Module 171 · Cultural Intelligence · China → Morocco
The Tea
Road
Morocco imports more Chinese tea than all of North America combined. Eighty-one thousand metric tons in 2024 — a 35% surge that made a North African kingdom China’s single largest tea customer on Earth. The gunpowder green that arrives at Moroccan ports gets blended with fresh mint and sugar, poured from height into small glasses, and served three times. Bitter as life, gentle as love, sweet as death.
0K
MT Morocco imports (2024)
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$ global tea exports 2024
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MT China produces (49%)
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MT world production 2024
001 · The Atay Ceremony
Three glasses. One proverb. The whole arc of a life.
Moroccan tea is not a drink. It is a protocol. Gunpowder green from Zhejiang province meets fresh nana mint from the Meknès plateau. Sugar — always too much sugar, by European standards — completes the trinity. The pour is theatrical: from a metre high, the stream aerates the tea and builds the foam. Three glasses, each sweeter than the last, each carrying a line of the proverb that Moroccans know by heart. Ethiopia has its own three-cup ritual — the buna ceremony — and the same unspoken rule: you cannot leave before the third.
Bitter as life
Glass 1
Strong, barely sweetened. The first glass teaches patience. The tea master pours from height — the higher the arc, the more the foam.
Gentle as love
Glass 2
More sugar. More mint. The edges soften. The conversation loosens. This is where the real business gets discussed.
Sweet as death
Glass 3
Maximum sugar. The sweetness is almost unbearable. To refuse the third glass is to insult the host. To accept is to accept life whole.
002 · Where China’s Tea Goes
Morocco buys three times more than America.
Africa is China’s most important tea export destination by volume. Morocco alone takes 22% of all Chinese tea exports — 81,000 metric tons in 2024, up 34.7% from the previous year. The price is the lowest among China’s African partners at $3.01/kg, because Morocco buys in bulk: raw gunpowder green, re-blended, re-packaged, and re-shipped to five neighbouring countries. Morocco is not just a customer. It is a distribution hub for Chinese green tea across West and North Africa — a gateway position it also plays in China’s broader Belt & Road investments on the continent.
Morocco
81K MT
Ghana
39K MT
Uzbekistan
27K MT
Mauritania
15K MT
Senegal
12K MT
Russia
17K MT
USA + Canada
25K MT
The Tea Route
Zhejiang → Casablanca → West Africa
China → Morocco (main route)
Morocco (hub)
Ghana redistribution
Senegal
Mauritania
003 · Global Tea Trade
$7.55 billion traded. China leads in value.
China is the world’s largest tea producer (3.5 million metric tons — 49% of global output) and second-largest exporter by volume behind Kenya. China dominates green tea exports at 87% of its shipments. Kenya, Sri Lanka, and India lead in black tea. The global tea trade reached $7.55 billion in 2024, down 7.4% from five years earlier — a market in consolidation, not decline, as producing countries increase domestic consumption.
China
$1.42B
19% of global exports
Sri Lanka
$1.16B
15% of global exports
Kenya
$1.15B
15% of global exports
India
$0.83B
11% of global exports
Poland
$0.77B
10% of global exports
Others
$2.22B
30% of global exports
004 · The Timeline
From Shennong to the medina. Five thousand years of leaves.
~2737 BCE
Legend: Emperor Shennong discovers tea when leaves blow into boiling water
~59 BCE
Earliest written record of tea preparation in China (Wang Bao's contract)
760 CE
Lu Yu writes Chá Jīng (The Classic of Tea) — first tea treatise
805
Japanese monks bring tea from China to Japan
~1600s
Dutch and Portuguese traders bring tea to Europe
1662
Catherine of Braganza introduces tea to English court
~1700s
Moroccan sultans receive Chinese gunpowder green tea as diplomatic gifts
1854
Crimean War disrupts British tea supply; merchants redirect stock to Morocco
1880s
Moroccan mint tea culture fully established across all social classes
2015
Morocco lowers bulk tea import tariffs to 2.5%; raises packaged to 32.5%
2016
Lichuan Jinli Tea (China) invests $9M in Moroccan tea packaging factory
2024
Morocco imports 81,000 MT of Chinese tea — record. More than all of North America.
005 · The Road
Tea arrived in Morocco through diplomacy and war. In the 18th century, Moroccan sultans received gunpowder green tea as gifts from Chinese and European merchants. It remained a court luxury. Then the Crimean War of 1854 disrupted British tea supply chains, and merchants redirected stock to Moroccan ports at bargain prices. Within a generation, tea had migrated from palace to medina to village. By the 1880s, atay was universal across all social classes.
What Morocco did with Chinese tea is alchemy. Gunpowder green — rolled into tight pellets in Zhejiang province — meets fresh spearmint from the Meknès plateau. Sugar is added in quantities that would alarm a European nutritionist. The mixture is brewed in a silver or steel teapot, poured from height to aerate, and served in small glasses — three rounds per sitting, each sweeter than the last.
The ceremony is not optional. You do not arrive at a Moroccan home, shop, or office without being offered tea. To refuse is to refuse the relationship. To accept the third glass is to accept the host’s blessing. The proverb — bitter as life, gentle as love, sweet as death — is not decoration. It is a map of the social contract.
Morocco now imports 81,000 metric tons of Chinese green tea per year — more than all of North America combined. The price per kilo is the lowest among China’s partners ($3.01), because Morocco buys raw bulk and adds value locally. Moroccan blenders re-package and re-ship Chinese tea to Ghana, Mauritania, Senegal, and Algeria, making Casablanca the de facto green tea distribution capital of Africa.
In 2016, the Chinese company Lichuan Jinli Tea invested $9 million to build a packaging factory in Morocco — the first Belt and Road Initiative tea investment on the continent. The subsidiary, Cathaysian Tea Company, now ships its Le Mont Yoto brand across West Africa. The ancient road from Zhejiang to Marrakech is now an industrial corridor.
The road is five thousand years old. The leaves are the same. The pour is the same. Only the names of the middlemen change.
The first glass is bitter as life. The second is gentle as love. The third is sweet as death.
Moroccan proverb
Continue Reading
The Coffee Covenant
Another ceremony, another commodity — Ethiopia's buna ritual and stolen genetics.
The Spice Routes
The maritime routes that carried tea, spices, and silk between continents.
The Silk Road Into Africa
Where China's ancient trade networks met the African continent.
The Al-Andalus Corridor
Morocco's gateway — Islamic Spain and the trade that shaped Maghreb culture.
Sources & Attribution
STiR Coffee & Tea — China 2024 tea exports: 374,100 MT, $1.42B revenue. Morocco 81,000 MT (+34.7%).
Firsd Tea — Global Green Tea Report 2024: Morocco imports 74–80K MT Chinese green tea annually.
Statista — Morocco remained China's largest tea export destination (2023): ~60K MT, 16% of exports.
World's Top Exports — Global tea exports $7.55B (2024). China $1.42B (18.8%). Kenya #1 by volume.
FAO IGG Tea / ITC — Global production 7.1M MT (2024). China 3.5M MT (49%). India 1.37M MT.
STiR — Morocco imports 3× more Chinese tea than US + Canada combined (75K vs 25K MT).
Trading Economics / UN COMTRADE — Morocco imports from China of tea: $178.9M (2023).
Tea & Coffee Trade Journal — Global Tea Report 2024: Morocco 60K MT, Egypt 72K MT top African importers.
China Tea Marketing Association — Morocco is gateway to N/W Africa, ~25% of China total tea exports.
Connected Intelligence
© Dancing with Lions 2025. Module 171. Data compiled from CAPIAC, STiR, UN COMTRADE, ITC, FAO. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.