Chinese Tales: The suspensions on shrimp exports from Ecuador and other stories.

Marco Polo

When Marco Polo returned from his trip through South Asia and North Asia, in the 13th and 14th centuries, where he visited countries that are today: Armenia, Iraq, China, Mongolia, and Afghanistan, among others, he told his stories about the things he had discovered. He described the new animals he had seen, the differences between people in the countries he visited, the strange flowers he had met, and he wrote a travel journal in which he tried to keep in writing everything he had discovered.

Marco Polo's stories became popular in Europe when Marco Polo's book was translated into various languages in the 16th century. However, the book told such strange and fantastic things that they were tough to believe. Many people thought it was a storybook, a book with made-up stories. Nobody could believe that such strange places, such odd animals, or that such different people could exist. The expression began to be used "Chinese tales" since most of Marco Polo's stories in the book belonged to his trip to China.

The Chinese Tales.

China's suspicions of COVID-19 contamination in food imports show no signs of abating, with the latest coronavirus case related to Brazilian beef and the suspension of shrimp imports from Ecuador after allegedly finding traces positives of the virus in the packages are a sample of it. 

As long as the coronavirus pandemic situation remains a threat to producing countries' public health, the Chinese government is likely to maintain stricter testing requirements on its food imports. Health authorities in this country even reported finding traces of the virus in beef imported from New Zealand, which had eliminated the virus's mainly local transmission.

The unilateral measures taken by the Chinese health authorities have aroused suspicion on the part of exporting countries of the veracity of the virus detection tests in packaged products that arrive at the customs of Chinese ports and have put tested the possibility of verifying that the contamination comes from the country of origin or if it occurred during the journey or even when inspecting the samples at the Chinese customs facilities. 

The Suspensions on Shrimp Exports from Ecuador.

A situation with prolonged restrictions on trade by the Chinese government could result in lower volumes and prices for food suppliers in Latin America, including shrimp producers in Ecuador and the countries with less transmission of the coronavirus those which could interest Chinese geopolitics maybe could increase exports. 

The scientific evidence behind the detection of shrimp containers from Ecuador or beef from Brazil contaminated with COVID-19 by Chinese health authorities has been widely questioned by experts and foreign governments, with some suggesting that the accusations are part of a broader campaign to hide the origins of Covid-19. 

The chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Control and Disease Prevention Wu Zunyou recently said that rather than have originated in Wuhan, the coronavirus might have entered China through imported packaging of seafood or meat. 

However, it is not known why the Chinese authorities do not clearly show the evidence by which they have identified these contaminations with COVID-19, despite the manifest skepticism and the demand for scientific evidence from the international community.   

Other stories.

According to studies by the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina, the probability that a person will get sick through a virus found in imported food or its packaging is one in a billion, and the proof of this is that no other major importer has reported results similar to those of China.

The political and economic weight that China has managed to have during the last decade in several of the economies of these exporting countries also influences decisions to block food exports, which in many cases are vital to the economy of the agro-industrial and aquaculture sector of these countries, and that can lead them to adopt a condescending situation in the face of Chinese demands on economic matters.

And the last story. 

The geopolitical war between China and the United States can also have a framework of action in these suspensions, especially when we see how the blockades arrive when these countries lean towards North America and how everything flows when they turn towards the Orient. 

Marco Polo could be telling these new stories to a mouths open audience, comfortably sitting in his studio on the banks of the Batario River in Venice, and transmitting his conference through the framework of "The Davoz Agenda", organized by the World Economic Forum, which was just held in January 2021, in its virtual version due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Salvador Meza.

Editor&Publisher of Aquaculture Magazine and Panorama Acuícola Magazine

www.aquaculturemag.com www.panoramaacuicola.com