How China benefits from “conveyor belts” of ecologically unequal exchange: Triangular relations with Indonesia’s palm oil and Aotearoa New Zealand’s dairy sectors

Narrow societal benefits and tremendous environmental harms are emanating from the production of two intertwined sets of commodities—dairy and palm oil—as China is playing a key role in shaping the Asia Pacific region. In the face of drought-induced feed shortages and the rising price of grazing land, dairy producers turned to animal feed supplements from PKE (palm kernel expeller or meal)—a waste by-product of palm kernel processing. This article takes a world-historical and world-ecological approach, building on a wide range of secondary sources, to analyze the interrelations among states and firms in three countries and along two commodity chains. Specifically, it focuses on how the PKE-dairy link has been propelled by Chinese demand and capital and is producing an uneven triangle of agro-extractive production and consumption across the Asia Pacific region. The relations among these three countries illustrate how ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) shapes semi-peripheries in ways that are distinct from more peripheral areas and from analysis of “middle powers.” Semi-peripheries are both exploited and exploiting. In this materialist analysis of relations among states and firms, PKE trade provides hidden windfall profits or “extra surplus value” to a small number of corporations while degrading environments and undermining livelihoods. Chinese consumers and transnational firms are the main beneficiaries from the flow of EUE across this triangle of countries.