Getting into the spirits

A 2014 report by Diageo, the world's biggest producer of spirits, showed that the company's revenue in China dropped by 14 percent that year, a result of the anti-corruption campaign.

But many foreign spirit brands and manufacturers have managed to weather the situation by readjusting their strategies in China to focus on the younger generation. In 2017, whisky sales in China soared by 19.5 percent year-on-year to hit 17.4 million liters in terms of imports, according to the Financial Times.

Chinese luxury industry watcher Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder and publisher of Hurun Report, once said that more than 80 percent of the young generation in China has increased their whisky consumption since 2015, with about 70 percent indicating that they would continue to drink more whisky over the next three years.

According to research by Hurun Report, a luxury publishing group based in Shanghai, the average retail price of a bottle of whisky in China is now 520 yuan, while about 30 percent of the consumers they surveyed said they are ready to spend more than 1,000 yuan on a purchase.

Diageo said that its sales in China in the first half of this year had grown 32 percent from the same period last year.