China's alcohol industry is trapped in the paradox that price equals value.
In the midsummer of 2026, the Baijiu industry released its most sluggish semi-annual performance report in recent years. As of early August, among the 8 listed Baijiu companies that have disclosed their semi-annual performance forecasts, only Wuliangye achieved a projected profit growth due to a significantly lowered base in the same period of the previous year, while the remaining 7 all saw profit declines or losses. The last time such widespread losses occurred dates back to the in-depth industry adjustment period after the "Eight-point Regulation" was introduced.
Losses are just the tip of the iceberg, and the entire price system is under full pressure beneath the surface. Previously, core products that had long occupied the thousand-yuan price band, including Wuliangye Classic, Moutai 1935, and Guojiao 1573, have all fallen below the 1,000-yuan mark. Industry analysis predicts that the product prices of the entire Baijiu industry will generally drop by 30% in 2026, with the mid-to-premium and mid-range Baijiu segments seeing the most significant pullback. At the same time, the inventory turnover days of distributors have further extended from 854 days in 2024, which means it takes two and a half years to clear the existing inventory. A Sichuan-based Baijiu distributor frankly told reporters: "Selling famous Baijiu products does not make money now, it is purely for maintaining customer relationships. The overstocked goods cannot be sold, and capital costs are increasing every day."
In sharp contrast, the prices of foreign high-end alcohol brands are still rising, the import value of whiskey continues to grow, and market demand remains strong. Cognac products such as Louis XIII and Hennessy are frequently out of stock in China's ultra-high-end market; the prices of premium winery wines such as Longdai Vineyard and Opus One are steadily rising, with clear price differences between different vintages and high liquidity.
This contrast is no accident — the divergence between Chinese and foreign alcohol industries is essentially the division of two value logics: one anchors prices with quality, and the other drives prices with sentiment. The predicament of China's alcohol industry appears to be a cyclical fluctuation on the surface, but in essence it is a structural defect in the brand value system.
Chaotic Brand Positioning
Although Moutai is a world-recognized high-end brand, its wine business presents a different positioning. Moutai Dry Red Wine, launched in 2002, is priced at only dozens of yuan and targets the mass consumer market. Although it has also launched high-end products, the prices of multiple long-term best-selling wine series have always remained in the low-to-mid range, and the overall brand image is more inclined to the low-end segment. More than 20 years later, the positioning of Moutai Wine has always been vague in the minds of consumers.
In 2026, Wang Li, General Manager of Moutai Group, publicly reviewed and admitted that previous cross-border co-branding collaborations (ice cream, Moutai-flavored latte, chocolate, etc.) "did not add value to the overall brand", and "Moutai aims to build a 'long-lasting popular' brand, not a 'viral internet-famous' brand". This is a rare self-correction by the management. However, no clear adjustment plan for the positioning of Moutai Wine has been announced so far.
Lafite's layout in China provides a completely different idea. Since the launch of its first vintage in 2019, Longdai Vineyard has always adhered to high-end positioning, and its pricing strategy is in line with Lafite's value system in the global market. Longdai did not launch low-priced high-volume products under the name of "Lafite", but targeted high-end consumer groups who truly understand wine culture as an independent winery with expressions of Chinese terroir. It has limited annual output and strict quality standards, and every bottle of wine tells the story of "the dialogue between Lafite's craftsmanship and Chinese land".
With Moutai's brand strength and capital reserves, it is fully capable of building a wine brand at the same level as Longdai. The problem lies in strategic cognition: Moutai always wants to make wine that consumers can afford and buy, but the essence of a high-end brand is precisely "not covering everyone", and Moutai's scarcity is the very foundation of its value. When Moutai Wine appears on the shelves at a price of dozens of yuan, consumers will naturally ask: between Feitian Moutai and Moutai Dry Red Wine, which one represents the real "Moutai"?
The misalignment between price and value anchoring is widespread in the Baijiu industry. Foreign markets use value to determine price, while the Chinese market uses price to determine positioning, resulting in positioning without solid value support.
Over the past 20 years, the Baijiu industry has followed a path of "the more prices rise, the more people buy". Core individual products such as Wuliangye and Guojiao 1573 have continuously raised prices to boost brand momentum — price itself has become a positioning tool: a price increase means the product is upgraded to the high-end segment, while a price drop means the brand is demoted. This logic worked effectively in the incremental market driven by government and business consumption: face-saving consumption follows the simple rule of "the more expensive, the more face you have", and price increases are directly converted into the appreciation of social currency. However, the problem is that this price positioning lacks the underlying support of quality value. When the external environment changes and demand shrinks, the price system loses its anchor point. After the business banquet scenarios shrank, consumers are no longer willing to pay for the "face premium", but brands cannot provide sufficient product value arguments to support their prices.
The pricing logic of foreign premium wineries is completely different: Lafite forms a transparent price discovery mechanism through en primeur transactions every year, which is based on the comprehensive evaluation of vintage quality, aging potential and market supply and demand, rather than one-sided pricing by the manufacturer. Regardless of the market boom or bust, consumers have a stable consensus that "Lafite is worth the price" — because this consensus is built on hundreds of years of quality accumulation and verifiable terroir value, rather than social face that fluctuates with market conditions.
As a result, a peculiar phenomenon has emerged: the prices of premium winery wines have risen steadily for a long time, while Chinese Baijiu fluctuates drastically with market sentiment. The same Baijiu product has huge price differences in different channels and different periods, and consumers have no way to judge "whether it is worth the price" — because the price itself has never established a stable corresponding relationship with quality. Baijiu established its status by raising prices, but it also hidden hidden dangers of unstable value foundation due to price hikes — once the price-raising logic fails, the entire price system is like a tower built on sand.
Undervalued Region Value
Chinese Baijiu has the most complex regional system in the world: the soy sauce aroma of Moutai Town, the strong aroma of Yibin and Luzhou, the light aroma of Fenyang, the soft and mellow flavor of Suqian... The uniqueness of these regions is extremely rare in the global spirits landscape. The soil differences between the left bank and the right bank of Bordeaux have created completely different wine styles, and the whiskeys of Speyside and Islay in Scotland have their own distinct characteristics due to different water sources and peat — the region itself is the credit endorsement of quality. However, for a long time, Baijiu enterprises have focused more on "brands" rather than "terroir", and the value of producing regions has been seriously underestimated.
Bordeaux, France provides a clear reference. In 1855, during the Paris World Expo, Bordeaux formulated a classification list that divided 61 wineries into five levels. This classification, arranged based on market prices and reputations at that time, relied on the social consensus formed by decades or even hundreds of years of quality accumulation in an era without any modern testing methods. 171 years later, this classification is still valid. It is not a law, but has become the benchmark for global wine pricing. As a first-growth winery, Lafite's price has always been at the top of the pyramid regardless of the vintage quality, because the market trusts the terroir commitment behind the "first-growth" label.
Bordeaux's regional protection goes far beyond classification. The AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) system legally delineates the origin boundary of every bottle of wine — grapes must be planted in specific plots, using specific varieties, and brewed in specific ways, otherwise the region name cannot be labeled. The en primeur trading system allows wine to be pre-sold to global merchants before bottling, and the price is formed after the market collectively judges the quality of the vintage. Wineries open to tourists and convert terroir experiences into brand loyalty. The superposition of the four elements — classification, law, market, and experience — constitutes a complete expression system of regional value.
The same is true for Scottish whiskey. Scotland is divided into five major producing regions: Speyside, Highlands, Lowlands, Islay, and Campbeltown. The law clearly stipulates that only whiskey that has been aged for at least three years entirely in Scotland can be labeled as "Scotch Whisky". On the label of every bottle of Scotch Whiskey, the regional information is as prominent as the brand name — consumers choosing the Islay region expect the strong style of peat smoke; choosing Speyside means looking forward to the elegance and delicacy of floral and fruity aromas. The boundary of the producing region is the promise of flavor.
China's Baijiu producing regions have not yet established such a system. Liquor enterprises in the same producing region imitate each other's formulas and engage in homogeneous competition, failing to form a differentiated and complementary ecosystem. At one point, thousands of "soy sauce aroma Baijiu" workshops gathered in Moutai Town, using various edge-ball brands to pass off inferior products as high-quality ones. In 2025, Douyin shut down all unauthorized Moutai stores and banned 600,000 counterfeit Moutai diversion accounts. The active cleanup by e-commerce platforms is undoubtedly a positive start — but the restoration of regional reputation is far from an overnight task.
The lack of regional protection directly restricts the internationalization of Chinese Baijiu. A senior person who has long been engaged in international alcohol trade told reporters that at mainstream European and American spirits exhibitions, most of the people who stop to ask at the Baijiu booths are novelty seekers. "Most people leave after tasting, and will not ask about the details of vintages, producing regions and craftsmanship like they do for whiskey." Whiskey has clear regional labels such as Scotland, Bourbon, and Canada, and Cognac has a clear classification system such as VSOP and XO, but Baijiu is still a vague "strange East Asian spirit" in the eyes of overseas consumers.
The lack of regional labels means that quality cannot be predicted — consumers do not know where the bottle of wine comes from, what characteristics it has, and what flavor to expect — so naturally they cannot form a stable purchase decision. China's Baijiu needs to promote international standard certification at the industry level, establish geographical indication protection and a unified quality classification system — just like "Champagne" and "Cognac", so that the world not only knows "Moutai is very expensive", but also understands "what Chinese Baijiu is and where its advantages lie".
Single Brand Category, Lack of Multi-brand and Multi-category Narrative
The growth of China's alcohol industry has long relied on the single path of Baijiu.
Song Shuyu, Chairman of the China Alcoholic Drinks Association, pointed out in May 2026 that in 2025, Baijiu, with a production share of 8.5%, captured 74% of the industry's total revenue and 86% of its profits, and is still the absolute industrial pillar.
However, structural changes in the industry are taking place: in 2025, all sub-sectors of alcoholic beverages declined to varying degrees, but beer achieved a year-on-year profit growth of 12.1%, and the profits of enterprises above designated size in other liquor categories such as liqueur increased significantly year-on-year. Although Baijiu still dominates the liquor category landscape, the incremental market is shifting to categories such as beer and liqueur. Young consumers' drinking scenarios are shifting from "dinner entertainment for social obligations" to "small gatherings for self-enjoyment", and the compound annual growth rate of new alcoholic beverage categories such as low-alcohol wine, fruit wine, and pre-mixed cocktails reached 37% from 2020 to 2025.
Japan's Suntory provides a reference transformation sample. Suntory's predecessor was just a wine importer. In 2024, its annual revenue after deducting alcohol tax exceeded 3 trillion yen for the first time, and more than half of the revenue came from overseas markets. Its product portfolio has expanded from whiskey (Yamazaki, Hakushu, Hibiki, Jim Beam) to beer, whiskey, pre-mixed cocktails, tea drinks, and coffee, forming a three-dimensional matrix of "spirits + low-alcohol beverages + non-alcoholic beverages".
Suntory's starting point is similar to the situation faced by Chinese liquor enterprises. The traditional local liquor in Japan is sake, and whiskey is an imported distilled spirit. In 1923, when Shinjiro Torii, the founder of Suntory, decided to build Japan's first malt whiskey distillery, Japan had no whiskey brewing experience at all, and the market had no knowledge of this "foreign liquor". But he did not stick to sake, but chose to enter a global spirits category, and made localized improvements — reducing the smoky flavor and adjusting the taste to adapt to the Japanese palate — finally allowing whiskey to take root in Japan and export back to the global market.
The enlightenment this brings to Chinese liquor enterprises is that the Baijiu market in China has become saturated, and the incremental space is limited. To break through the ceiling, we cannot only focus on Baijiu. Wine, whiskey, beer, and pre-mixed cocktails are all globally popular liquor categories, which are also expansion paths that China's alcohol industry can enter.
Suntory spent a hundred years growing from a country dominated by sake culture to an important pole in the global whiskey industry — proving that an imported category can be deeply cultivated and carried forward in the local market. China has equally profound brewing traditions and a huge consumer market, and there is no reason why it cannot achieve this.
However, Suntory's expansion has a key principle: multi-brand. The three whiskey brands Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Hibiki have independent names, independent positioning, and independent accumulation of brand assets. Consumers do not need to recognize them through the parent brand "Suntory". Each brand grows independently in its own track.
When Japanese whiskey consumption was sluggish in the 1980s, Suntory promoted the Highball drinking method and launched canned products, also using independent product lines such as "Kakubin" as the starting point, rather than forcibly using the parent brand to endorse an aging category that was rejected by young people. The core logic of this multi-brand architecture is: different categories require different brand personalities. Forcibly attaching them to one parent brand will only prevent each sub-brand from growing bigger.
In contrast, China's Baijiu leading enterprises are highly concentrated in a single flavor type and a single price band. Moutai represents the high-end of soy sauce aroma Baijiu, and Wuliangye represents the high-end of strong aroma Baijiu — this simplified brand cognition is no problem to hold the basic market in the stock market, but it is powerless to expand new crowds and new scenarios.
Category expansion is the way out, but the method cannot be wrong. Yanghe launched the "Chinese Whiskey" in 2019, which was jointly created by Yanghe and Diageo. After a wave of distribution in channels, there was no further movement. A Jiangsu Baijiu distributor said: "This wine has no popularity, and consumers can't figure out whether it is Baijiu or foreign liquor."
The failure of "Chinese Whiskey" appears to be a vague brand positioning on the surface — it has both the mellow taste of Baijiu and the rich aroma of whiskey. It sounds like it covers both sides, but in the end it is not recognized by either side. More deeply, Yanghe uses a main brand whose cognition has been solidified as "strong aroma Baijiu" to endorse a completely different category. When consumers see the words "Yanghe", their brains activate the taste memory and consumption scenarios of Baijiu, and they cannot adjust their cognition when it comes to whiskey. The brand assets accumulated by "Yanghe" in the Baijiu track not only cannot help in the whiskey track, but even become an obstacle.
Lost Brand Spirit
Jingjiu unexpectedly became popular in 2025 with the title of "menstrual relief artifact". This health wine, originally targeted at male consumers, unexpectedly opened up the female consumer market due to the spread of the folk prescription of "drinking Jingjiu for menstrual pain" on social media. Wang Nanbo, President of Jing Brand, revealed in October 2025 that the user-initiated topics on social platforms in the past two years have brought 9 million young users (aged 18 to 30) to the brand, including 4 million female users, and Jingjiu's performance increased by more than 20%.
This is a typical sample of the traffic era. However, a marketing industry observer pointed out that this "meme-based" marketing has significant short-term effects, but lacks systematic brand strategy support. "If Jingjiu does not have a complete brand logic for the female market next, this wave of popularity will come quickly and go quickly." Jing