China

Coffee was first cultivated in China in the late 1800s on a small scale, introduced by French missionaries in Yunnan. Production at scale didn’t take off for nearly 100 years, despite government initiatives back in the 1960s. It was in 1988, as part of another government-led project assisted by the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, that coffee began to be commercially produced and exported.

The focus on specialty in China is relatively recent with the past decade seeing smaller coffee farms and producers improving their knowledge and skills to produce better quality coffee. Yunnan province – a mountainous and fertile land in the south west of China, is responsible for over 97% of China’s coffee production.