About one fifth of China's total tea exports in 2018 were sent to Morocco, the South China Morning Post reported, quoting the China Tea Marketing Association. The association revealed that out of the 364,742 tons of tea China exported last year, 77,562 tons were imported by the Kingdom, thanks to the Chinese government's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In addition to imports, Jinli Tea, a Chinese firm headquartered in the Hubei provincial city of Lichuan, is one of the first Chinese companies to have a branch in Morocco. According to the same source, Jinli has five packaging lines in the Kingdom, producing 3,000 tons of tea annually. The company's Moroccan branch «contributed about 60 million yuan (US$9 million) of revenue last year», Jinli's chief executive Wang Qimao told the same newspaper. «Our main products are still for export, so we went to Morocco and thought we must open the western Africa market through the country», Wang said in an interview with South China Morning Post in Lichuan.
