Driscoll's took its top blueberry varieties and growing methods to China and got copied, a lesson Taiwan's farm sector learned the hard way years ago — bad news for any grower betting on the Chinese market.

• Driscoll's sent experts to Yunnan in 2012 to set up modern blueberry farming, and Chinese growers quickly copied the methods and bred protected varieties without permission.
• Driscoll's has filed over 20 lawsuits in China and won some, but China's blueberry output has grown 25-fold since 2010 and is now double the US's.
• Taiwan went through the same thing: its prized "Golden Diamond" pineapple was being grown by Taiwanese businesses in China by 2003, and now pineapple, mango, wax apple, jujube and sugar apple varieties are all produced there at scale.
• Fish and shrimp breeds, farming know-how, and even retired researchers and technicians were lured across the strait with tax breaks, land and "consultant" roles, so the varieties, tech and people left together.
• China also used a "feed, trap, kill" pattern with Taiwan's sugar apple exports: buy big, get farmers hooked, then suddenly block imports and slap on high tariffs.

Outlook: Taiwan has tightened seedling export controls and China keeps expanding its own plantings, so foreign growers who bring top varieties and tech into China should expect to end up competing against cheaper copies of their own products.