It’s lunchtime and the line is huge. Not in front of the latest trendy restaurant in Shanghai, but in front of a clinic for “cosmetic medicine”, a less invasive alternative to surgery, which is gaining popularity in China.
Lasers, hyaluronic acid injections, “peels” … In the age of selfies, these faster and smoother techniques, which do not require going through an operating room, seduce a new generation of Chinese.
27-year-old Kayla Zhang has not yet planned to go through the scalpel. Instead, he has just allowed himself a laser treatment, with injections and had tension threads placed under the skin of his face that allow it to “retain” it.
“I am not going to change my nose or eyes. It would be an excessive change in my appearance,” explains the young woman to AFP, who claims to seek a “better version” of herself instead of a “totally new face.”
Popular in the West, these methods – less invasive and cheaper than cosmetic surgery – are becoming very affordable in Chinese metropolises as living standards rise.
According to the Chinese Association of Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery, the sector is expected to reach 300 billion yuan ($ 47.48 billion) this year, seven times more than in 2013.
Non-invasive techniques represent a very important segment of this trend, while surgery is losing steam, according to the US firm of consulting companies Frost & Sullivan.
– “Unrealistic beauty standards” –
But the authorities want to prevent the sector from developing in a chaotic way: they prohibit practices that contribute to “appearance anxiety” and physical complexes.
Specialty clinics cannot present “before and following” photos of an intervention or promote “unrealistic standards of beauty.”
In 2021, the authorities imposed tens of millions of dollars in fines for various infractions.
Li Li, a 27-year-old professional model, receives laser treatments every month to correct her skin blemishes. But he says he feels some social pressure to continually improve his image
After comments from friends regarding the features of his face, in not ideal proportions according to them, he had his chin “filled in”. “I was quick to do it,” he explains.
According to the British audit firm Deloitte, these interventions cost on average a third of the price of cosmetic surgery operations.
Specialist physician Yang Kaiyuan points out that 10 years ago, his clients used to come to show him a photo of a celebrity saying, “I want to look like this.”
“Today, people want mostly slight improvements in their appearance,” he explains.
– Non-conforming needles –
However, the increase in the number of unauthorized establishments worries the authorities.
In 2019, 15% of the 13,000 authorized beauty clinics worked outside their defined fields of activity, according to a report by the Shanghai cabinet iResearch. According to the same study, one in three needles in circulation was non-compliant.
In early 2021, an actress was featured in the press following posting images of her nose blackened by necrosis on social media following an operation that had gone wrong.
But for Ken Huang, president of the PhiSkin Clinic in Shanghai, such incidents do not diminish the popularity of cosmetic treatments among young Chinese who want to improve their appearance or increase their opportunities in the job market.
“Beautiful people will have more opportunities than others,” he says. “If you are not attractive on the outside, even if you have an interesting personality, people might not get a chance to see it.”
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