Source: People's Daily

Guizhou in Southwest China has increased peasants' incomes and sharpened the competitive edge of Guizhou tea by promoting the development of its tea industry. The tea industry in Guizhou Province has become a new pillar of its modern agricultural economy and will receive strong support from the central budget.

Guizhou Province possesses favorable natural geographical and climatic conditions for producing good tea. Following a three year-long promotion of the tea industry, the average income of millions of spring tea growers in Guizhou has increased by nearly 3,000 yuan.

Planting tea can not only improve the ecological environment, but also increase the wealth of tea growers faster. Therefore, with a stable and broad market, tea growing has become an important strategic decision of Guizhou Province to develop modern agriculture during recent years.

Over the past three years, more than 700 million yuan from various funds assisting agriculture and over 400 million yuan of social capital were invested in the construction of tea plantations. The new tea plantations in Guizhou are growing by 400,000 mu each year. At present, the total area of tea plantations has reached nearly two million mu.

The tea processing capacity and standards in Guizhou Province have continued to improve rapidly. For example, over a period of two years, the annual tea production capacity of a company in Zunyi rose from 200 tons to 2,000 tons, and its sales revenue increased from eight milion yuan to over 80 million yuan. At present, not only are there tea processing enterprises, deep processing enterprises focusing on tea polyphenols, tea seed oil and others are also emerging.

Guizhou green tea received over 40 top awards at the fourth and fifth China Beijing International Tea Expos and the ninth Guangzhou International Tea Expo.

Guizhou recognized by the Ministry of Finance as one of China's advanced provinces in implementing modern agricultural projects and received a reward of 35 million yuan from the central budget.

The Ministry of Finance has decided to allocate more fund for the modern agricultural industry to support the development of Guishou's tea industry for three successive years since 2008. Guizhou plans to set up five million mu of ecological tea plantations by 2020. In 2009, the total area of tea plantations is expected to exceed 2.5 million mu.