Ambassador Dr. Palitha Kohona was addressing the Belt and Road International Tea Trading Forum in Hefeng County, Hubei Province as a guest speaker. Hubei has over 700,000 hectares of immaculately tended tea gardens.

China's insatiable thirst for tea could provide Sri Lanka's high-quality tea with a lucrative and expanding market but China's standards and special requirements must be observed, he said.

Organic tea, though more expensive, was rapidly catching on in China, especially among the health conscious older consumers, but had to satisfy other requirements

The modernisation of the Sri Lanka tea industry including through digitization contributed significantly to the success of China's rural revitalization program and it could introduce dramatic changes to the lives of the work force, especially to the thousands of women employed in the industry.