In a recent incident, a political and legal affairs committee secretary in Henan Province, China, along with 4 other officials, consumed 4 bottles of liquor during a political study session, resulting in the death of one individual. Following this, the Chinese Communist Party authorities claimed they would crack down on the culture of excessive wining and dining, exposing the illegal “specially supplied liquor” industry in the state media, where counterfeit “specially supplied Maotai” was priced at only 5 yuan per pound. The privilege and corruption behind Maotai liquor itself has been widely scrutinized.
According to a report by Land Media on May 18, on various occasions when friends and relatives gather, some would bring out bottles labeled with the words “specially supplied,” “exclusive,” or “for internal use,” boasting about them ambiguously… But is this “specially supplied liquor” really special?
The report stated that “special Maotai” has become part of the black market industry, serving as a cash cow in the sales sector, particularly in tobacco and liquor stores.
An official case study presented in the report revealed that prior to 2022, in a tobacco and liquor store in Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, the owner, Mr. Yuan, repeatedly guaranteed that the glittering “Maotai specially supplied for internal use” and “World Expo exclusively supplied liquor” were genuine, selling them to consumers at exorbitant prices close to a thousand yuan, making hefty profits for himself.
After receiving a tip-off, the police uncovered a counterfeit liquor producer named Mr. Li Weimin, revealing a counterfeit and sales chain of “specially supplied liquor” spanning across two provinces, Shandong and Guizhou.
According to the report, at this illegitimate operation in Renhuai, Guizhou, the counterfeiters purchased low-cost bulk white wine for a few yuan per pound from the market, along with various packaging materials (including outer boxes, liquor boxes, bottle caps, and ribbons), and hired 3 workers for bottling. For instance, the 90 boxes of “specially supplied Maotai” in the warehouse were all adulterated with cheap bulk wine at 5 yuan per pound, repackaged and sold to the market for 120 yuan per box.
Chinese lawyer Yang Sheng (alias) previously told The Epoch Times that a vast majority of Maotai liquor on the market is indeed fake because genuine Maotai liquor is directly obtained by the military from the company, while at embassies and provincial-level official banquets, although they are specially supplied, the labels do not bear that designation. Bottles labeled for “exclusive” or “specially supplied” purposes are mostly playing on the edge of legality.
Under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, Maotai liquor was once revered as a symbol of national liquor, chosen for entertaining and gift-giving purposes by central and local leaders.
Chinese elite have long held a tradition of drinking Maotai liquor. An article in the New Yam News on February 14, 2001, titled “Wine Immortal Xie Jin,” documented that even during the great famine of the 1960s, amidst widespread suffering, Premier Zhou Enlai of the Chinese Communist Party could still enjoy Maotai.
Current Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping also holds a special fondness for Maotai liquor. The Maotai liquor served to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during Xi’s hosting was the specially supplied Maotai known as “low-necked Maotai sauce bottle,” priced as high as 1.28 million yuan per bottle in a store named “Goethe Yingxiang Old Liquor Shop” on Jingdong Mall.
Maotai liquor has also become synonymous with corruption in the Chinese Communist Party, used as “special supply liquor” in various military districts, military systems, and government agencies in recent years for gifting and bribery.
Guizhou Maotai Group is the largest state-owned enterprise in Guizhou Province. In the six years from 2019 to 2025, three chairpersons of Guizhou Maotai Group were removed from their positions: Yuan Renguo, Gao Weidong, and Ding Xiongjun. Former Deputy Governor of Guizhou Province Wang Xiaoguang helped family members acquire the franchise rights for 4 Maotai liquor stores through Yuan Renguo, making illegal profits exceeding 40 million yuan.
Former member of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Wang Youqun, stated in a published article on The Epoch Times that the Maotai Group is characterized by its loyalty to the “Party,” with leaders of the Maotai Group appointed by the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and government. This implies that the Maotai Group operates as a political-economic collective where party control is absolute. Those in positions of power seek to gain from it. The corruption within the Maotai Group is perpetual and unsolvable.
Under the influence of the officialdom, counterfeit Maotai liquor has flourished in the Chinese market. Chinese official sources state that the specially supplied liquor has become a lucrative business involving the bottling and blending of low-grade white wine, often leading to substantial profits, and occasional announcements of crackdown operations.
Chinese media reports revealed that as early as 2011, the authorities were investigating the misuse of labels such as “specially supplied” and “exclusive.” In March 2013, an official notice was issued prohibiting the use of the terms “specially supplied” and “exclusive” by central and state agencies. Starting from March 2024, the State Administration for Market Regulation of the Chinese Communist Party launched a year-long campaign against counterfeit “specially supplied liquor.”
At the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, two cases involving the production and sale of counterfeit Maotai liquor were exposed in Shanghai, with the amount involved exceeding tens of millions of yuan. The methods of counterfeiting in the two cases were similar, involving the purchase of large quantities of fake Maotai packaging materials online, acquiring empty bottles at high prices from restaurants, hotels, and tobacco and liquor stores, filling them with bulk high-proof or low-cost white wine, labeling and packaging them as premium branded liquor, then distributing them through tobacco and liquor stores.
On June 10, 2024, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security claimed to have seized more than 318,000 illegal bottles of “specially supplied liquor” in a 3-month period, “dismantling 48 cross-regional professional counterfeit and trafficking criminal gangs, arresting 417 crime suspects, involving a total of 890 million yuan.”
Former Shenzhen entrepreneur Wang Yingguo once told The Epoch Times that the crackdown on illegal specially supplied liquor by the Chinese Communist Party is a means of allowing officials at all levels to “trim the grass,” capturing and fining a group of people to generate income for the officials.
Wang Yingguo stated that under the Communist Party’s rule, there exists an inherent system of special supplies, with each central government department having its own “reserved area.” He mentioned that in the past, he would receive many such specially supplied liquors annually in China, with one from the military called “South China Sea.” He believes that the current campaign by the Chinese Communist Party against illegal specially supplied liquors is essentially a ploy to make money under false pretenses.