Chinese Wine Industry developing rapidlly

China's wine industry is now in a period of supernormal growth with wine enterprises scattered across 26 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities nationwide.

China is now home to about 600 wine enterprises, 167 of which are state-owned earning annual sales revenues greater than 5 million yuan, located mainly in Shandong, Hebei, Jilin, Henan, Xinjiang,Liaoning and Gansu.

The industry's output churned out 23.4 percent more year on year to698,300 kiloliters in 2008, its gross industrial output valueincreased 27.02 percent to 19.17 billion yuan, and sales valuereached 18.32 billion yuan, up 23.75 percent. Meanwhile, Chinaimported 163,200 kiloliters wine.China's wine industry concentration level is considerably high, asthe combined output of four leading brands, Changyu, Great Wall,Dynasty and Weilong, accounted for about 40 percent of the country'stotal.

The further development of the industry, however, will face severalchallenges, including insufficient policy supports, the absence of ascientific layout for future development, laggard research andpromotion of existing research results, and the lack of industrystandards.

Additionally, the industry disappointed the market by providing onlya limited selection of wines; mainly being dry red ones. Theindustry's marketing system also failed to cater to China's localconsumers.