The Golden Fruit That Sparked an International Smuggling War

Most of you will never grow a golden kiwi. Not because you couldn’t. Because you’re not supposed to.

Gold kiwis are mostly grown in New Zealand. Specifically by Zespri, a cooperative of kiwi growers that controls the SunGold variety like a dragon hoards gold. They developed it between 2010 and 2012. It took years of research and millions of dollars. It’s resistant to the bacterial vine disease PSA that nearly wiped out New Zealand’s kiwi industry in 2010. It’s basically the superhero of fruit.

But here’s the thing. People smuggled gold kiwi vines out of New Zealand and grew entire farms of them in China. Illegally.

One man named Haoyu Gao did it. He was a Zespri grower in Opotiki. When PSA hit, he started negotiating with Chinese growers to sell them the new resistant varieties. He smuggled the budwood, the cuttings, the precious genetic material, to China. Orchards started appearing. One was 120 hectares. Another 260. By 2023, Zespri estimated there were over 7,850 hectares of illegal gold kiwi growing in China. More than the 9,000 hectares of legal ones back home.

The company that patented it loses tens of millions of dollars every year to unauthorized growers. They sued Gao in New Zealand and won $12 million in damages. In 2025, they won another case in China against growers in Hubei province, who were ordered to destroy 260 hectares of vines and pay compensation. But the illegal fruit keeps coming.

Now let’s talk about why anyone would bother smuggling a fruit.