33China
In-depth country profile: production, varieties, classification, history, current situation and points that remain uncertain. Region: Asia.
In China, coffee is a recent story and still under construction. Nearly all production comes from Yunnan, the “red land,” whose climate and relief recall the Colombian Andes. The coffee plants, sheltered from frost by the mountains, are grown there by small farms.
The country is both a producer of arabica (almost all of which it exports) and an importer of canephora from Laos and Vietnam. The sector was supported in the 1980s by a United Nations program, and remains in full development today.
- Botanical species
- Arabica
- Varieties
- Caturra; S288 (rust-resistant)
- Altitude
- 700 to 1,200 m
- Shade
- Varies by plantation
- Harvest
- Manual and selective
- Processing
- Wet process
- Sorting
- Mechanical (sorting and screen grading)
- Harvest period
- November to March
- Packaging
- 60-kg bag
The Chinese system combines number of defects and bean size, grouped into grades.
| Grade | Criteria |
| Grade 1 | 90% min > screen 17; 10% max < screen 15; 5% max defects; 0.5% major defects (black beans…) |
| Grade 2 | 90% min > screen 14; 10% max < screen 12; 8% max defects; 1% max major defects |
History
China does not appear in Ukers's world table of exports in 1922: its coffee growing is entirely later. The profile places the takeoff in the 1980s, with the support of a United Nations program, and nearly all production in Yunnan.
Ukers 1922, ch. XXII, p. 289-291 (exports of the producing countries), p. 290-291; Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Chinese planting material is imported, and the choice of the two varieties says a lot about the project.
The first pillar is Caturra, a dwarf mutation of Bourbon selected in Brazil.
The second is S.288. It is the first variety resistant to coffee leaf rust, released in India by the Central Coffee Research Institute in 1936-1937. It comes from a natural hybrid between arabica and liberica, another species of the genus Coffea.
The choice of S.288 is the more telling of the two. It was planted for disease resistance, not for what the coffee would give in the cup.
World Coffee Research, Coffee Varieties Catalog 2025, Caturra and S.288 (Sln.1) profilesToday
The profile gives no production volume for China. Cultivation is between 700 and 1,200 meters, in the “red land” of Yunnan, on small farms sheltered from frost by the mountains, with selective manual harvesting and the wet process. The country is both a producer of arabica, almost all of which it exports, and an importer of canephora from Laos and Vietnam.
Country Profiles, Marco De Sousa Rosa, 2026Gray areas
- No Chinese production volume is given by the profile or sourced elsewhere here.
- The United Nations program of the 1980s is neither named nor dated by the sources consulted.
- The date of introduction of coffee to China (the French missionaries of Yunnan are often cited) is established by no source in the corpus.
- The share of Chinese domestic consumption, which is growing fast, is not quantified here.