Because of its frequent appearance in corruption reports, Guizhou Maotai wine has become a microcosm of the Chinese Communist Party‘s official drunkenness. Recently, during the traditional Chinese New Year, a bottle of Maotai was hard to come by, and even the cartons were surprisingly speculated at high prices.
According to land media, a 53-degree, 500-milliliter bottle of Flying Maotai is priced at 1,499 yuan (RMB, same below), but the Chinese people cannot buy the wine at the original price in the market. At the same Time, Maotai wine has frequently appeared in the reports of officials’ fallen horses, and Maotai wine has become the “hard currency” of the Communist Party’s official circles. The official media, People’s Daily, commented in an article last year that CCP officials believe that “drinking Maotai has face, hiding Maotai has value, and giving Maotai has status”, and that for them, Maotai brings “the taste of power”.
The official media issued several articles last year declaring that “wine is for drinking, not for speculation, and not for corruption”, calling for the cooling of Maotai wine. At the end of January this year, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) used the example of Wang Xiaoguang, the former vice governor of Guizhou, who had fallen from the horse, to “cut off the chain of Moutai’s illegal benefit transfer”.
Under official pressure, the Guizhou Maotai Wine Sales Company frequently pushed “price control and market stabilization” measures before the Yellow New Year, saying that they hope people can buy wine, requiring the distribution units to reach 100% of the unpacked sales ratio, otherwise they will be punished, and also announced that all available Maotai wine in 2020 will be put on the market to achieve zero inventory.
But land media visits found that in the market to buy Flying Maotai at a pricing of 1,499 yuan is still a nearly impossible thing to do, to a special dealer in Beijing Xicheng District, for example, where Maotai are sold at a unit price of 2,750 yuan to 2,800 yuan.
Not only that, the Maotai wine market during the New Year is getting crazier and crazier, even a 2020 Maotai wine carton are becoming sought-after goods, the unit price speculation to 500 yuan, while ordinary cartons of the same size are selling for just 3 yuan each.
Industry sources revealed that the current market price is Moutai original box of wine a bottle of 3300 yuan (6 bottles per box), loose bottles of wine 2700 yuan, 500 yuan a carton therefore plays an important role, “buy a whole box of Maotai people are not their own drinking, or would not care about the carton. Because of the carton, the price of a single bottle of Maotai can rise another 600 yuan”.
The newspaper quoted liquor retailer Lin Ming (a pseudonym) as saying that laymen think that people who buy boxes are going to fill them with fake wine, but in fact, they are not, and those who buy boxes are basically the most downstream wine merchants, because the official launch of the “unboxing order”, so the scalpers need to turn the loose bottles of wine into the original boxes of wine as much as possible, Maotai wine cartons and each bottle of wine have corresponding batches and numbers The cartons of Maotai wine and each bottle have corresponding batches and numbers, which correspond to each other before the original boxes are considered complete.
Lin Ming also pointed out that the whole body of Maotai wine is “treasure”: in addition to boxes, floating belt, wine glasses, bandages, bags, wine tester, etc. can be circulated: floating belt a 2 yuan, the original wine glass set of 30 yuan, a bandage 15 yuan, a handbag 100 yuan.
Maotai does not only speculate in wine but also in cartons. When the news came out, mainland netizens’ jaws dropped and many lambasted this as representing the Culture of corruption still rampant behind Maotai wine.
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