China Disposable Hygiene H2 2025: Medical-Grade Safety Shift

Introduction#

China's disposable hygiene products market is being reshaped by two structural forces at the same time. Content-led commerce, built on live streaming and short video, has become a major route to purchase for feminine hygiene pads, and a single product safety exposé on the CCTV 315 Consumer Rights Gala led to 1.325 million social media posts in one month and pushed sales of medical-grade products to triple-digit growth rates. The brands gaining most in this environment are challenger brands built around ingredient credibility and live-commerce distribution.

China's domestic online disposable hygiene market reached CN¥ 36.1 billion in January–August 2025, up 10.7% YoY. Volume grew 16.8% YoY to 780 million units while average order value (AOV) fell 9.1% YoY to CN¥ 46.0, so the market is growing on units while prices fall. Brands without a differentiated position to justify premium pricing face pressure to compete ever harder on promotions, while for brands that have invested in product innovation and safety credentials the same conditions create a growing market at premiums they can defend.

Beyond China's domestic market, Chinese hygiene brands' overseas sales are growing more than three times as fast as domestic sales, and Southeast Asia is their second-largest regional market after North America.

Key Finding 1: Content-Led Commerce Reshapes How Pads Are Bought#

The rise of content-led commerce is one of the most important structural developments in China's feminine hygiene pad market in H2 2025, and the reasons are specific to the category. Purchase decisions in feminine hygiene depend heavily on explanation of ingredients, safety certification and materials. Live commerce, with product demonstrations and endorsements from content creators, suits this kind of considered purchase well. We believe brands that can tell a convincing ingredient or safety story in video will turn viewers into buyers in ways that static product listings find hard to match.

Key Finding 2: The Shift to Medical-Grade Safety#

The 2025 CCTV 315 Consumer Rights Gala exposé of a refurbished sanitary pad manufacturer caused a crisis of consumer trust that became the most significant demand-side catalyst in the category's recent history. Social media discussion on major social platforms peaked at 1.325 million posts in March 2025, the highest reading in 20 months of data, above even the November 2024 Double 11 shopping peak of 1.261 million posts.

The discussion subsided in the following months, and the exposé's lasting effect on the market was the shift in consumer demand that it brought into focus. Medical-grade and sterilization-grade feminine hygiene products both passed CN¥ 1 billion in sales with YoY growth above 100%, which reflects consumer demand that existed before the incident and was greatly accelerated by it.

Challenger brands responded fastest. Taotao Yangmian (淘淘氧棉) built its whole positioning on medical-grade sterilization, and Fuyanjie (妇炎洁) launched its Snow Lotus Core Nourishing Pad, a product that connects the brand's gynecological care heritage with a functional pad formulation. We believe these brands are part of a wider repositioning of the category around safety and ingredient provenance as the main criteria in consumer decisions.

Consumer feedback data from a leading marketplace supports this reading. Authenticity concerns carry an industry-average negative feedback rate of 18.3%, and packaging integrity carries an average negative rate of 23.7%. These rates indicate that consumers across the category recognised the conditions exposed by the 315 incident, and that the concern was not limited to one manufacturer.

Key Finding 3: Feminine Hygiene Spreads Across More Brands While Baby Diapers Concentrate#

Sales in China's feminine hygiene pad market spread across a wider range of brands in January–August 2025, while the category grew 23.9% YoY to CN¥ 12.88 billion, as consumers tried newer brands offering ingredient innovation.

Baby diapers moved the other way, with sales concentrating further among established brands, which build on brand loyalty and premiumisation. The baby diaper category's AOV rose 8.5% YoY to CN¥ 61.0, the highest of the three hygiene categories. We believe the difference between the two categories reflects their purchase criteria. Parents buying baby diapers put established brand trust and safety pedigree first, while feminine hygiene consumers are actively experimenting with newer brands that offer ingredient innovation.

Adult diapers show a third pattern, with volume down 22.5% YoY and AOV down 12.6%. At CN¥ 554 million, only 1.5% of the CN¥ 36.1 billion domestic hygiene market, adult diapers are far less developed than China's ageing population would suggest. We believe the category needs investment in consumer education to build demand that is so far largely untapped.

Key Finding 4: International Expansion and the Southeast Asia Opportunity#

Chinese hygiene brands' overseas sales reached CN¥ 13.13 billion in January–August 2025, up 34.4% YoY, more than three times the domestic growth rate. North America remains the largest overseas market at CN¥ 5.73 billion (+35.2% YoY), and Southeast Asia is second at CN¥ 4.13 billion (+35.3% YoY), ahead of Europe at CN¥ 2.42 billion (+42.9% YoY).

Online disposable hygiene sales on leading marketplaces in Southeast Asia reached CN¥ 3.58 billion in January–July 2025, and Vietnam stood out, up 70.2% YoY to CN¥ 858 million. Indonesia, at CN¥ 865 million and up 34.4% YoY, was the region's largest market by sales, and the Philippines followed at CN¥ 617 million (+35.0% YoY).

The Chinese brand MAKUKU shows what a successful entry into Southeast Asia can look like. In Indonesia's online baby diaper market, where it competes with Unicharm's Mamypoko, Kimberly-Clark's Sweety and Kao's Merries, MAKUKU uses a diversified strategy of four product series and active social media marketing on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. We believe this approach, a range of products aimed at several price points combined with content-led digital marketing, can be repeated by other Chinese brands.

The conditions for this expansion are also improving. The number of overseas warehouses in Southeast Asia tripled from 43 to 136 between 2020 and 2022, which removes a last-mile disadvantage that used to limit cross-border competitiveness.

Market Implications#

Three priorities follow for brands operating in or entering China's disposable hygiene market.

First, live commerce capability has become essential for any brand that wants to grow in feminine hygiene. The content-led format suits the ingredient and safety storytelling that drives purchase decisions in this category, and we believe brands that invest in partnerships with content creators, live streaming operations and short-video content are best placed to share in the category's growth.

Second, safety and ingredient credentials are now the price of entry. The high negative feedback rates on authenticity and packaging point to a lack of trust that brands can turn into a competitive advantage through tamper-evident packaging, third-party certification and transparent ingredient sourcing.

Third, we believe the opportunity in Southeast Asia is open and may narrow over time. Vietnam and the Philippines are markets where category penetration is low, e-commerce infrastructure is maturing and Chinese brands are still at an early stage of entry. MAKUKU's experience shows that the approach can work. We believe the brands that build distribution and brand recognition in these markets over the next two to three years will gain an advantage that grows as these markets approach the scale of more mature Southeast Asian markets.

Conclusion#

We believe the brands that do best will be those that have committed to live commerce operations, invested in product formulation around safety and functional ingredients, and moved early to build positions in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines before these markets mature. Brands whose models were built on mass media and traditional retail will need to adapt them.