The Chinese won't drink wine? Let's try bribing them

An organization called the International Wine Culture Promotion Association -- which apparently has had 578 visits to its website -- really wants China to take up wine drinking, so much so that they are "donating" 100,000 wine cellars to middle class China. In alcoholism parlance, they would be known as an enabler. From Xinhua:

The first 20,000 cellars are earmarked for Beijing and Shanghai and recipients are being actively sought, Thompson said.

Recipients of the IWCPA are expected to own their own home (no less than 120 square meters), a private car, higher level education, or to be VIPs in banking, aviation or telecommunications industries.

The IWCPA said the criteria for selecting recipients were designed to ensure that they were genuine wine lovers who could afford to be wine lovers.

There are catches, of course. The cellars aren't really cellars -- they are "wooden box-like structures that can be installed anywhere in the house" and retail for around RMB 7,980. And they aren't really free: "Recipients pay 2,980 yuan to become members of the association" but "the 2980-yuan deposit can be recovered if recipients purchase sufficient quantities of wine from retailers listed by the IWCPA." What a nice scheme gesture.

The story points out that wine accounts for 1 percent of China's annual alcohol consumption, although imports of wine were up 88.8 percent this year over last year. We think we're a few years away from a Chinese movie called Thank You For Drinking, unless that movie is about someone who works for the International Rice Wine Culture Promotion Association.