blue uniforms load and unload.

"Winter or summer, the temperature is always 13 to 14 degrees centigrade, the optimum for storing bananas. A lot of fruit dealers in Dalian rent shelters for storing bananas. They are natural refrigerators," says Zhang.

Zhang, 37, studied and worked abroad for eight years before returning to become CFO of Dalian Ruihua Everfresh Trade Co., Ltd, a fruit importer that specializes in bananas.

Now, bananas are top of Ruihua's agenda as "of all the imported fruits, bananas are the most affordable with an average price of 10 yuan (1.6 U.S. dollar) per kilogram,"says Zhang.

Outside the bleak concrete bunker, Ruihua's success has been dazzling. The company handles one in three bananas sold in the three provinces of northeast China, home to more than 101 million people.

Since Ruihua's first order from Ecuador -- 36 containers with 75 tonnes of bananas -- arrived at Dalian Port in October 2011, the company has received a new shipment every week. In 2014, Ruihua received 1,000 containers from Ecuador, a year-on-year increase of 80 percent. Its target this year is to raise it by another 30 to 50 percent.

Fruit dealers attribute the surge of imported food like bananas to the growing wealth of Chinese people and worsening domestic food safety. In addition, e-commerce has brought foreign products to central and western inland regions, an under-tapped market with great potential.

"When I was a kid, a banana was a luxury for an ordinary family like mine, not to mention an imported banana," says Zhang. She was born in 1978, when the central government formally began its "reform and opening-up" policy.

"It's not far-fetched to say that the sales of imported bananas demonstrate the real purchasing power of ordinary Chinese people."

The banana still has an exotic appeal, especially in the more remote parts of China's northeast, where the inhabitants might never have heard of the far-flung Latin American nation that grew it.

Packed in a fruit basket, bananas can still brighten special occasions such as the Spring Festival, when the area is emerging from winter temperatures that can plunge to minus 40 degrees centigrade.

Fifty days before reaching China, the bananas were still green when a worker picked them on a plantation in Guayas, Ecuador. Then they were packed into the container and shipped from Guayaquil Port. After a 40-day journey across the Pacific, they arrived in Dalian.

Mike Fang has worked for Maersk, the world's biggest shipping company, for 21 years, and has seen close up how China's development has transformed economic patterns.

He joined in Maersk in 1994, when China's economy rocketed with double-digit growth as the country became the factory of the world.

"At that time, China imported large amounts of waste paper, plastic and metals to make low-end products for exports, which resulted in a high foreign trade volume, but limited contribution to a high-value economy," he says.

However, over the past decade, the imported items have changed. The demand for fruit, meat, dairy products and wine has increased dramatically, "particularly in the last three to four years", while imports of the industrial waste are much less.

"Actually, now our ships carry auto parts, instead of waste metals, from Germany to China," says Fang.

To adapt to the trend, Maersk has begun to restructure its China operations.

"Previously, we mostly handled China's exports, but now we have to think about how to carry products to China as soon as possible. For instance, we have put more cold chain containers on the lines between China and Latin America or Oceania for the fruit and fish imports," he says.

Fang believes the increase in imported products pressures Chinese producers to sharpen their competitiveness, which is also the key to the government's goal of upgrading China's economy.

After more than three decades of rapid growth, the world's second largest economy slowed its pace to 7.4 percent in 2014, a 24-year low, and the figure dropped 6.9 percent in the first three quarters of this year.

The government says the economy has come into a "new normal" -- a slower but healthy growth, but many worry that China's "economic miracle" might be over.

Liu Shijin, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, says the "new normal" means China's economy has shifted gear from high-speed to medium-to-high speed growth.

"Previously, China's economy was driven by investment and industrial development, which relied heavily on labor. But now it is transforming into a consumption and service-oriented model. The changes will have long-term significance," says Liu.

For Zhang Jingyun's Ecudorian partners, the "new normal " means new opportunities.

"As China increased its purchases of edible products or raw ingredients, countries that rely heavily on agriculture, like us, will have more opportunities," says Luis Fernando Rojas, Commercial Counselor of Ecuadorian embassy in China.

"We will have more exports and more jobs," he says.

Although China accounts for just 5 percent of Ecuador's total banana export volume due to the distance and tariff factors, he still has full confidence in the future of the bilateral trade.

Few banana exporters sold to China 10 years ago, but the number rose to about 50 last year, when 232,000 tons of bananas were exported to China, bringing Ecuador 185 million dollars, about 35 times that of four years ago, says Rojas.

"Besides bananas, we have shrimp, cocoa, coffee among other foodstuffs. The outlook is encouraging," he says. Endi