AT THE Tianshunyuan abattoirs near the far-north city of Harbin, at the end of a narrow packed-ice road littered with the detritus of Spring Festival fireworks, Han Lubo explains why he plans to buy as much as a quarter of all the red meat Australia will export this year.
''We can only get reliable supplies of domestic lamb that meets our standards in July and August,'' says Han.
Almost all China's lamb and beef comes from low-rainfall grazing lands of northern and western China, which are frozen over for four months of the year. It's impossible for herdsman to supply fresh meat all year round to Chinese markets and restaurants.
Government-driven attempts to fence in nomadic herdsmen and cram more animals on to their rapidly degrading grasslands have backfired. Having 22 per cent of the world's population but only 7 per cent of its arable land and 6 per cent of renewable water supplies implies that China's red meat self-sufficiency is no longer economically feasible. Chinese red meat production has fallen in recent years as the country has reached something of an environmental frontier.
As is often the case these days, the combination of China's 1.3 billion people and rapidly rising incomes can lead to some mind-boggling numbers. Chinese consumers traditionally don't eat much red meat but their appetites are growing faster than in any other major market. China's annual per-capita consumption of sheep meat and beef has risen from 500 grams of each three decades ago to 3.5 kilograms and 5 kilograms respectively, as consumers get richer and borrow consumption patterns from abroad.
''The combination of increased wealth, urbanisation, westernisation and population growth saw total consumption of beef and sheep meat in China surge 2.5 million tonnes and 2 million tonnes, respectively, between 1996 and 2008,'' say Rabobank analysts Pan Chenjun and Wendy Voss, in a recent report, Feeding the Dragon.
And yet beef and lamb account for only 8 and 6 per cent respectively of Chinese meat consumption, behind poultry (20 per cent) and pork (65 per cent). China's Ministry of Agriculture expects beef and lamb consumption to grow another 1.5 million tonnes and 1 million tonnes respectively over the next decade.
While consumption is surging, Pan and Voss say production has fallen in recent years as the government reduces policy support. As a result, beef and lamb prices doubled in the two years to 2007 and have remained at those high levels since.
That's the good news for Australian farmers. The bad news is China's blue sky-potential remains just that, in the face of steep Chinese import tariffs.
China (including Hong Kong) imported just 13,000 tonnes of Australian beef last year, or 1.5 per cent of Australia's beef exports. Exports of lamb and mutton fared better, with 24,000 tonnes (15 per cent). But those exports are now growing exponentially, thanks in no small part to Han Lubo's efforts to brand Australian meat as a luxury product in an otherwise unreliable marketplace.
Like many of China's lamb and beef suppliers, Han is an ethnic Hui Muslim. He built a small empire from nothing by borrowing a few hundred dollars from friends and working absurd hours. Fifteen years ago he would rise at 3.30am and pedal his bike 24 kilometres to his roadside meat stall, sometimes in temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees.
He often tours Australia, where his daughter is studying international relations, and New Zealand, which used to be his main supplier. Australian lamb carcasses are larger, fattier and lighter in colour than the competition across the Tasman, he says. It tastes as good as the best Chinese lamb, from Hulunbei'er in Inner Mongolia, and has it all over the ''terrible'' produce of desertification-stricken Gansu province. Han hopes Australia and China will sign a free-trade agreement that at least closes the tariff advantage now granted to New Zealand producers.
This year his Tianshunyuan company plans to import 10,000 tonnes of Australian meat, up from 6800 tonnes last year. He mainly buys the rib and flank ''flaps'' that Australian consumers don't particularly like but that can be nicely rolled and then sliced for the hot pot. He also serves and packages premium cuts.
''I never studied, I just like to eat,'' he says, turning Australian wagyu beef on a mini-BBQ at his newest Harbin restaurant.
Han's strategy is clear at any of his high-end hot pot restaurants, where diners are bludgeoned with posters, pamphlets and high-rotation videos that advertise the safety and quality of Australian meat.
''Chinese people are caring more about quality and 'green' food,'' he says, without explicitly mentioning the food safety and smuggling scandals that plague China's meat and food industries.
