Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe BEIJING, Oct. 11 (UPI) -- China is showing deft marketing skills as its young shun tea for coffee at Starbucks, to whom the government is asking to market its green tea worldwide. Figures from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show tea consumption in China is growing by 2 percent a year, while Chinese figures show tea production rising 8.7 percent last year and rapidly accelerating. Advertisement Government support helped produce an 18.9-percent jump in Chinese tea exports last year, to $437 million, in a global market that is nearly stagnant. Jin Yuemei, a 54-year-old tea-picking peasant near Hangzhou, Told the New York Times that the boom in tea exports meant her home now held a television set, a refrigerator and even a couple of air conditioners. "Everyone has these things," she said. "We are quite rich now."
