China has been aggressively marketing its brands all over the world, what some observers tag as the country's "Made in China" flagship program. The latest of this push is the establishment of the Baijiu College, an institution specially made where students can study the Chinese liquor Baijiu.
China has been making a lot of effort in order to protect its local economy, while at the same time promote it to the international market. The latest of this strategy is the establishment of a $58 million school called the Baijiu College which is located in Yibin within the mountains of China's Sichuan province. As the name suggests, Baijiu College is named after one of China's most famous beverage.
To highlight China's commitment to this strategy, the country was able to completely build the Baijiu College in just a span of nine months. Boasting a price tag of $58 million, the college is so new that some of its surveillance cameras are still wrapped in plastic.
The mission and goal of Baijiu College are simple, teach students how to craft the native brew. What separates this college from the regular brewery is the fact that it uses high-tech machinery in order to automate the whole brewing process which is rather tedious and hard. One of the college's goal is to make Baijiu an acceptable replacement for whiskey and other popular alcoholic beverages like tequila and gin. In essence, China wants Baijiu to receive the global recognition it deserves.
Baijiu College has more than 2,000 enrollees. They are taught how to distill, inspect, and properly market Baijiu in China's humid Sichuan region. Sichuan was specifically picked for the location of the college because of the region's spiritual and historical connection to the Chinese spirit.
While Baijiu is widely considered as a staple in the Chinese drinking culture, some outsiders might find the brew's taste as rather peculiar. Most outsiders who have tasted it describe its taste as "burning" and a journalist even once described it as "liquid razor blades."
Many market experts noted that China's push to bring Baijiu into the global scene is just part of the country's strategy to cope up with the ongoing trade war with the United States. The commercial battle between two of the world's largest economies has pushed China to the brink of reducing its reliance on the American market, most especially in technology. Trade experts believe that promoting Baijiu will play an essential part in offsetting the negative repercussions of the trade war.
