1. Why Look at This Jiangxi Industry as One

Liquor, beverages and refined tea fall under one manufacturing category in the statistics, yet in most provinces the three go their own ways and share little common narrative. Jiangxi is an exception. Here, viewing liquor and tea together is not padding but recognition that each has grown into a rooted tree, both planted deep in Jiangxi's water, soil and seasons.

Jiangxi is hilly, threaded with streams, abundant in rain and mild in climate. Such endowments favour both the microbial environment of brewing and the growth of tea bushes. So the province has nurtured two things at once: a baijiu aroma type that belongs to it alone, and a roster of geographically marked teas that have entered national rankings. One relies on fermentation pits and yeast cultures, the other on mountain plots and solar terms; seemingly unrelated, they share the same moist earth. This is why the Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute chose to survey Jiangxi's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing in a single report.

A note on boundaries first. The two threads of baijiu and tea have reasonably full public information and are developed here; the beverage branch, by contrast, lacks well-disclosed, verifiable leading-firm data within Jiangxi. This report will not fabricate it, preferring to write briefly and truthfully.

2. Special Aroma: An Identity Card Unique to Jiangxi Baijiu

To understand Jiangxi baijiu, one must first understand the term "special aroma."

Chinese baijiu is divided by aroma type, of which strong, light and sauce aromas are the familiar ones. The special-aroma type is a relatively niche category, yet one contributed independently by Jiangxi. Its representative is Siji liquor, produced in Zhangshu. Zhangshu's brewing history runs deep, but what truly made "special aroma" a category of its own was a recognition process often cited in the trade: in 1988, a panel of leading national baijiu experts, after studying Siji's production craft, confirmed its aroma stood apart; in 1997, after review and recommendation by the state light-industry authority, this aroma was formally recognised as an independent type.

The special-aroma profile is often summarised as three styles — strong, light and sauce — coexisting in harmony within one cup, favouring none yet remaining distinctive. This craft-level uniqueness gave Jiangxi baijiu an identity card that cannot be copied elsewhere. The leading position persists today: Siji led relevant research institutes in drafting the national standard for special-aroma baijiu, which has now entered its implementation stage. For a local brand to define a national standard for an aroma type is uncommon in the baijiu trade, and it shows how tightly the special-aroma type is bound to Jiangxi, written now into the rules of the industry.

3. Siji and Lidu: A Defence and an Offence in the "Gan Liquor Contest"

If the special-aroma type is the ground tone of Jiangxi baijiu, then the shifting balance between Siji and Lidu is the most telling thread of recent years.

Siji was long the undisputed king of Jiangxi baijiu. Public reports show that around 2012 its sales once topped five billion yuan, taking roughly half of the province's baijiu market. Thereafter, as strong brands from neighbouring provinces entered Jiangxi and its own product line aged, Siji's scale fell markedly; its 2023 revenue dropped to about 1.5 billion yuan, and its provincial share shrank with it. Its capacity base remains solid — annual output of about 60,000 kilolitres and total storage capacity of about 110,000 kilolitres — but the decline on the sales side genuinely happened. This is a textbook case of a regional leader turning defensive under open competition.

Set against Siji's defence is Lidu's offence. Lidu liquor comes from Jinxian and, around 2014, was a firm mired in losses. It took roughly a decade to turn around and, with its parent company, listed in Hong Kong, earning the label of the "first baijiu stock on the Hong Kong exchange." Its brand strategy is distinctive: rather than competing head-on on capacity or price, it foregrounds an "immersive experience" of baijiu, using sealed-jar culture, cultural tourism and heritage banquets to roll out hundreds of experience outlets nationwide, inviting consumers into the culture of the spirit. Public data show the Lidu brand earned about 1.3 billion yuan in 2024, up about 18 percent year on year, one of the fastest-growing segments within its group.

Between defence and offence, the question of "who is the king of Gan liquor" has reopened. It should be stated plainly that Jiangxi's baijiu market totals about fifteen billion yuan and has long been deeply penetrated by out-of-province brands, leaving local brands a limited share. Both Siji's retreat and Lidu's rise are unfolding in a market thoroughly stirred by outside forces; the verdict is far from settled.

4. Zhanggongwang and the Regional Picture: Local Forces Each Holding Their Ground

Beyond Siji and Lidu, Jiangxi baijiu has a cohort of locally rooted regional brands, of which Zhanggongwang is representative.

Zhanggong Winery sits in Ganzhou; its brand traces back to 1938, later becoming the state-run Ganzhou distillery through public-private merger. It is a "China Time-Honoured Brand" and one of Jiangxi's key baijiu producers, with a plant covering about 400 mu. Unlike Siji's special-aroma route, Zhanggongwang leads with the strong-aroma type, offering several series — cave-aged, raw-grain, premium and others — selling mainly in southern Jiangxi and radiating outward. Its presence shows that Jiangxi baijiu is not monolithic but a layered structure of "provincial powerhouse brands plus prefecture-level time-honoured names": Siji and Lidu contend for the province and the nation, while a brand like Zhanggongwang firmly holds the local consumption base of one patch of land, each holding its ground, none replacing the other.

This layered structure is a useful lens for observing a province's baijiu manufacturing map. It reminds researchers that baijiu competition is never only a story among the leaders; the factories that cultivate prefecture markets and sustain local consumption through time-honoured reputation are an indispensable link in the chain.

5. Four Greens and One Red: Jiangxi Tea Moving from Scattered to Consolidated

Moving from the wine table to the tea hills, Jiangxi's other thread comes into view.

Jiangxi is one of China's important tea-producing regions. Public data show that in 2024 the province's tea garden area was about 1.83 million mu, with annual output of about 80,000 tonnes and a full-chain comprehensive output value exceeding fifteen billion yuan. The sector has a long-standing summary — "four greens and one red": the four greens are Lushan Yunwu, Gouguban, Fuliang tea and Wuyuan green tea, and the one red is Ningyi red tea. Most are historic famous teas and have entered the value rankings of China's regional public tea brands, with Lushan Yunwu, Gouguban, Fuliang and Wuyuan green tea all near the national front in brand value.

The story of Jiangxi tea is, at its core, a movement from "scattered" toward "consolidated." For a long time Jiangxi tea was described as "small, mixed and weak" — plenty of famous teas, but scattered across hilltops and counties, each brand limited in scale and hard to combine into a single force. In recent years Jiangxi has tried to gather these scattered famous teas into a sector of national influence through unified branding, deeper processing and export expansion. Public information shows Jiangxi tea already exports at a meaningful scale, proof that this green leaf has the market competitiveness to go abroad. From scattered famous teas to an industrial cluster, Jiangxi tea walks a path quite different from baijiu yet equally dependent on geography and brand.

It should be viewed objectively that a tea's "brand value" is an assessment of a public brand, not the same thing as a firm's actual revenue. Although Jiangxi tea's output value has passed ten billion yuan, compared with top tea regions the scale and concentration of individual processing firms still have room to grow, and the share of deep processing is still climbing. The potential of this green leaf is real, and so are its shortfalls.

6. The Beverage Branch: An Honest Blank

As noted, liquor, beverages and refined tea are grouped into one manufacturing category. The two threads of baijiu and tea are clear, but the "beverage manufacturing" branch lacks well-disclosed, verifiable leading-firm data within Jiangxi.

Facing this, a researcher has two choices: force a narrative by digging out a national beverage firm with some tenuous Jiangxi link, or acknowledge the limits of public information and leave the branch honestly blank. This report chooses the latter. An industrial map has clear parts and blurred parts; marking the blur honestly comes closer to fact than filling it in by force. Jiangxi's beverage manufacturing may have its own distribution, but within verifiable public information this report will not speculate.

7. The Institute's View: Two Roots in the Same Moist Earth

Drawing the two threads of baijiu and tea together, Jiangxi's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing presents a rare dual-thread structure: on one side, baijiu defined by the special-aroma type and driven by the shifting balance of Siji and Lidu; on the other, tea framed by the four greens and one red, moving from scattered toward consolidated. Their crafts differ, their rhythms differ, yet both sink their roots into the same mild water and soil of Jiangxi, both relying on a geographic endowment and an accumulation of time that others find hard to copy.

The challenges they face are each concrete. On the baijiu side, local brands must hold their share in a market thoroughly penetrated by out-of-province forces and tell the story of their own aroma type clearly; on the tea side, the task is to truly gather scattered famous teas into a sector and convert brand value into firm revenue and deep-processing capability. Two threads: one seeking a point of attack while on the defensive, the other shoring up scale while consolidating.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's view is this: the point of this Jiangxi industry lies not in how much liquor was brewed or how much tea was picked in a given year, but in whether it can turn "geographic distinctiveness" from an endowment into a lasting industrial barrier through long cultivation. The special-aroma type belongs to Jiangxi, and so do the four greens and one red; no one can take this distinctiveness away. But whether distinctiveness converts into sustainable industrial competitiveness depends on whether local factories keep investing in craft, brand and channel. For these roots, baijiu or tea, to grow into trees depends not on a passing tailwind but on year-after-year cultivation of that moist earth.

It is worth adding that whether supplying yeast cultures, packaging and bottling equipment to liquor firms like Siji and Lidu, or providing processing, roasting and packaging equipment and raw materials to Jiangxi's tea regions, such firms form an indispensable upstream of this chain. Sales teams supplying upstream goods to Jiangxi's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturers can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter directories of relevant Jiangxi factories and decision-maker contacts along the two dimensions of region and industry, turning upstream customer development from door-to-door inquiry into following a map.

Data Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (directories and industry data for Jiangxi's liquor, beverage and refined tea manufacturing and its related upstream factories)
  • Xinhuanet: Exploring Siji Liquor — Technology Empowering Ecological Special-Aroma Brewing
  • Sina Finance: Siji Liquor Falls from Its Pedestal — Sales from Five Billion Yuan to 1.508 Billion Yuan
  • China Daily: Leading the Special-Aroma Baijiu Region's Vigorous Growth — Siji Liquor Advances in 2024
  • 21st Century Business Herald: Zhenjiu Lidu Reports 2024 Results, Revenue of 7.07 Billion Yuan
  • China Daily: Zhenjiu Lidu's Steady 2024 Growth, Crossing the Industry Cycle with Quality and Innovation
  • Tencent News: A Fifteen-Billion-Yuan Gan Liquor Market, Siji Falls from Its Pedestal
  • Jiuzhi.com and Baidu Baike: Corporate profile of Jiangxi Zhanggong Winery Co., Ltd. (founding era, time-honoured brand, product series, plant scale)
  • Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the PRC: Jiangxi's Awards at the 20th China Tea Economic Annual Meeting (the four greens and one red and brand value)
  • Nankang District Government, Jiangxi, public disclosure: Jiangxi tea garden area, output and comprehensive output value