A pineapple symbolizes the tense relationship between China and Taiwan

The alleged Chinese theft of an exclusive new pineapple cultivar from Taiwan is prompting questions about how far Beijing will go to coerce Taiwan — and who really owns the food we eat.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Things are tense between China and the island of Taiwan. Beijing is ramping up economic pressure on the island to force it into a more subservient relationship to China. And to tell the story of how China’s doing that, we begin with a pineapple. NPR’s Emily Feng takes it from here.

EMILY FENG, BYLINE: This past spring, Taiwanese policymakers issued an urgent call to action. They had discovered China had gotten its hands on a Taiwan-bred fruit called the mango pineapple. Now, the fruit was being grown and sold in China. Taiwan’s deputy agricultural minister, Chen Junne-jih, called it blatant robbery. And he told NPR this kind of, what he calls, agricultural IP transfer has been happening for decades. Taiwan’s rice, orchids, tea, beans and mushrooms have all somehow been transplanted in China.

CHEN JUNNE-JIH: (Through interpreter) In 2017, I had the opportunity to go to China and visit their plant research institute, and they had all of Taiwan’s plant variants. They flaunted them to us. And they weren’t ashamed about having Taiwan intellectual property at all.

FENG: But the transplantation of the mango pineapple hit especially hard because pineapples are political. Ninety-seven percent of Taiwanese pineapple exports used to go to China until 2021, when China announced a ban on the most common type of Taiwan pineapple.

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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Pineapples have become the latest victim of the worsening relationship between Taiwan and China.

FENG: China said the fruit was full of pests. Taiwan denied it and said the ban was economic coercion, pressuring their voters towards more China-friendly policies or lose even more access to the China market. And eating pineapples in Taiwan became an…