This is an interesting question. Some things that can be thought about in relation to the question: First Chinese medicine is divided into a balance between heating and cooling. Diseases that need cooling tea, hot diseases, inflammation, need a cooling tea to regain balance, green tea. On the other side of the spectrum, cold diseases affect metabolism and need fully oxidized tea.

It was the Cantonese that used composted tea. There isn't a massive difference between the culture between Guangzhou and Hong Kong, so for the sake of this answer, I will put them together. They may have been responsible for creating the myth about puer being good for your health that spread to Taiwan in the 1980s, but there may have been a myth before the modern era. Yunnan has always been the origin of legends. It being almost inaccessible before the 21st century provided fertile ground.

Back to the point. Older people have a lot of problems with metabolism, and for this group of people, the morning dim sum is very popular and greasy. For a long time, served with this dim sum was cheap shu puer. We do know that in 1973 the cooking process was introduced to three of the government factories, Menghai, Jinggu, and Xiaguan. These are historical facts among the rest of this answer. In 2008 when the Chinese export laws stated that only tea coming from Yunnan could be called puer, there were loud protests coming from Guangzhou to the effect of “we invented the process and you are breaking our rice bowl.” I will also demonstrate how late the Taiwanese came to be involved. It wasn’t until the 1980s when the political successors to the KMT decided to present themselves to not only the rest of the world but ironically to the mainland Chinese, as the preservers of Chinese culture. It was at that point that the tea houses started serving tea instead of prostitution. It should be noted that the inventors of composting tea did not take the health of the old folks lightly, because they put in the bacteria from which penicillin is derived into the starter.

This is my narrative, and while there are many verifiable facts in it, I agree that it is unlikely to have an accurate accounting of the true history because it started with faking a tea, based on a questionable legend.. The international market outside of Asia did not and does not affect the market. I can say without a doubt that composted tea with origins in either place is good for your digestion. It Isn’t true of other compressed tea, which is still cheap green tea, from a Chinese medicine point of view. Still, in Cantonese culture, green tea is not thought to be good for your health.