The global tea industry was launched not from its native China but in British India during the first half of the nineteenth century, when the East India Company began setting up tea plantations in Assam. By the 1880s, India was dotted with over 600 tea plantations, where natives planted and harvested tea under slave-like conditions. The tea industry then expanded to the island of Ceylon, or modern-day Sri Lanka, where the famous "tea barons" Thomas Twining and Thomas Lipton established their empires.

Tea made its international debut at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 and the Paris Exposition of 1900, where Ceylon tea was heavily publicized through advertising gimmicks like life-sized recreations of colonial tea factories.

Today, about 15,000 cups of tea are consumed per second throughout the world, according to the tea industry consultant group Le Palais des ThÈs. The organization estimates that about one-third of all tea is produced in India, and China produces an additional 19 percent.

The International Tea Committee reports that tea production worldwide rose from 3.05 million tons in 2001 to 3.15 million tons in 2003, with China contributing about 770,000 tons to the world's tea supply. The vast majority of this was green tea, and about one-third was exported. The Russian Federation was the number-one importer of tea, sucking in 166,000 tons. The United States ranked fifth, with 94,000 tons of tea entering the country that year.