"Minors may not drink in this restaurant" - will this become a common sight?

Well, the Ministry says that the standard is not an iron rule, but rather a guideline. And besides, there is already a law on the books: the "Prevention of Juvenile Crime" law from 1999 states that "no business may sell alcohol or tobacco to minors."

A reporter for the Chongqing Evening News did a quick survey of supermarkets, local convenience stores, and bars, and found they were still selling to children and youth.

"My family will be having guests for lunch, so my father sent me to buy four bottles of beer and two bottles of erguotou." Right around lunch, this reporter met Xiaowang, a junior-middle school student who was buying alcohol. When I asked the person selling the alcohol if he knew that the Ministry of Commerce had put in place new regulations on 1 July, he looked at me blankly: "I haven't heard of that standard. There are lots of children who come here to buy alcohol. When I'm doing business I can't check people's residence permits."

In 2002, Guangdong Province wrote a drinking age into the first draft of a new set of alcohol regulations, but it was later deleted after complaints that the rural elderly and infirm would be inconvenienced if their children could no longer buy alcohol for them.

And last year a restaurant in Shenyang put up the sign shown here, refusing to serve alcohol to minors. Of course, it only did so after a group of drunken teenagers beat up a driver, who retaliated by running them down. It remains to be seen what the response will be to the Ministry's guidelines.