China Cracks Down on Cosmetic Medicine Advertising

BEIJING, November 2 (TMTPOST) — The State Administration for Market Regulation has released the Enforcement Guidelines for Cosmetic Medicine Advertising on Monday, providing clear rules on cosmetic surgery and medicine advertisements.

Source: Visual China

Nine types of advertising violations are mentioned in the guidelines, including fear marketing strategies to promote cosmetic surgeries, medicine, and other relevant products, equaling attractive physical features to qualities such as indiligence, good taste, and success while linking the lack of attractive physical appearance to being unintelligent, lazy or poor. The guidelines also stress that businesses should receive approval from relevant authorities before placing advertisements for cosmetic surgeries, medicine, and equipment. Using patients’ before-after photos for advertising purposes is also considered a violation, according to the guidelines.

Violations will be taken seriously, and strict measures will be taken accordingly, according to the guidelines.

China’s cosmetic medicine industry has been on a roller coaster this year. The State Administration for Market Regulation started to collect feedback on the Enforcement Guidelines for Cosmetic Medicine Advertising from the public on August 27, 2021, while China’s top player in this sector, Soyoung, announced just one day earlier that it achieved record-breaking revenues of RMB451.8 million in Q2 2021, registering a year-on-year increase of 37.7%. The cosmetic medicine industry is highly valued for its repurchase rate of over 90%.

The State Administration for Market Regulation publicized ten typical problematic behavior categories among cosmetic medicine businesses on October 25. The ten cases include false advertising of products, treatments, and doctors’ qualifications, business licenses, and artificially inflating sales records, etc. According to the administration, there were 71 cases of false advertising in the cosmetic medicine industry between January and September 2021 and the involved businesses were fined RMB3.55 million. Illegal cosmetic medicine entities, doctors without proper qualifications, and illegal products have been the three major issues plaguing the industry and harming Chinese consumers. It is reported that there are over 30,000 cosmetic medicine companies in China while there are less than 5,000 doctors who have received their cosmetic medicine doctor certificate.

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