Kweichow Moutai, often called China's national liquor, is being shaken from within and without. After prices fell to half their boom-era levels amid anti-corruption policies and a domestic slump, a dispute over the place-of-origin labeling on its popular Moutai 1935 product has emerged, cracking confidence in the brand.
According to Chinese media including China.com on Tuesday, suspicions have recently arisen, mainly on Chinese social networking services (SNS), that the manufacturer's address printed on Moutai 1935 product boxes differs from the actual one. Searching for the manufacturer listed on the product box returns an address different from the one printed, according to the claims.
As the controversy spread, Moutai officially stated its position, citing China's national food safety standards: "The manufacturer is a branch of the head office and there is no legal problem whatsoever."
On the origin labeling, the company explained that "the listed location is where the final production took place after blending raw liquor from other regions, and it is a legitimate notation that encompasses the production, blending, and packaging regions." It added that the change was the result of altering labels to comply with newly established food labeling supervision and management regulations taking effect next March.
Launched in 2022, Moutai 1935 is a popular product that served as a new growth engine for the Moutai series, at one point driving sales growth of about 30%. Recently, however, its price has fallen sharply amid the downturn in the liquor market.
The wholesale price of Moutai 1935, which once exceeded 1,000 yuan (about 190,000 won) per bottle, fell to 580 yuan (about 110,000 won) as of Sunday, and it is trading at under 700 yuan (about 130,000 won) on e-commerce platforms.
The situation is similar for Flying Fairy (Feitian) Moutai, the company's flagship product. Its wholesale price, which reached 4,000 yuan (about 760,000 won) per bottle during the 2021 boom, has slumped to about 1,930 yuan (about 370,000 won) this year.
Behind Moutai's fall is President Xi Jinping's intensified anti-corruption policy. Moutai had long established itself as a premium liquor for entertaining China's senior officials and business figures, and also functioned as an investment vehicle.
But after regulations were revised last year to effectively ban the provision of high-end dishes, liquor, and tobacco at official meals, a key source of demand was cut off. It is the so-called "civil servant liquor ban."
Moutai stated its position that "as a state-owned enterprise, we will thoroughly follow the government's austerity policy," but it has been unable to avoid an earnings slowdown. Kweichow Moutai's sales growth rate fell from 18.0% in 2023 and 15.4% in 2024 to 10.54% in the first quarter of this year, and its market capitalization ranking on the Chinese stock market slipped from first to third.
The entire Chinese baijiu (traditional white liquor) market is in a slump. According to China's National Bureau of Statistics, baijiu production by above-scale enterprises in 2025 was 3.549 million kiloliters, down 12.1% from the previous year. Compared with the peak in 2016 (13.584 million kiloliters), the cumulative decline reaches 74%.
Production from January to April this year also stood at 1.198 million kiloliters, down 2.8% from the same period last year, continuing the downward trend. Experts cite changes in consumption patterns driven by generational turnover as the main cause. The analysis is that as China's younger generation prefers milk tea, fruit juice, and non-alcoholic beverages, the high-proof-focused baijiu market is structurally shrinking.
In the Korean market, too, Moutai's standing is not what it once was. As recently as 2022, Moutai was so popular it was hard to find at duty-free shops, and because reselling could yield a margin of more than 200,000 won, Chinese tourists scrambled to buy it.
But as China's economic slump has dragged on, market prices have fallen more than 40% from their peak, and inventory is piling up at duty-free shops as well. UBS downgraded its investment rating on Moutai to "neutral," forecasting that "sales could fall 13% by 2025 due to a decline in the main consumer population (ages 30 to 59)."
