East-central China’s Hunan Province dispatched 13,000 kg of ‘Sunshine Rose’ or Shine Muscat grapes to Malaysia on June 3, 2025, kickstarting the 2025 export campaign.
Fair weather in growing regions has helped bring shipments a month earlier this season than in the August 2024 export campaign.
According to Voc, Changde city’s Customs inspected the initial batches and expedited clearance for similar punnets.
To reduce prolonged inspections, the customs authority undertook extra-inspection interventions right along the processing chain.
Hunan expects to ship some 5 million kg of the special grapes to over 10 export markets in Asia and Africa.
What is ‘Sunshine Rose’?
With an origin in Japan in the early 2000s, the ‘Sunshine Rose’ table grape cultivar reached China at an indeterminate date.
By September 2022, the variety was the talk of town for its fragrant floral taste and vibrant yellowish green tinge.
Its seedlings soon dominated nationally acclaimed grape nurseries in Huludao City in northeast China while the table grape took over groceries.
Uptick demand spurred the cost of seedlings to 30 yuan ($4.18) per item in 2022, from 20 yuan ($2.79) in 2021.
The government of grape-rich Hunan soon pounced on the trade potential of the cultivar via selective international sales. On August 1, 2023, Lixian county made a significiant dispatch of 2.5 million kg of the variety to a local processing plant.
Nevertheless, the glory faded fast. By mid-January 2025, retailers in Kunming city in southwest China were selling the fresh fruit at 20 yuan ($2.8)/kg.
What used to cost over 100 yuan ($13.94)/kg was now accessible for 10 yuan ($1.39), beneath median grape retail rates in China.
So, could the 2025 export campaign that Malaysia has begun rescue the waning glory of ‘Sunshine Rose’ grapes? Whatever the outcome, below statistics explore China’s grape sector in general.
China Grapes Statistics
China is the world’s biggest production hub for grapes at 12.6 million tonnes per annum, as of 2022. In 2023, it ranked 4th worldwide for exports with an export value of $813.9 million, equal to 8.8% of the global table grape revenue. Only Peru, the Netherlands and Italy have bigger export revenue shares. China’s lead owes to a range of graded table grape cultivars such as ‘Sunshine Rose,’ originally known as “Shine Muscat.”
How extensive is the cultivation of ‘Sunshine Rose’ in China?
‘Sunshine Rose’ vending in China went on from relative insignificance to sales of 2 million seedlings per year by 2018. The provinces of Yunnan, Hunan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Liaoning and Guangdong dramatically ramped up their cultivated areas to cash in. The Breeders Alliance reported in 2022 that the grape’s national acreage rose from 6,740 hectares (ha) in 2016 to 20,806 ha in 2022. Other estimates put the actual 2022 cultivated area under these grapes at 66,666 ha.
What is the grape consumption per capita in China?
In 2023, China ranked 6th globally in grape consumption at about 8.3 kg per person per year, according to the ESS Feed. Apart from Türkiye with 8.9 kg per capita, China’s consumption rate is the highest in geographical Asia.
How has China’s grape production performed in the 2019-22 period?
China recorded its biggest grape output in the 2019-22 period in 2022 at over 15 million tonnes. According to the FAOSTAT, production upped consecutively while acreage fluctuated in the timeline, per the table below.
| Year | Production [tonnes] | Acreage [Ha] |
| 2022 | 15,443,449 | 707,492 |
| 2021 | 15,067,900 | 704,017 |
| 2020 | 14,388,103 | 713,192 |
| 2019 | 14,284,035 | 745,907 |