Workers get busy at a ginseng plantation in Jilin province. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

Northeast China's Jilin province is taking advantage of the huge consumer demand for ginseng – both domestically and globally – through increasing intensive processing, and integrating on-site and online production, sales and distribution, to develop an industry with an annual output exceeding 100 billion yuan ($14.26 billion), according to local media reports.

The province boasts a long history of growing the plant. Statistics show that more than 60 percent of ginseng in China is from Jilin and more than 40 percent of ginseng in the world comes from the province. Each year, Jilin exports huge amounts of it to South Korea, Japan and other countries.

A woman collects dried ginseng. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

The Changbai Mountain Ginseng Planting Alliance was established in 2016 in Jilin province and it plans to improve the yield and quality of the ginseng there by solving the problem of protecting the plants.

In the Wanliang Changbai Mountain Ginseng Market in Jilin's Fusong county – the largest ginseng trading market in Asia – the price of fresh ginseng produced by the Changbai Mountain Ginseng Planting Alliance area is currently 2-4 yuan higher per kilogram than the market price elsewhere, due to its higher quality.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), Jilin province established a number of demonstration plantations for standardized production of ginseng, with the unit yield increasing from 0.8 kg per square meter to 2 kg, as well as a high-quality rate of over 75 percent.

Plans are for Jilin province to develop a tracing system for the whole supply chain of Changbai Mountain ginseng and control the quality of the entire cultivation and sales process. The high-quality rate of fresh ginseng is expected to reach 85 percent in 2025.

Top-quality ginseng goes on display in Jilin province. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]