Episode Details

It’s the liquor that fuels toasts, seals deals, and measures corruption—and it’s one of the most profitable businesses on the planet. In this episode, we pour into the world of Kweichow Moutai, the state-run distillery behind China’s infamous national spirit, baijiu. Despite ignoring every Western rule of marketing, Moutai has become a financial juggernaut with sky-high margins and a premium customer base larger than France. But its rise is tangled in politics: from decades of elite misconduct that turned its price into a “barometer of corruption” to recent bribery arrests and a meddlesome government shareholder that won’t let the company act like a normal corporation. Built on nationalism, elitism, and the spending power of older consumers, Moutai is a rare success story that thrives by breaking all the rules. The question is—how long can it keep defying gravity?

https://www.economist.com/business/2020/01/23/moutai-madness