When official figures show one of China’s consumer categories posting double-digit growth, you’d expect the people selling that product to be feeling pretty good. In the alcohol trade, they are not.
According to the latest data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics, retail sales of tobacco and alcohol rose 15.2% year-on-year between January and April 2026 – far outpacing the overall growth rate of just 1.9% for China’s broader retail market, and placing the sector among the fastest-growing consumer categories in the country.
Yet interviews with listed companies, traditional distributors, liquor retailers and regional industry associations tell a strikingly different story. Few people on the ground have felt anything close to that kind of growth. Many say business is actually getting harder.
So who exactly is buying all this alcohol?
The Numbers Look Strong. The Industry Doesn’t Feel It.
The scale of the apparent disconnect is striking.
China’s tobacco and alcohol retail sales reached RMB 257.5 billion (US$35.8 billion) in the first four months of 2026. Of all the retail categories tracked by the NBS, only communications equipment up 17.7% grew faster.
But when Vino Joy News put the figures to several industry association leaders, the responses were remarkably uniform.
“We genuinely don’t know where the growth is coming from,” one executive said on condition of anonymity. “Looking at listed companies’ first-quarter results, many businesses actually declined.”
Another regional representative declined to comment altogether, saying only that it was “not convenient” to discuss the data.
Corporate earnings support their unease. In baijiu – China’s largest alcoholic beverage category by far – only the two industry giants, Kweichow Moutai and Wuliangye, managed to grow revenue in the first quarter. Most other major producers, including Fenjiu, Yanghe, Luzhou Laojiao, Gujing Gongjiu, Shede Spirits and Swellfun, reported declines. Beer fared no better, with Qingdao Brewery and Chongqing Brewery both posting weaker performances. In wine, Changyu managed a sales rebound but still saw shareholder profit fall 6.76%.
The gap between the headline figures and lived experience has left the industry searching for explanations.
On the Ground, Retailers Are Feeling the Squeeze
From the retail front line, the mood is cautious at best.
Feng Tao, deputy general manager of Hengtai Liquor Chain Store, a liquor retail chain running more than 20 stores across Chengdu, says sales at his stores are actually falling. He traces the problem to two forces working simultaneously: softer overall demand, and a rapid fragmentation of where consumers choose to buy.
China’s alcohol retail landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Traditional liquor stores remain relevant, but they now compete with instant-delivery platforms, direct-sourcing retailers like Sam’s Club and Freshhippo, and an expanding array of online channels — all of which have eroded the captive customer base that traditional retailers once relied on.
Wu Yonglei, general manager of Xiamen Fond Wine, which operates across wine, baijiu and whisky through conventional distribution, hears similar stories from the distributors he works with.
“The tobacco and alcohol market still feels relatively sluggish overall,” Wu said. He does, however, point to pockets of resilience: lower-priced products are holding their volumes, white wine remains one of the few wine subcategories in growth, and several emerging alcohol segments are expanding quickly.
The biggest growth engine of all, he says, is instant retail.
Instant Retail Is Rewriting the Rules
That observation is not unique to Wu. Across the industry, instant retail, the model of ordering online for rapid local delivery has emerged as the one channel where growth feels real and traceable.
Wang Yutian, head of marketing and O2O instant retail at Torre Oria China, has watched the shift accelerate. His company has invested heavily in both instant retail and ready-to-drink categories, and what he is seeing on the ground is unambiguous.
“Growth in instant retail is actually exceeding the figures reported by the statistics bureau,” Wang said. “Consumer habits have already formed, and products on instant retail platforms often enjoy pricing advantages compared with some offline retailers.”
The shift has been years in the making. Platforms like Meituan spent enormous resources building the habit of reaching for a phone rather than visiting a store — and it has stuck, particularly among younger consumers. Last year, Taobao’s aggressive push into instant retail, backed by heavy subsidies and promotional pricing, accelerated the trend further.
The practical implication is significant: a meaningful and growing slice of China’s alcohol spending may now be flowing through channels that sit outside the traditional retail networks where industry participants have historically felt the market most directly. If that is where the NBS numbers are being made, it would go a long way toward explaining why so many on the ground feel disconnected from them.
New Tastes, New Occasions
The channel shift is only part of the story. What Chinese consumers are drinking is changing too.
Wang points to strong growth in RTDs, flavoured beer, cider and rice-based alcoholic beverages — categories that share a common quality: they taste approachable.
“We believe many consumers don’t actually enjoy the taste of traditional alcoholic beverages,” Wang said. “They drink because of social occasions. Products like RTDs taste more like soft drinks and solve an important consumer pain point.”
The data supports that view. According to Grand View Research, China’s ready-to-drink cocktail market was worth approximately US$308 million in 2025 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 14.1% through 2033, with online channels expected to be the fastest-growing segment.
Wine, by contrast, faces a slower road. Its inherent complexity — regions, grape varieties, vintages, styles — creates a learning curve that limits casual adoption. Wang believes sustained consumer education remains essential to growing the category meaningfully.
The picture that emerges is one of genuine transformation rather than simple growth. China’s alcohol market is not expanding uniformly — it is shifting, fragmenting and reorganising around new consumption occasions, new channels and new categories. Traditional players embedded in old distribution networks are feeling left behind even as the headline numbers climb.
That divergence, more than the 15.2% figure itself, may be the most important story in China’s alcohol market right now.
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