Fruit growers from North and Northwest China hope to sell their fruit to the ASEAN market and in order to raise awareness of their products, including apples, pears, peaches and winter jujube (a kind of Chinese date), they are taking part in the ongoing 13th China-ASEAN Expo (CAEXPO).
Merchants from around China are showcasing the various fruits at the four-day event in Nanning, capital of South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The expo wraps up on Wednesday 14 September.
"Fruit produced in North China has a different taste and texture than fruit from the tropics, so we will have complementary advantages in introducing our fruit to the ASEAN countries," said an official from the agriculture department of North China's Shanxi Province.
Carving out new markets for domestic products goes hand-in-hand with the central government's supply-side reforms, which aim to make domestic industries more efficient, the official told the Global Times on Monday. "Globalization is key to meeting the goal," he noted.
Growers from Shanxi have already exported apples and peaches to the US and Australia, the official said.
Beside the Shanxi growers' booth, a group of growers from Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region were also promoting their fruit and nuts.
"Xinjiang has imported lots of ASEAN fruit, like Myanmar's watermelons and mangoes, so why can't we export our fruit and produce there," a fruit merchant from Aksu, Xinjiang, told the Global Times.
It will not be easy, however, because Southeast Asian consumers aren't familiar with many Chinese fruit and domestic growers haven't received much support from the local governments, according to some attendees at the expo.
There is also an element of protectionism involved, according to one attendee from Indonesia. The Indonesian government wants to sell fruit to China, but it isn't interested in opening its market to Chinese growers.
China's fruit imports from ASEAN countries plunged 29.88 percent year-on-year in June to $230 million, according to data from CAEXPO's website. Meanwhile, China's fruit exports to the region rose 2.91 percent from the previous year to $106 million.
China and ASEAN countries have grown closer in terms of agricultural cooperation. By the end of 2015, China's direct investment in ASEAN agriculture had exceeded $4.3 billion, data from China's Ministry of Agriculture showed.
In 2015, bilateral agricultural product trade reached $30.5 billion, a seven fold increase compared with 2002.
