魏尚进：茶与咖啡背后的全球贸易与资本博弈Wei Shangjin: The Global Trade and Capital Game Behind Tea and Coffee

(Source: Positioning and Business Model Research)

Title: On August 2, 2026, the 58th session of the "Chengze Forum" jointly organized by the National Development Research Institute of Peking University (hereinafter referred to as "Peking University National Development Institute") and the Machinery Industry Press was held at Chengze Garden of the National Development Institute. This article is compiled based on the keynote speech of Wei Shangjin, visiting professor at the School of International Finance, Fudan University, tenured professor at Columbia University, and author of "Tea and Coffee: Global Trade and Capital Gaming in the Cup".

Do you agree with these three statements? Firstly, tea has sparked two wars that changed world history; Secondly, there was a thrilling "de Sinicization" movement around tea in history; Thirdly, there is a're Sinicization 'revolution happening in the tea and coffee industry.

Two Important Wars Triggered by Tea

Why is it said that tea has sparked two wars that changed world history?

Let's start with the first war: this year marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. How did the founding of the United States occur? Before the founding of the United States, there was a movement known as the "Boston Tea Party" in world history textbooks. At that time, consumers including North America and Europe were extremely obsessed with tea, and the only exporting country for tea was China. Although coffee has been introduced to North America and Europe, drinking coffee was very inconvenient at that time, and various coffee machines used today were invented in the early 20th century. Therefore, at that time, if people wanted to enjoy high-quality drinks, their main choice was still tea. If you want to drink tea, you can only purchase from China.

The British saw profits from it and decided to monopolize the tea trade. According to British regulations, tea sold to North America can only come from state-owned and quasi state-owned enterprises in the UK. After achieving a monopoly, the British can increase taxes through these enterprises. This move sparked strong dissatisfaction among the people of North American colonies. So there was the later scene: late at night, colonial residents infiltrated the port of Boston and dumped all the tea leaves that British companies had just purchased from China and had not yet unloaded into the sea. After the incident, the high-pressure measures taken by Britain ultimately triggered the American Revolutionary War. It can be seen that there is a profound connection between the American Revolutionary War and tea produced in China.

The second war is closer to us. The Opium War can also be called the 'Tea War'. As mentioned earlier, Europeans, including the British, were extremely obsessed with Chinese tea, and China was the only tea exporting country at that time. Moreover, under the rule of the Qing government, China only charged silver when selling tea to Britain and was unwilling to accept other British goods. Therefore, in Sino British trade, the UK has long had a significant deficit, while China maintains a huge surplus. To solve the trade imbalance, the British sold opium to China, which led to the Opium War.

The history of "de Sinicization" of tea

There is a little-known sequel to this history, which is extensively discussed in the book 'Tea and Coffee'.

Before looking back at this period of history, it is important to emphasize that tea is loved all over the world, and tea is only produced in China for many years. Two indirect evidences can be listed here.

Firstly, there are over 6000 languages worldwide, and among all languages, the pronunciation of "tea" is only two, namely "cha" and "tea". 'cha' originates from the northern Chinese pronunciation, while 'tea' originates from the Minnan dialect. The formation of pronunciation differences stems from the different channels and sources of obtaining tea in different countries; The fundamental reason why there are only two pronunciations is that tea is only produced in China.

Secondly, the Latin scientific name for tea is Camellia sinensis. Among them, Camellia refers to a flowering tree, translated as Camellia in Chinese; The meaning of 'sinensis' in Latin is' Chinese'. The scientific name of this plant directly includes the attribute of "China", indirectly confirming that tea originated in China.

Returning to that period of history itself. The British launched the Opium War to change the huge trade deficit caused by tea with China and believed they had won a complete victory. However, they soon realized that even if they had won the Opium War, the pattern of Sino British trade would eventually return to a situation where Britain had a large trade deficit and China had a large trade surplus. What is the reason? Previously, Britain relied on selling opium to earn silver, which was used to purchase Chinese tea, provided that opium was not cultivated domestically in China. However, after the Opium War, since the Qing government was unable to ban the opium trade, it is highly unlikely that they would also ban local opium cultivation. The poppy plant has extremely strong vitality and is easy to cultivate. Therefore, the British believe that once the opium trade is legalized, Britain will soon return to a state of significant trade deficit, once again falling into the dilemma of searching for silver globally to purchase tea.

How to solve this dilemma? In today's Western discourse system, the British believe that a thorough "de Sinicization" movement must be launched for tea. The so-called 'de Sinicization' refers to the use of extreme industrial policies to steal tea seeds, tea trees, and tea making processes from China, thereby breaking China's exclusive monopoly on the tea industry.

At that time, the morphology and tea making process of tea trees were completely unfamiliar overseas, and ordinary personnel were unable to complete the theft task. Therefore, Britain had to send professionals to infiltrate China. The lack of knowledge about tea among the British can be seen from scientific literature: at that time, the British and even the entire European academic community were debating whether black tea and white tea originated from the same plant or belonged to different species. In fact, all types of tea come from the same plant. Any crop that can be called 'tea' must belong to the species Camellia sinensis. Different types of tea are mainly due to differences in processing techniques. However, in Britain and other European countries at that time, people had only seen finished tea leaves and had never seen the tea tree itself, and even experts could not clarify this issue.

It can be seen that stealing tea related technology must be carried out by professional personnel. At that time, Britain selected Robert Fortune, the director of a botanical garden in London, who served as both a botanist and an administrator. The British government proposed to Fuqiong that, based on national interests, they would like to entrust him to lead people to China to retrieve tea seeds, tea seedlings, and tea making techniques, in order to complete the task of freeing tea from Chinese control.

Fu Qiong initially refused, stating that as a botanist, he should not infiltrate other countries to steal. After the British government proposed a fivefold increase in salary, he ultimately agreed. Considering the high transportation costs of tea seeds and tea seedlings, the British state-owned enterprise East India Company promises to provide free transportation support for Fuqiong as long as it can bring tea related products and technologies out, whether it is ultimately transported to Britain or other colonies of the British Empire. Britain also utilized the latest portable glass greenhouse technology at the time to solve the problem of low plant survival rates during ocean voyages.

In 1848, sent by the East India Company, Fortune shaved her hair and braided her hair, disguised as "Xinghan", pretended to be a Chinese businessman, broke through the ban and went deep into core tea producing areas such as Mount Wuyi and Mount Huangshan, and successfully stole 20000 high-quality tea seedlings and 13000 precious tea seeds along the routes of Shanghai, Hangzhou, Huizhou and Mount Wuyi, including core varieties such as Zhengshan Race and Longjing. He did not simply take away the plants, but also systematically recorded the complete process of withering, rolling, fermentation, and drying. He hand-painted key tea making tools and process details, transforming tea making techniques into replicable text and images. Fuqiong also successfully recruited 8 Chinese craftsmen who were proficient in tea making techniques to travel to India with heavy financial incentives, and directly taught practical skills in tea gardens at the foot of the Himalayas, ensuring the implementation of the technology.

Britain once attempted to grow tea locally, but the climate conditions were not suitable. Instead, they searched for suitable tea producing areas in colonies and ultimately determined the Darjeeling and Assam regions in India, as well as Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Kenya as tea planting areas. These regions have a subtropical climate, similar to the climate of tea producing areas in China.

Under the continuous efforts of the "de Sinicization" movement in British tea, just three years later, the Assam region of India successfully produced its first batch of black tea, completely breaking China's millennium long global monopoly on tea.

Observing Industrial Iteration from the Rise and Fall of Tea Industry

Tea was crucial to Britain and Europe, and what was the significance of tea to China at that time?

In the mid-19th century, when the British planned to steal tea seeds, tea exports accounted for about 60% to 70% of the Qing government's total exports, with some years accounting for even higher proportions. In other words, tea far exceeds the sum of all other commodities such as porcelain and silk, and is undoubtedly the absolute export mainstay. In short, China's exports at that time were almost equal to tea exports.

How successful has the UK's "de Sinicization" campaign been? After several years of cultivation outside of China, tea seeds and seedlings began to yield, and the yield has been increasing year by year. By the end of the 19th century, Britain and Europe still maintained a large demand for tea procurement, but the sources of procurement had undergone tremendous changes: China not only lost its position as the world's only tea supplier, but also lost its title as the world's largest tea exporting country, often even struggling to maintain its second position. At that time, the top two tea export destinations in the world were British India and British Sri Lanka. Even today, when looking at international trade data, it can be found that in some years, China's total tea exports only ranked fourth in the world, with Kenya ranking first (Kenya's domestic tea consumption is limited, so its export volume is always higher than China's).

Once upon a time, tea was almost equivalent to China's exports, and only China could export it. But by the end of the 19th century, a large amount of tea consumption in the European and North American markets had already moved away from China. From the perspective of the UK, the 'de Sinicization' movement has achieved significant results.

From China's perspective, this is undoubtedly a huge negative impact, and its impact can be compared to the impact of current artificial intelligence technology on the industrial landscape. In the mid-19th century, China's exports were almost entirely dependent on tea. If someone had predicted at that time that tea would no longer be China's main export product in the future, and even that the export volume of other countries would surpass China, what commodity would China rely on to maintain its exports? This question is similar to the confusion faced by people today: if artificial intelligence replaces human jobs, which positions will remain in the economic system? At that time, this situation was unimaginable.

By extension, what else can China export today? Do we need to worry about this? The answer is no. The current export amount and total export volume of China not only set a historical record for China itself, but also rank first in the world. At the same time, China's annual trade surplus exceeds $1.2 trillion, which is not only the largest in China's economic history, but also unprecedented in world economic history. What is the current composition of China's export commodities? According to the classification of tradable goods in international trade, there are approximately 6500 types of tradable goods. According to customs data statistics, China exports about 5000 types of products, with half of them ranking among the top three in terms of export value and volume. China has become the world's largest exporter of many commodities.

Comparing this history with the current hot topic of AI, it can be found that even though we cannot predict which new job positions will emerge after the popularization of AI today, historical experience tells us that there is a high probability that there will be a large number of jobs that we cannot imagine today in the future. Just as history has shown us, China, which has lost its monopoly on tea exports, can still become the strongest exporting country in terms of comprehensive strength.

The New Wave of "Re Sinicization" of Tea

Next, let's enter the second half of the tea story - 'Re Sinicization'.

In addition to the "de Sinicization" movement led by the British, multiple external factors have also contributed to the situation, such as the introduction of coffee into the Chinese market, changes in the lifestyle and consumption preferences of young people, resulting in a decline in the status of tea not only in China's export sector, but also facing many challenges in the domestic consumer market. A large number of young people choose to embrace coffee, gradually moving away from drinking tea, and even considering drinking tea as a habit of the older group, because coffee symbolizes modernization, globalization, and is more convenient and fast.

But in recent years, there have been several changes that have brought many opportunities for the "re Sinicization" of tea, among which the rise of Chinese milk tea stands out.

From the perspective of Chinese tea companies and consumers, milk tea is a relatively new form of tea production, sales, and consumption. Many milk tea brands such as Ba Wang Cha Ji and Mi Xue Bing Cheng not only have a large chain scale, but have also successfully gone public. Some brands have also begun to expand into overseas markets. Nowadays, Chinese milk tea brand stores can be seen in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and other places, and many people can often be seen queuing up just to buy a cup of milk tea from China. The queue includes not only overseas Chinese, but also consumers from all over the world.

A cup of milk tea has suddenly elevated the status of Chinese tea among young people and international consumers through this new form of production, sales, and consumption. By 2025, China's tea exports will achieve double-digit growth, and Chinese milk tea companies that have expanded overseas are likely to play a significant role.

Milk tea is completely different from our traditional perception of tea. One of the reasons why young people love milk tea is convenience, and although milk tea is called "tea", the drinking experience is quite different. Who pioneered the production and consumption of milk tea? In fact, the answer is already implicit in the previous story - English milk tea was invented by the British. Why did the British invent milk tea? After completing the "de Sinicization" of the tea industry and promoting tea cultivation to India, Sri Lanka, Kenya and other places, local British multinational companies made several "improvements" to the tea making method, one of which was to switch to machine tea picking.

In Chinese tea gardens, tea picking mainly relies on manual labor. There are multiple interpretations of the reasons behind it, one of which is that Chinese consumers prefer complete leaves and fewer tea stems when purchasing tea. The good tea in our perception emphasizes one bud and one leaf, one bud and two leaves; The expensive price of precious varieties such as Jin Jun Mei is mainly due to the fact that only the bud raw materials are harvested. The core requirement is that the leaves are intact and there should not be too many tea stems, as they can make the tea soup bitter.

The British use machines to pick tea, in order to pursue production scale and control costs (with less manual labor), inevitably has two side effects: first, it cannot guarantee the integrity of the leaves, which is likely to crush the tea leaves; The second reason is that tea stems are easily mixed into tea leaves, and the cost of making tea stems and sorting tea leaves is much higher. How can multinational corporations solve the problem of unwilling to bear sorting costs? One way is to "educate consumers" and guide European consumers to accept that "the correct way to drink tea is to add sugar and milk to the tea". Once sugar and milk are added, the bitterness of the tea stem is no longer a problem, but rather just right.

The origin of the tea flavor in milk tea is precisely related to the tea stem. Observing the raw material procurement of domestic milk tea brands, it is not difficult to find that the completeness of the tea leaves they purchase is not important, and they also deliberately purchase tea stems. Because these milk tea companies are aware that only by adding tea stems to milk tea to bring a slight bitterness, and then diluting it with sugar and milk, will consumers feel that this milk tea has a sufficient tea flavor. If high-quality tea leaves with one bud and one leaf are used to make milk tea, consumers may feel that the tea flavor is too weak. The cost of tea stems is much lower than that of tea leaves and tea buds, and milk tea companies are happy to adopt them.

In short, the drinking method of milk tea was originally invented by the British, and now our milk tea companies have brought back this process, greatly reducing tea production costs, making quality stability more controllable, and providing consumers with a convenient way to drink tea. Therefore, more and more young people are willing to order a cup of milk tea at will. The consumption of tea, especially among young people, has significantly increased.

Over the past 200 years, overseas consumers have undergone a transformation from primarily drinking tea, to combining tea and coffee, and then to coffee consumption surpassing tea drinks; Nowadays, a large number of European and American consumers, especially young consumers, have suddenly started to love milk tea from China. This is very noteworthy.

The Sinicization of Coffee

The book 'Tea and Coffee' also has a lot of content about coffee, here are a few brief points. From the perspective of the connection between China and globalization, coffee is very interesting. China used to neither produce nor drink coffee, but later coffee was introduced to China as an imported product. From Lu Xun's diary and prose, we can see that although he criticized coffee culture and talked about the various drawbacks of "take it for yourself", he would buy a cup of coffee every morning.

Today, the number of coffee shops in many cities in China is already very large. According to relevant data, the number of various coffee shops in Shanghai has surpassed London and New York, becoming the city with the largest number of coffee shops in the world, without exception. From the perspective of consumption habits, it can be seen that the changes have been very significant.

Equally noteworthy and of greater research value is that China once did not grow coffee at all, and coffee was not considered a comparative advantage for China. However, now coffee plantations have emerged in Hainan Island, and the coffee planting scale in Yunnan is even more considerable, becoming the most important coffee producing area in China.

Why is it suitable to grow coffee in Yunnan? There is a little-known fact: experience has shown that areas suitable for growing tea are usually also suitable for growing coffee, and vice versa. This pattern was first discovered by the British. In the 19th century, after stealing tea seeds, seedlings, and tea making techniques from China, the British immediately searched for suitable tea growing areas worldwide, and Sri Lanka was one of them. Sri Lanka was originally planned by the British Empire as a coffee plantation area. In the mid-19th century, a disaster swept through Sri Lanka, causing almost all of the local coffee trees to be destroyed. When the British planned to introduce new coffee saplings, they suddenly adjusted their tasks and prioritized planting tea as a higher strategic task. So Sri Lanka cleared the remaining trees in the original coffee plantation and planted tea instead, ultimately achieving success in tea cultivation. The tea cultivation and sales in Sri Lanka are also operated by British multinational corporations, and several well-known tea brands have emerged, such as Dilmah. The tea industry in India has also given birth to multiple well-known brands under the operation of British multinational corporations.

Yunnan has gradually developed its coffee industry from not planting coffee, and has achieved significant results with considerable production. The emerging domestic coffee chain brand Manner Coffee extensively uses Yunnan coffee beans as raw materials, which is a typical example of the rise of Yunnan's coffee industry. Several European friends have commented that this brand of coffee is priced lower than Starbucks, but its quality and taste are superior to Starbucks. Among the best-selling products of Manner Coffee, the most widely used types of coffee beans all use Yunnan coffee. Yunnan coffee not only supplies domestic coffee chain brands, but is also widely welcomed in the international market.

The inspiration brought by this phenomenon is that coffee was once not considered a category with comparative advantages in China, but practice has proven that it can grow into a competitive product in China, and Yunnan coffee is a typical example. Of course, the large-scale cultivation and industrial development of high-quality coffee in China are still in their infancy.

The competition in the domestic tea industry is fierce, and the phenomenon of internal competition is severe. For most tea farmers, it is difficult to obtain an ideal selling price for tea, and in the past few years, the global average price of tea has continued to decline, while the global coffee price has shown an upward trend. Based on the previous statement that areas suitable for growing tea are often also suitable for growing coffee, there may be innovative entrepreneurs in the future, including MBA and EMBA graduates from the National Development Institute, who can guide tea farmers who are struggling with industry competition to transform into planting high-quality coffee and increase their income levels.

In summary, tea and coffee are not just daily beverages, but also carriers of capital and national fortune, and mirrors reflecting the evolution of human civilization.

Organized by: Bai Yao | Edited by: Wang Xianqing