China's "beauty economy" explosive growth New media: Young people pay more attention to their appearance

Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao website published a report by reporters Yang Danxu and Zhu Menghan on July 18 entitled "The Explosive Growth of the Yan Value Economy in China". An excerpt from the article follows:

In a plastic surgery hospital in Nanjing, Zhu Kexin, a 22-year-old college student who had just done a complete face line carving, used two white ice packs that covered her entire face to cover her face.

Thread carving is a micro-shaping technique that increases skin firmness by implanting collagen threads, a medical beauty program aimed at anti-aging, which is now also used by young Chinese people to reshape their faces.

Zhu Kexin, who is not satisfied with his "baby fat", said that the current social aesthetic is biased towards thin and pointed faces, and "there are too many good-looking people, and they always feel imperfect when they look at themselves."

The rise of consumerism, coupled with the promotion of the Internet industry, around cosmetics, medical beauty, fitness, beauty photography, fashion clothing and other aspects to enhance personal appearance of the face economy experienced explosive growth in China, has become a new pursuit of Chinese young people.

One of the most intuitive manifestations is the rapid growth of cosmetic sales. According to the retail sales data of social consumer goods released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China on the 15th, the total retail sales of cosmetics in China increased by 22.5% year-on-year, and the growth rate ranked first among all types of goods, which is enough to reflect the huge potential of the beauty economy in China.

Medical beauty, which was previously tried by only a few people, has also become a more popular consumer in China.

According to a report released by consulting firm Frost Sullivan, the total revenue of China's medical aesthetic services industry reached 121.7 billion yuan in 2018, with an average annual compound growth rate of 23.6% from 2014 to 2018. It is expected that the total revenue of the industry will reach 360.1 billion yuan in 2023.

In addition, consumers of China's beauty economy are not limited to women. According to the face value economic report released by Tmall, a well-known e-commerce platform in China, the year-on-year growth rate of men's special brands in 2018 reached 56%, and the sales of men's makeup increased by 89% year-on-year.

Hong Weiping, a professor in the Department of Marketing at the School of Management of Fudan University, pointed out that Chinese "millennials" who grew up in the social media environment have a strong sense of self, care about the outside world's views and evaluations of themselves, tend to show positive things and images, and pay more attention to their own appearance, which has become an important foundation for the development of the yan value economy.

However, Zhao Ping, director of the International Trade Research Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Research Institute, believes that the Internet is only a means to promote the development of the Yan value economy, and the rise of the Yan Value economy is fundamentally because of the changes in China's economic level and social culture, so that Chinese's pursuit of beauty is no longer implicit.