Save our suds from the big beer bullies—喜欢精酿啤酒

Incase this column doesn't make it immediately obvious, I might as well comeright out and say it — I like beer.
I'm partial to a Tsingtao, have experimented with Snow and can often be foundsupping from a cold can of Beijing's own Yanjing.
But what I enjoy most is a nice, rounded craft beer — something with depth,flavor and tantalizing taste.
In Yorkshire, we call such beverages "hand pull", because they'remost often served by way of a beer engine — a manually operated device forpumping up the lustrous liquid from a cask in the pub's cellar.
Strictly speaking, this would more correctly be termed cask-conditioned beer or"real ale", which similar to the United States-style craft beer thatChina is more familiar with, owes much of its popularity to a backlash againstmass-produced lagers that began in the 1970s.
Between 1978 and 2012, the number of breweries in the US rose from 42 to morethan 2,750, with virtually all of that growth attributable to craft brewers.Over the same period, the number of "real ale" brewers in the UK roseto more than 700 ‑ four times what it had been in 1971.
According to trade group the Brewers Association, the US craft beer market wasworth $23.5 billion last year.
Some predict that a similar craft beer explosion will soon hit China, which iswhy I read a recent Fortune article on the subject with great interest.
That piece, titled "China's New Craft-Beer Bully" outlined globalbeer behemoth Anheuser-Busch InBev's attempts to muscle in on the Chinesemarket  at the expense of local players.
Apparently, the "heart of its strategy" is to "squash—or somedaysoon acquire—small breweries before they have a chance to capture marketshare". It does so by undercutting smaller operations, leveraging its sizeand ability to throw money around.
The reason why is simple — it doesn't want to miss the craft revolution, likeit did in the US.
By offering eye-watering sums of cash, big brewers like AB InBev can inducebars to remove all competing brands from their taps. Not all outlets will do so,but many — as the Fortune article points out — struggle to turn down the kindof money that's on offer.
China's current regulatory environment also favors these big foreign companies— in the US, brewers can't monopolize the beer a bar offers or controldistributors, but there are no such restrictions here.
Rules around product safety, meanwhile, prevent many local craft brewers fromrunning in-China bottling operations, which again puts them at a disadvantage.
At present, craft beer only accounts for a tiny fraction of China's estimated$80 billion-per-year beer market.
But as the country gets ever wealthier and the size of its middle classincreases, tastes will change. Perhaps it's high time to rethink policies thatfavor the big beer bullies over homegrown entrepreneurs?