It’s unusual for an Argentinian official to ask the Chinese government to be zen. A few days ago, after China had blocked three ships loaded with soya which were ready to land in the port of Beijing, Alfredo Chiaradía, secretary of the Commercio e Relaciones Económicas Internacionales de la Cancillería expressly told the Chinese ambassador that his Country has to be patient. The order to stop the ships had come after the announcement of the restrictive measures taken by the Kirchner government against the importation of various types of goods from Asia (including clothing, shoes, toys and leather-ware), with the objective of safeguarding the Argentinian national industry and of stopping unfair trade. Argentina states that this move is “under study”, and does not wish it to be interpreted as anti-Chinese.

A temporary measure. Zhang Tuo, the Chinese ambassador in Buenos Aires, said it was a temporary measure, a simple examination of some ships. Actually, China can’t afford to close its doors to the leading soya-exporting Country. For ten years now, 75 percent of the soya oil in Chinese kitchens is Argentinian, and every year 1,3 million tons of soya arrive from what is supposed to be the land of meat. In 2006, 6,3 million tons entered the Country, for a value of 1.422 million dollars. The other importing Countries are the United States and Brasil, but they are far from the astronomical figures that arise from the trade between Argentina and China.

The Board of Trade in Buenos Aires pronounced itself in favour of the rules imposed by the government because it considers that the measure does not concern just China but all Asiatic countries, and because it also protects the national industry from having to compete with low-quality and very low-price products. Asiatic countries seem not to follow the procedures established by WTO (World trade organization) for the invoicing required by customs to justify the lower prices. From now on, therefore, they will have to stick to a simple bureaucratic procedure if they want their goods to cross the borders.

Soya instead of cows. The soya producers of are of a different opinion: they foresee an economical debacle if China decides to stop importing soya from Argentina. Although its first cultivation in China dates from the XI century B.C., Argentina, who saw soya for the first time at the end of the 19^th century, has become its main exporter in a little less than 30 years. Many cattle breeders, seeing the profit that could be obtained from exportation, prefered to cultivate soya instead of grass, the main staple of Argentinian cattle, abandoning the cattle in small left-over plots of land. One hectare of soya feeds one person for 5.500 days, while meat only does so for 600, and production costs are also much lower. This has caused not only a change in the landscape of the pampas (the typical photo with lots of cows grazing instead of wide expanses of soya), but a crazy rise in the price of land, and the deforestation of thousands of kilometres of country. Touring the Argentinian rutas now means finding soya even on the edge of the road and on the hills, everywhere, but the cows are few and far between, and the native woods fewer and fewer.