Tea industry thrives in SW China’s Guizhou

The tea industry in southwest China’s Guizhou province continued to expand in 2020 with the production of some 436,000 tons of tea, creating a total output value of 50.38 billion yuan (about $7.75 billion) in the year.

Last year, Guizhou exported 6,577.7 tons of tea worth $231 million, up 91.7 percent year on year.

Farmers pick tea leaves in a tea plantation in Anshun city, Guizhou province. (Photo/Xinhua)

Guizhou is home to 7 million mu (about 466,666 hectares) of tea plantations. To ensure the quality of the tea, rigorous measures have been adopted on the construction of standard tea plantations, pest and disease control, and tea processing. The use of chemical herbicides and 128 kinds of pesticides has also been banned.

The province has also been holding tea promotion activities across the country. Last year, tea distributors outside the province sold 209,200 tons of tea produced in Guizhou, bringing the total revenue up to 20.9 billion yuan.

The tea industry has become an important driving force behind rural revitalization in Guizhou, said Hu Jicheng, deputy director of Guizhou Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

Zhongzhai township of the province’s Yanhe Tujia autonomous county is one of the beneficiaries of tea planting. By taking advantage of its natural environment, which features many cloudy and foggy days throughout the year, making it suitable for tea growth, the township has turned the tea industry into a pillar industry.

“The white tea sold so well that we can barely meet market demand these days. The average revenue of tea per mu is expected to reach 15,000 yuan at the peak of the harvest season,” the township’s Party secretary Tan Pengfei said proudly. In Guizhou, the average annual income of tea growers has reached 12,351 yuan.