The following list shows the food brands among the latest release of China’s top 100 brands.

The list includes the brand, the product type, the value of brand in USD mn and the change of the value compared to 2013.

12 of these 21 brands are alcoholic beverages, making it by far the largest industry. The next industry is dairy, with 4 brands.

A salient feature of this list is the high number of newcomers; 9 out of 21. This seems to indicate that the Chinese food industry is highly volatile. This is further corroborated by the relatively high decrease of value of some of the brands. All of these are alcoholic beverages, and the reason for the decrease is very well known. The new central government has started a serious attack on spending of public funds by state owned enterprises. Famous distilled liquors like Moutai and Wuliangye were the first to suffer from that campaign. Interestingly, one of the newcomers, Swellfun (a.k.a. Shuijingfang) is owned by a foreign investor: Diaogeo.

Yanjing Beer (Beijing) also seems to fall victim to this austerity drive. However, Qingdao (Shandong), China’s oldest beer brand, is still growing. There must be different things going on in the Chinese brewing industry.

In that respect, we also see two smaller brands of distilled liquor appearing in this year’s list for the first time.

So apart from the slowing down of feasting on the State’s account, we also see a number of established brands having a hard time competing with newcomers, which are perhaps led by better educated managers.

Also see the food companies in the list of the 2014 China Top 500 Enterprises. The companies in that list are ranked according to turnover of 2013, while the above list is based on estimated brand value.

Eurasia Consult Food knows the Chinese food industry since 1985. Follow us on Twitter.

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Peter Peverelli is active in and with China since 1975 and regularly travels to the remotest corners of that vast nation. He is a co-author of a major book introducing the cultural drivers behind China’s economic success.