The Shanxi Medicinal Tea Industry Alliance was established in Taiyuan -- capital of North China's Shanxi province on April 21 -- with 17 representatives of chambers of commerce in different regions and 36 member units attending the founding meeting. 

Led by Shanxi health industrial company Zhendong Group, the alliance is an independent legal entity implementing a membership system and joint-stock business model. 

The alliance will be engaged in planning medicinal tea industrial development, establishing industrial standards, establishing medicinal tea quality traceability platforms, as well as building medicinal tea raw materials bases. 

In addition, it will guide research and the development of medicinal tea products and related production technology. 

It will help small and micro-sized medicine tea companies grow stronger, build information sharing and marketing platforms for the medicinal tea sector, as well as operate the regional public brand of Shanxi Medicinal Tea. 

With its unique geographical environment for growing traditional Chinese medicine, Shanxi province is abundant in traditional Chinese medicine and boasts a long history of making and drinking medicinal tea. There is a solid foundation for developing the medicinal tea industry in the province. And boosting the medicinal tea sector is one of measures identified to advancing modern agriculture in the region.

Wang Cheng, vice-governor of Shanxi, said at the founding meeting that the establishment of the alliance marked a substantial move by the province's medicinal tea industry towards standard, large-scale and intensive development.

He emphasized that the alliance should help develop Shanxi province into a national center for R&D of medicinal tea products, a national cluster for medicinal tea production, an incubator for medicinal tea processing enterprises and a distribution center of medicinal tea products -- so as to expand the local medicinal tea industry and enhance the national and international reputation of the Shanxi Medicinal Tea brand.