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Young worker tapping rubber.
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No.129 rubber plantation.
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Plantation of rubber saplings at Mengman Township, Yunnan.
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Rubber trees usually grow only in scorching equatorial temperatures
between the latitudes of 10°South and 15°North, but in
China, those rules of nature do not apply. Here, high-yielding
rubber trees can be found between the latitudes of 18°North
and 24°North. By the year 2003, China had some 660,000 hectares
of land on which rubber trees were grown. The country’s average
annual output of natural rubber tallies up to 565,000 tons, making
China the fifth-largest rubber producer in the world.
Where did it all begin? Early in 1904, the headman of Yunnan
Province’s Ganya Dai tribe (present-day Yingjiang County)
Dao Anren went through considerable pains to bring 8,000 rubber
tree saplings all the way from Singapore to Fenghuang Mountain
in Xincheng Township. He planted the saplings and discovered that
they could indeed survive in the local climate. One of those very
trees still stands today.
It seemed that Dao sparked off a trend among patriotic people
and overseas Chinese who brought more saplings into China and
set up rubber plantations in Hainan, Guangdong and Yunnan provinces.
China resultantly became as important to rubber production as
Brazil as rubber plantations mushroomed, and today some 3 million
people are engaged in the industry.
The large-scale state-owned Yunnan Reclamation Bureau (YRB) is
one such enterprise. With a staff numbering 100,000, 41 farms
and assets amounting to RMB 5.92 billion, YRB has made extraordinary
achievements since it was founded in 1951.
YRB has managed to build a large rubber plantation on the northern
fringes of the Torrid Zone, which surprisingly yields the highest
quantity per unit area in the world. It has also established the
world’s most advanced natural rubber processing base nearby.
It currently makes more than 70 percent of the entire province’s
dry rubber, and yields 127 kilograms per mu or one-and-a-half
times the national average, and more than yields in Cote d’
Ivoire, the world’s main rubber planter.
In 2001, YRB was running up losses of RMB 200 million a year,
but stringent reforms and management improvements have turned
that situation around. Last year, it raked in profits of RMB 250
million, and its employees have also shared in its new success.
Average incomes at YRB rose from RMB 4,670 per annum in 2001 to
RMB 11,000 last year.
One of the key reforms that YRB implemented, and central to its
success, was the introduction of a “family contract operation
system” that offers long-term contracts to the families that
work the plantations and processing factories. The families pay
an agreed proportion of the profits to the company, and keep the
rest themselves. Plantation planning, technological support, quality
control, pest elimination, and product purchase, processing and
sales are all managed by the YRB. It is also in charge of setting
annual production targets, manufacturing fees and selling prices.
Both the YRB and the contracted families share a fair proportion
of the work as well as the market risks.
The reforms have no doubt been successful. Since the family contract
system was popularized in 2003, 40,000 families on 41 farms have
contracted rubber plantations. In those three years, most of the
farms have set new records, in total output, yield per mu, workers’
incomes and enterprise profits.
Such efficient operation helps to squeeze down production costs,
and thus sharpens the company’s competitive edge in the global
rubber market. In other major producing countries like Malaysia,
Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, the cost per ton is about US
$660 – 700, while in India, it is a staggering US $900. But
the direct cost of YRB rubber is below US $500 per ton.
Natural rubber is the only one of the four major industrial rare
materials (the others being steel, coal and petroleum) that is
recyclable. What’s more, it remains vital to certain industries
such as aviation and automobile manufacture. Of course, YRB’s
success is not based on its operation modes alone – its advanced
technologies also play a fundamental role. The YRB has made painstaking
efforts to develop and introduce high-yield strains of rubber
trees, quality processing systems, rubber plantation regeneration
and other relevant biotechnologies. As the world’s largest
rubber consumer, China has truly stepped up its efforts to develop
its natural rubber industry. But the country’s demand is
so great, however, that some imports are still necessary.
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