A woman dressed in traditional Chinese clothing picks green tea leaves in Shengzhou, Shaoxing. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Shengzhou, a county-level city in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, exported nearly 100,000 tons of green tea overseas last year, accounting for about one third of China's green tea exports in 2020, according to Shengzhou's agriculture authorities on April 22.

Destinations of the exported Shengzhou green tea include Morocco, Mexico, Mali, the Republic of Guinea, and Sri Lanka.

Ian Gibbs (right), chairman of the International Tea Committee, grants the title of "World Famous Hometown of Tea" to Shengzhou in March 2019. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Over the past few years, Shengzhou has opened the Tea Research Development Center of the China Tea Research Institute and built the world's largest tea tree germplasm base.

Shengzhou is now home to 12,000 hectares of tea plantation. The city puts an emphasis on producing organic tea with no pesticides.

Several tea companies in the city have adopted a tracking system enabling customers or buyers to track the origins of the tea.

Representatives from Shengzhou in Zhejiang province and Mogador in Morocco sign a memorandum for friendly exchanges in 2019. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Last year, Shengzhou signed a memorandum for friendly and cooperative relations with Mogador in Morocco, and the bilateral tea trade has seen burgeoning growth since then, according to an envoy of Morocco's embassy in China.

The envoy added that half of the tea imports of Mogador came from Shengzhou.

In March 2019, Ian Gibbs, chairman of the International Tea Committee, granted the title "World Famous Hometown of Tea" to Shengzhou.