Skin Care - White magic

The whitening market in China has developed way beyond facial skin lightening and now extends as far as deodorants and wash-off products. How far can it go?

To be beautiful in China is to be fair skinned, and for cosmetics companies that’s an opportunity to tap the world’s largest emerging market for whitening creams. According to Chinese government figures, China’s beauty and cosmetics market was worth 42-46bn Yuan (US$5-5.5bn) last year and a third of that total was spent on whitening products.

Such is the demand for skin care products that cosmetics giants such as L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Procter & Gamble and the Japanese Shiseido Co are scrambling to target the Chinese market with cosmetics that cater to the Chinese compulsion for a white complexion. After L’Oréal’s 2004 sales almost doubled from 2003’s figure of 1.5bn Yuan (US$180m), the company set up a research and development centre in Shanghai solely to study Chinese skin and hair.

“Whitening creams are very important to the Chinese cosmetics market because Chinese people regard white skin as the most important criterion for beauty,” says Mr Li, a spokesman for the China Association Of Fragrance, Flavour and Cosmetics Industries (CAFFCI). “Overall, the Chinese cosmetics market will carry on growing at an annual rate of 10-15% over the next five years. But because the whitening products are so popular, we expect that market to grow at an even faster rate.”

Shiseido’s Aupres White, the company’s best selling whitening product in China, and Procter & Gamble’s Olay and SK-II lines are now established favourites in China. But the Chinese consumer’s seemingly insatiable demand for whiteners is such that many companies now add them to other cosmetic products. Suntan lotions, deodorants, bath gels and anti-wrinkle creams that contain whiteners can all be found on sale in China and all over Asia Pacific.

With China’s rapidly greying society - the country will have 400 million senior citizens, one quarter of the total population, by 2050 - products such as Olay’s Regenerist, an anti-wrinkle cream that also contains a whitener, are tipped to become best sellers. Bath gels and cleansing milks with whiteners are also expected to be growth markets in the future.

The ever increasing demand for cosmetics that has made China the second largest cosmetics market in Asia, after Japan, and the eighth largest in the world is being driven by the increasing purchasing power of the Chinese consumer. In particular, it is the residents of China’s booming eastern cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, who are leading the way. In 2000, just 2.4% of urban households in China had an income over 50,000 Yuan (US $6000), but by 2010 that’s expected to be 12.5%, according to Asia Demographics.

But the desire for fair skin is not a new phenomenon. Make-up may have been regarded as a bourgeois affectation during the Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when not even lipstick was available, but the Chinese have always treasured a white complexion. That’s mainly because it is associated with wealth. In pre-industrial China, the poor worked in fields under a blazing sun while the rich stayed inside and preserved their complexions. Today, TV and print adverts for cosmetics in China invariably feature a model with a perfect white complexion and, in the summer, Chinese women take to the streets with umbrellas to guard against the sun. It is during the summer that the demand for whiteners surges and there is no sign that the Chinese will change their view that white skin is the ideal. “It’s because of the skin colour of Chinese women,” points out Barney Zhao, the beauty editor of the popular Chinese women’s magazine i-Look. “Chinese women don’t look so great, or healthy, with a yellow skin colour.”

One early remedy for dark skin was to grind pearl from seashells and then swallow it. The advent of whitening creams has made life easier for Chinese women, but the safety of some of the products on sale in China is still an issue. In May 2002, two whitening creams on sale in Hong Kong were withdrawn after they were found to contain levels of mercury over 9000 times the recommended dose. There have been similar cases of unsafe mercury levels in whiteners manufactured elsewhere in China. That has helped drive consumers towards the more expensive foreign brands produced by the likes of L’Oréal, Shiseido and Procter & Gamble. Foreign firms and joint ventures with Chinese companies account for 80% of the Chinese cosmetics market.

“Chinese women prefer the whitening creams from Japan because they think Japanese women have a similar skin to them, so the creams are more focused to their needs and are more effective,” says Zhao. But what does the consumer think? “I’d rather spend my money on a big international brand that I know has passed lots of tests before it reaches the consumer,” said Fiona Wang, a 25 year-old civil servant browsing the cosmetics counters in a department store in central Beijing. “I don’t believe Chinese whitening creams are truly safe.” Wang laughs at the prospect of going without whitening products. “Every Chinese woman wants to have fair skin and so do I. A girl with fair skin looks prettier.”