China is more commonly associated with tea than coffee, but some still wonder if coffee is popular in China. The answer is still no, but it is growing in popularity, especially among the middle class. Still, the average Chinese citizen only drinks around five cups of coffee per year, making the drink still firmly behind tea in popularity.
There’s a lot to know about coffee consumption in China though! Read on to find out everything you need to know about if coffee is popular in China.
Is coffee popular in China?
Although it’s not the most popular drink, there are plenty of people in China that like to drink coffee.
In fact, as of June of 2021, China consumed 3.7 million 60 kilogram bags of coffee. For the non-mathematicians out there, that’s 222 million kilograms of coffee. In pounds, that’s 487 million! So although coffee isn’t China’s most popular drink, the sheer amount of people there makes them a large consumer of the hot beverage nonetheless.
What do Chinese people drink instead of coffee?
So, if coffee isn’t China’s most popular drink, what do Chinese people prefer? Well, the obvious answer (and the correct one) is tea. Tea has been the most popular hot beverage in China for thousands of years. To compare to coffee in weight, they consume 2.1 million tonnes of coffee annually in China. Talk about a lot of tea!
Tea actually gives a lot of the same benefits as coffee, such as increasing energy due to caffeine. Green and black tea have a solid amount of caffeine, can help with digestion, and taste great as well!
What demographics drink coffee in China?
Coffee is most popular among the middle class in China, due to it being more expensive than tea. The most common age group that drinks coffee in China is between 26 and 35 years old. This age bracket makes up the majority of Chinese coffee consumers.
In fact, 76% of total Chinese coffee consumers were up to 35 years old. This suggests that younger working middle-class people make up the bulk of China’s coffee-drinking population. This data may suggest that coffee will become more popular with time as this demographic ages and continues drinking coffee, and more people enter this age group and start drinking coffee as well.
How much coffee does China drink?
As mentioned earlier, China drinks around 487 million pounds of coffee annually. This number has been growing significantly over time, especially in recent years as coffee becomes a more widely available and more popular commodity in modernized Chinese cities.
Still, China’s coffee consumption rate lags behind the rest of the world significantly, as they are in the bottom five lowest per capita coffee consumption rates in the world. This has a lot to do with the lack of access to coffee in China, as well as the popularity of alternative drinks like tea.
Do other Asian countries drink coffee?
Unlike in China, other Asian countries drink a solid amount of coffee. Because of French colonization, countries like Vietnam and Cambodia have developed quite a taste for coffee over the years.
Japan is the place where coffee is perhaps most popular in Asia, however, has consumed close to 7.5 million 60kg bags of coffee, or 450 kilograms of coffee last year. This comes out to roughly 992 million pounds of coffee. For a population that is only a fraction of the size of China, this makes Japan one of the largest consumers of coffee in the world.
Japan drinks the 43rd most coffee per capita for countries around the world and leads all of Asia in per capita coffee consumption. Japan has a particular taste for coffee, however, and they’re willing to pay a lot for it. In fact, Japan pays the most for coffee in the world.
Other nations, such as Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines are avid coffee drinking countries as well, making the lack of coffee in China sort of an outlier compared to many other Asian nations.
Does China produce coffee?
Yes, China does produce coffee. In fact, they produce around 1.8 million 60kg bags of coffee annually. This makes for about 108 million pounds of coffee a year. China isn’t very high on the list as far as coffee producers go, which comes as no surprise considering they don’t drink very much of it either.
Still, China drinks basically twice the coffee they produce, so they have to import much of it from foreign nations.
Where in China is coffee produced?
Around 98% of China’s coffee production comes from the Yunnan region of China. This is the most Southwestern region of China, and therefore has the best climate for producing coffee, as well as a ton of suitable fertile land.
Do other Asian countries produce coffee?
Yes, there is plenty of coffee produced in countries all over Asia. India, Vietnam, and Indonesia produce some of the most popular and delicious coffee in the world. Indonesia in particular has been growing and exporting coffee for centuries, and the Indonesian island of Java is where the coffee term “java” originally came from!
Are there Starbucks in China?
Yes! There are Starbucks in China. In fact, Starbucks has more than 5,400 stores and employs more than 60,000 people in 200 cities in China. They are not as popular as in the United States, where there are close to 8,500 stores, but this is still a hefty number of coffee shops!
What are Starbucks’ competitors in China?
Hey Tea is Starbucks’ largest competitor in China. They have around an 8.8% share of the coffee and tea market in the nation. Costa Coffee, a UK-based coffee chain, is also a popular option among Chinese citizens. Luckin is a third brand that’s been making waves in the Chinese coffee scene lately.
There are, however, just like in the US, a ton of different coffee and tea shops in every Chinese city, so Starbucks has plenty of competition.
Hi, I’m Jen Williams, chief editor and writer for ThirstPerk.com.
I’ve been drinking coffee and tea for most of my life, but it wasn’t until I started working at Thirstperk.com that I became an expert on the subject. I’m a total caffeine addict who has spent hours upon hours reading about and experimenting with the different types of coffees out there in my search to find the perfect cup of joe.
I’ve been a tea lover for as long as I can remember as well. I grew up in a house with a mom who loved to drink herbal tea, and I think that’s where my love for tea first began. These days, I’m always on the lookout for new and interesting teas to try, and I love experimenting with different brewing methods and flavoring combinations.
