Frost & Sullivan in collaboration with ZhiMei have officially released the '2025 Anti-aging Special White Paper on the Chinese Medical Beauty Industry | The Era of Hierarchical Anti-aging Approaches is Upon Us, Reshaping the Paradigm of Skin Health Management

This white paper is based on the professional research and comprehensive analysis of Frost & Sullivan. Driven by policy dividends, accelerated compliance, and consumption upgrading, the Chinese medical aesthetics industry is entering a new phase of 'strong regulation and quality improvement'. Institutions with medical qualifications, R&D capabilities, and chain operation experience will become the core force in industry integration, driving the industry towards standardized, normalized, and transparent development.

Meanwhile, non-surgical medical aesthetics services have been growing rapidly mainly due to their naturalness, safety, and quick recovery, which align with contemporary consumer preferences; technological progress has also promoted the widespread application of injection fillings and photoelectric projects.

Frost & Sullivan has found through research that there are significant differences in the cognitive and decision-making behaviors of different types of consumers towards anti-aging services. In addition, although there is a consensus within the medical community on segment-specific anti-aging, consumers generally lack awareness of the correct methods and there is a clear cognitive disalignment. In the future, the medical aesthetics industry should promote the coordinated construction of 'medical consensus - consumer awareness - business implementation', to drive anti-aging services towards specialization and systematization.

Shi Nannan, Consulting Manager, Frost & Sullivan Greater China

As the medical beauty industry gradually enters a stage of standardized development, regulatory authorities have successively introduced a number of policy measures to promote coordination from both the industrial supply and consumer demand perspectives. This dual-pronged regulatory approach not only safeguards the legitimate rights and interests of consumers but also promotes the sustainable development of industry-leading enterprises, forming a new cycle of healthy market development.

Since 2020, the state has introduced nine major special regulatory policies for medical aesthetics, covering access approval, market promotion, and credit supervision. By severely cracking down on illegal medical aesthetics practices, standardizing promotion and publicity, and strengthening credit supervision, the market has been effectively purified, consumer trust has been enhanced, and the industry's standardized development has been promoted. In summary, there are three main aspects:

●Hierarchical traceability: Dynamic supervision throughout the entire process

The policy promotes the construction of a grading and traceability system for medical beauty drugs and devices, achieving dynamic supervision throughout the entire production, circulation, and use process. An integrated governance mechanism of 'traceable origin + controllable system' is established.

●Standard innovation: accelerating the construction of a moat

Policies are accelerating the refinement of pharmaceutical and medical device classification rules, addressing the ambiguity in compliance boundaries; enterprises are accelerating their R&D and innovation window periods, building a competitive moat with technological barriers.

●Collaborative High Voltage: Full-dimensional Industry Supervision

The policy constructs an inter-departmental collaborative supervision framework to strengthen the governance of the medical beauty industry; departments such as drug supervision and market supervision take joint action to crack down on false advertising and unfair competition, clarifying the industry's compliance red lines.

The beauty service market in our country presents an obvious dual structure: on one hand, there are traditional beauty services mainly focused on daily care, and on the other hand, there are medical beauty services that include surgical and non-surgical procedures. The current medical beauty industry is in a stage of vigorous development, with significant potential for market penetration and broad prospects for future development. Traditional beauty services, due to their safety and ease of operation, have a wide acceptance in the consumer market. These services mainly improve skin quality through non-invasive methods such as topical skincare products and physical massage, meeting the basic needs of the public for daily care and immediate beautification, thus occupying an important position in beauty consumption. Medical beauty services have relatively high consumption thresholds and necessary recovery periods, but because they have significant and lasting effects, the continuous enrichment of 'light medical beauty' options and the provision of professional medical beauty solutions have gradually become an important choice for more and more modern consumers. In recent years, the scale of China's medical beauty market has continued to climb, with an average annual compound growth rate of about 10.0% in the past five years.

The industrial chain of the Chinese medical beauty market consists of upstream pharmaceutical and device manufacturers, midstream medical beauty service providers, and downstream consumer channels and end consumers. The upstream of the medical beauty industry is mainly composed of raw material and equipment manufacturers, with their license advantages and R&D and innovation capabilities constituting core competitive barriers. This segment has a high degree of industry concentration, with leading enterprises holding a dominant position, providing a solid foundation for midstream medical beauty services through technological innovation. The midstream mainly includes public hospitals and private medical beauty institutions, with private institutions as the main body of the industry, dominating the market share (private institutions account for nearly 85.0%). Among them, chain plastic surgery medical institutions ensure a high level of medical care through team management and achieve refined division of labor in medical beauty services. The downstream customer acquisition channels play a crucial role in promoting business growth and brand building, facilitating sales conversions through effective communication and interaction, thereby achieving continuous expansion and growth of business. At the same time, they help medical beauty institutions gain an in-depth understanding of consumer needs and shape brand images.

Based on the characteristics of the sample population for this survey, Frost & Sullivan has divided consumers into three main categories:

The first group is the anti-aging pioneers, who have experienced medical aesthetics services within the past year and have also used anti-aging-related medical aesthetics services. The second group is the anti-aging advanced users, who have experienced medical aesthetics services within the past year, and although they have not yet tried anti-aging-related medical aesthetics services, they intend to do so in the coming year.

The third category is the anti-aging new generation, who have not experienced medical aesthetics services in the past year but intend to do so in the coming year.

Although these three groups have different understandings of medical aesthetics services and different experiences in this field, their awareness of anti-aging shows highly consistent cognitive characteristics among the sample population. The advanced group who has not yet experienced anti-aging medical aesthetics services and the younger generation who have never had any experience with medical aesthetics all recognize the importance of anti-aging to a hundred percent, indicating that the awareness of anti-aging in medical aesthetics has become an important part of public image management concepts.

Consumers' preferences for anti-aging and beauty medical aesthetic projects exhibit a significant 'demand stratification migration' characteristic. This preference differentiation essentially reveals a common feature in the consumption of the medical aesthetic industry: beauty projects build foundational trust through lightweight experiences, while anti-aging relies on systematic concept upgrades to achieve deeper value exploration. Proponents of anti-aging currently tend towards beauty projects, which confirms that the cycle of anti-aging medical aesthetic projects is longer than that of beauty projects with a 'light medical aesthetics' attribute. It also reflects that beauty items with diverse and low recovery periods are more likely to form a 'skin care-like' consumption inertia due to their immediate effects. Advanced anti-aging consumers show higher interest, supporting the idea that early medical aesthetic experiences can alleviate their safety anxiety, and through effect verification, establish technical trust, making them willing to migrate towards higher-level anti-aging projects, achieving a consumption upgrade from 'local modification' to 'systematic anti-aging.' Although anti-aging and beauty medical aesthetic projects are generally popular among consumers, combined treatment accounts for less than 10.0% of interest among all three groups. This phenomenon reflects that consumer demand remains at the stage of 'single-point technology dependence,' not understanding the relevance of different skin layers, and lacking trust in the scientific logic of '1+1＞2.' The reasons behind this may stem from the market's early emphasis on the immediate effects of single medical aesthetic treatments, leading to cognitive biases among consumers, or from the current lack of professionalism and precision in the design of combined treatment plans by medical aesthetic institutions, failing to successfully educate and attract consumers.

When choosing anti-aging medical aesthetics services, more consumers opt for high-frequency epidermal repair and regular device-based anti-aging treatments. This reflects the industry's internal competition dominated by single services, lacking multi-layered linkage and scientific systematic anti-aging solutions. From the perspective of consumer acceptance of medical aesthetics services, even consumers with experience in medical aesthetics still mistakenly believe that anti-aging only requires periodic single services, rather than multiple services linked in multiple layers.

From the research results, it can be found that consumers mostly have an inherent cognitive bias against anti-aging and a lack of understanding of aging patterns. This is why nearly 60.0% of consumers believe that there is no significant improvement in their appearance after receiving anti-aging medical aesthetics services. This indicates that the anti-aging medical aesthetics service market is still in a stage where 'technology exceeds market education';This cognitive and practical gap reveals structural growth opportunities for the industry in the future. With the deepening research on skin aging mechanisms and the upgrading of consumers' demand for systematic service plans, full-layer combined treatments with cyclical management nature of systematic anti-aging medical aesthetics services will evolve into core therapies.

Human facial aging has been widely recognized by the medical community as a dynamic evolution and cumulative change in multi-level tissue structures. The mechanism ultimately acts synergistically on the skin surface, forming visible signs of aging such as wrinkles and laxity. Medical anti-aging awareness has entered an era of layered combat, with the industry moving from superficial repairs towards deeper reconstruction to achieve 'layered visualization and treatment' from assessment to intervention. By providing personalized diagnosis and treatment plans, the targeting nature of anti-aging interventions can be enhanced, along with long-term effect maintenance.

The human facial structure is divided into six major structural layers, and the causes and external manifestation states of aging at each level are outlined. It is evident that even if similar aging features appear on the face, they may result from aging changes at different levels. If current medical aesthetic services are categorized according to the existing structural levels, it can be seen that the overall services exhibit single-level intervention characteristics. However, facial aging is actually a multi-dimensional synchronous degeneration involving weakened epidermal barrier, loss of dermal collagen, fat atrophy, fascia relaxation, muscle tension imbalance, and periosteal collapse. A single project cannot cover the full layer of repair, which will lead to an imbalance where local temporary improvement in facial aging coexists with deep-seated continuous deterioration.

There is a gap between anti-aging cognition and medical consensus as well as consumer practice. Firstly, there are significant differences in consumer expectations, which do not align with the actual medical practice cycle; secondly, there are cognitive differences, as consumers do not yet understand the underlying logic of anti-aging, which requires layered long-term treatment; finally, there is an increased safety risk. When consumers overly rely on a single medical aesthetic service, it can lead to an increase in future medical aesthetic treatment risks. Only systematic solutions can effectively and safely combat aging.

Looking ahead, in this era of improving the quality of medical aesthetics services, with the rapid development of technology, stratified anti-aging will become the mainstream new paradigm for skin health management in the future, bringing new growth opportunities to the medical aesthetics industry.