China has unveiled new guidelines to expand its tea industry, aiming for the total value of the full industrial chain to reach 1.5 trillion yuan (about $216 billion) by 2030. The plan highlights the country’s ambition to build a globally competitive, innovative, and sustainable tea sector.
The guidelines were jointly issued by five government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. They focus on improving the quality and efficiency of tea production, processing, and marketing. By 2030, China will build a tea industry that supplies markets efficiently, protects the environment, adopts advanced technologies, and competes globally.
The guidelines also set targets for 2028, emphasizing steady growth in major traditional tea-producing regions. Local specialty tea industries will continue to improve quality, boost efficiency, and expand their market reach. The plan stresses modernizing the entire industry chain and expanding consumption scenarios, ranging from traditional tea drinking to innovative uses in new products.
Key tasks include strengthening science and technology innovation, nurturing market entities, and advancing specialized industry clusters. The guidelines encourage integrating tea into sectors such as home products, cosmetics, health care, and daily chemicals, creating new value chains and business opportunities.
China, long known as the hometown of tea, has cultivated a deep tea culture for thousands of years. Tea is not only a staple of daily life but also a symbol of cultural heritage. The new guidelines aim to combine this rich tradition with modern economic strategies, ensuring that China’s tea industry continues to grow, innovate, and compete globally.
Through these measures, China plans to transform the tea sector into a high-quality, high-value, and internationally influential industry, strengthening its global competitiveness, creating new economic opportunities, expanding export markets, and simultaneously preserving and promoting the country’s rich tea culture over the next decade.
