China threatened to end all financial relations with Kenya because of ‘Tilapia’

Africa Correspondent for the national British daily broadsheet newspaper the Telegraph has caused an online stir when he revealed that Kenya’s relationship with China is based servitude and not on equality.Image result for Adrian Blomfield

“When Uhuru Kenyatta tried (rightly or wrongly) to protect the Lake Victoria fishing industry against a flood of tasteless, farm-reared tilapia from China, China threatened to end all financial relations with Kenya. Uhuru capitulated within six hours. Is that sovereignty?” he posed?

Image result for President Uhuru Kenyatta china

Despite the grumbling of unhappiness over a “flood” of cheap imports from Asia, Kenya is short of options. After months of policy ping-pong on whether we should let in fish from China, it looks resigned to the imports from the Asian giant meeting local demand.

In October 2018 President Uhuru Kenyatta hinted at a ban, saying Kenya needed to find “out of the box” ways to limit the imports.Image result for President Uhuru Kenyatta china
China’s ambassador reportedly described the ban as a “trade war” and threatened sanctions. He later softened his tone. “We hope that the issue of fish imports will be resolved in an amicable way,” Zhang Gang, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Kenya, told Africa Check as the controversy raged. “As a strategic partner of Kenya, China will not engage in a trade war.”Image result for china fish

But the Department of Fisheries took Kenyatta’s cue and said it would not approve applications to import tilapia, the fish most imported from China, from 1 January 2019. Weeks later the department reversed the decision “to allow further consultations”.
The move to curb imports also came amid reports claiming Chinese fish imports contained poisonous heavy metals.
In its budget statement, the Treasury said it was “not true that fish from China has mercury.”
But what are the facts on Kenya’s fish?

 

 

Is Kenya’a relationship with China based on equality, not servitude?

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