China now eats more imported beef than it did five years ago, and the trend line still points up. Rising incomes, a growing middle class with a taste for protein, and the spread of hot pot and Korean-style BBQ dining have pushed beef from an occasional luxury to a weekly staple in many urban households. For brands sitting outside China, this is one of the few food categories where demand growth is not slowing down even as overall grocery spending stays cautious.
Domestic beef production has never kept pace with this appetite. China’s cattle herd is small relative to its population, land for grazing is limited, and domestic beef prices sit well above imported equivalents once you account for cut and quality. Add to that a string of food safety scandals over the past decade involving mislabelled or adulterated meat, and many Chinese consumers now associate imported beef, particularly from Australia, Brazil, Uruguay and New Zealand, with a stronger guarantee of traceability. That perception alone is worth a premium at the shelf.
The cuts that sell in China are not the cuts that sell in Europe or North America. Hot pot culture drives huge volume for thinly sliced brisket, short rib and rolled beef slices, sold frozen in trays for home use or by the plate in restaurants. BBQ and yakiniku-style venues want short plate, flank and marbled ribeye. Western-style steakhouses, still a small but fast-growing segment in tier 1 and tier 2 cities, want tenderloin, sirloin and prime rib graded on marbling. A brand that ships the same cut mix it sells at home will leave money on the table in China. Working with a distributor who understands this split, and who can place stock in both retail and foodservice channels, is one of the areas we help clients with; our guide to finding distributors in China covers how to vet partners on exactly this kind of category expertise.
Origin countries: a shifting picture
Australia has long held one of the strongest positions in China’s imported beef market, built on geographic proximity, an established cold-chain relationship and decades of trade ties. That position took a hit in 2026. According to Chinese state media, China’s Ministry of Commerce ruled at the end of 2025 that a surge in beef imports had caused serious injury to the domestic cattle industry, and from 1 January 2026 it introduced a country-quota-plus-tariff safeguard measure running for three years. Imports beyond the national quota, set at 2.688 million tonnes for 2026, now face an additional 55 percent tariff on top of the existing rate. A separate report from People’s Daily notes that from 20 June 2026 Australian beef specifically became subject to that 55 percent surcharge once its country allocation was used up.
Brazil and Uruguay have used this shift to their advantage. Both countries hold sizeable, growing quota allocations and have invested in GACC-registered processing capacity aimed squarely at the Chinese market, and Brazilian beef in particular has picked up retail shelf space that a few years ago would have gone to Australian product. New Zealand keeps a smaller but steady share, helped by its free trade agreement terms. US beef remains the most complicated case. Access has opened and narrowed several times over the past decade depending on the state of broader trade negotiations, and shipments are still subject to plant-by-plant registration and periodic suspensions tied to individual food safety incidents rather than blanket country bans. Any brand weighing US beef for China needs to check current facility status before committing volume, not rely on what was true even a year ago.
Cold chain and GACC registration: the hardest part of the category
Meat sits among the strictest categories under China’s import framework. Every exporting facility, from slaughterhouse to cold store, must be registered with the General Administration of Customs China (GACC) before a single container can clear port. That registration covers hygiene inspection, veterinary health certification, and traceability records that follow the product from farm to processing plant. Temperature control is checked at multiple points: at loading, during ocean transit, at the bonded warehouse, and again at final distribution, with any break in the cold chain risking rejection or destruction of the shipment at the border.
This is not a category where a brand can test the market with a small, loosely managed shipment. Getting a facility onto the GACC-approved list takes months of paperwork and inspection, and losing that registration, which does happen when a health issue is traced back to a specific plant, can shut off China access overnight. Beef brands that succeed here treat compliance as a core part of the go-to-market plan, not a formality handled after the fact.
Retail versus HORECA: two very different sales motions
Retail sales of imported beef run largely through Freshippo (Hema) and Tmall Fresh, both of which built their reputations partly on selling premium imported meat with visible traceability information at the point of sale. Consumers there scan a QR code and see the farm of origin, the cold-chain journey, and grading details, which reinforces the safety premium that drove them to imported product in the first place. This channel rewards brands with strong packaging, clear storytelling and consistent stock availability, since Freshippo in particular moves quickly to delist suppliers who cannot maintain supply.
HORECA is a different business entirely. Hot pot chains buy in bulk on contract pricing and want consistency of cut and fat content above all else, since their menus are built around a fixed customer experience. Premium steakhouses, by contrast, buy smaller volumes at higher margins and often want a story to tell diners: a specific breed, a specific region, a grading system guests recognise. Distributors who serve HORECA usually run separate logistics from those serving retail, and a brand entering China often needs relationships with both types of partner rather than a single national distributor covering everything. This is one reason we point clients toward our food and beverage sector page, which lays out how channel strategy differs by product type across China’s food import market.
The direction of travel is clear even with the new tariff measures in place. Chinese consumers want more imported beef, not less, and the safeguard tariffs are reshaping which countries win share rather than shrinking the category itself. Brands that get the cut mix, the compliance paperwork and the channel split right still have a genuine opening in one of China’s fastest-growing protein categories.
Sources: 商务部对进口牛肉实施保障措施的裁定, Ministry of Commerce of China, 2025年第87号公告, mofcom.gov.cn; 我国2026年起对进口牛肉采取为期3年的保障措施, Xinhua, news.cn; 我国6月20日起对澳大利亚进口牛肉加征55%关税, People’s Daily, people.com.cn
Matt Sun is Chief Ecommerce Officer at EAC. He has spent the past several years helping food and beverage brands navigate GACC registration and cold-chain logistics into China, including a beef supplier project where the biggest delay was not customs but convincing a partner’s cold store to fix a single faulty temperature logger. Thinking about bringing a meat or protein brand into China? Get in touch with our team and we will walk you through what compliance and channel strategy looks like for your specific product.
