Safety Became Decisive in China's Feminine Hygiene Market

Introduction#

On March 15, 2025, the CCTV 315 Consumer Rights Gala, an annual consumer rights programme on the state broadcaster, exposed a company that had acquired defective goods and production waste from sanitary pad and diaper manufacturers and repackaged them for sale. The social media response was the largest spike in discussion of feminine hygiene products in 20 months of data, with 1.325 million posts in March 2025, more than at the peak of the Double 11 shopping festival. We believe the more important outcome was structural, because a shift in consumer demand that was already under way happened much faster than it otherwise would have. Safety in China's feminine hygiene market has moved from a basic expectation to the main purchase criterion for a fast-growing group of consumers, who are choosing brands that can show it credibly.

Online sales of feminine hygiene pads in China grew 23.9% year on year to CN¥ 12.88 billion in January–August 2025. Within that growth, sales spread across a wider range of brands, while medical-grade and sterilization-grade products each passed CN¥ 1 billion in sales with triple-digit growth. The brands that gained in this period were set apart mainly by the credibility of their safety and ingredient credentials, and price played a smaller part.

What the CCTV 315 Incident Exposed#

The CCTV 315 exposé showed a company acquiring defective goods and production waste from sanitary pad and diaper manufacturers, then repackaging them for sale or recycling them into production without any disinfection, which broke the most basic expectation consumers have of a hygiene product used in intimate contact with the body. The nature of the violation made the reaction stronger, because consumers could not tell safe products from unsafe ones by inspecting them.

The social media data shows the scale of the loss of trust. The 1.325 million discussion posts of March 2025 on major social platforms exceeded the November 2024 Double 11 peak of 1.261 million posts, so the product safety scandal drew more consumer discussion than the year's largest e-commerce shopping event. It also passed the earlier peak of April 2024, 1.026 million posts, which had been driven by seasonal discussion of product choice.

Discussion fell back in the following months (April: 712,731 posts, May: 692,838, August: 605,056), but we do not read this as consumer concern returning to its level before the incident. Consumer awareness of product authenticity and safety credentials has stayed higher, as the continued growth of medical-grade product sales and the persistent rate of authenticity complaints in consumer feedback both show.

The Concern About Safety Was Already Building#

The 2025 CCTV 315 exposé did not create the concern about safety in China's feminine hygiene market, and market data shows that the concern was already building. Consumer feedback on a leading marketplace shows that authenticity carries an industry-average negative feedback rate of 18.3%, and that packaging integrity carries an average negative rate of 23.7%. Packaging rates are high for every major brand, which points to a supply chain problem shared by the whole industry.

These figures indicate that a meaningful share of consumers buying from established brands were already questioning product authenticity before the March 2025 broadcast. The 315 incident confirmed the concern at scale and gave consumers a clear account of a worry that had until then appeared only in scattered individual reviews.

For brand strategy, this means that the lack of trust in safety across China's feminine hygiene market is a question of product development and supply chain integrity as much as of crisis communications.

How Brands Responded to the Safety Shift#

The brand data shows two kinds of brand that gained in the feminine hygiene market after the 315 incident: brands that had built safety-first positioning before it, and brands that moved quickly to launch products with safety credentials soon after it.

Taotao Yangmian (淘淘氧棉) is an example of the first kind. Its brand identity is built on medical-grade sterilization credentials, a positioning that was niche before March 2025 and became mainstream immediately after, and it sells at an average order value well above the category average of CN¥ 32.4. We believe this premium shows that medical-grade credentials work as a point of differentiation that supports a higher price, beyond their role as a basic safety claim.

Fuyanjie (妇炎洁) is an example of the second kind. It connected its established gynecological care heritage to a new pad formulation, the Snow Lotus Core Nourishing Pad. The launch was timed to draw on consumers' existing trust in a gynecological health brand to answer the concern about hygiene, with a product positioned on traditional wellness ingredients. Snow lotus, along with mugwort and cranberry, has become a fast-growing functional ingredient in the feminine hygiene category. Each is marketed on a benefit that consumers can grasp quickly, such as the warmth that Traditional Chinese Medicine associates with mugwort, which suits a market where consumers are paying close attention to safety.

Pure Cotton Times (全棉时代) built its growth on medical-grade pure cotton positioning, which places it in the same safety-led part of the market.

Why Product Performance Alone Is No Longer Enough#

Consumer feedback suggests that good performance on fit, comfort and odour is not enough on its own when buyers are screening for safety credentials, particularly when that screening happens in live commerce and short-video content, where purchase decisions in the category are increasingly made. A brand's safety credentials need to be communicated actively in those formats if its product strengths are to count with buyers.

The Medical-Grade Market Opportunity#

Medical-grade and sterilization-grade feminine hygiene products are the fastest-growing segment of the market, and their growth, which began before the March 2025 broadcast, shows that these are mainstream demand categories.

Analysis of consumer demand on social media shows medical-grade discussion growing 80.5% YoY, the fastest-growing functional need, with heat dissipation up 67.0% YoY and skin-nourishing discussion up 51.3% YoY. The needs that used to lead discussion, breathability, anti-side-leak protection and softness on the skin, are all falling in relative discussion share (-11% to -23% YoY) as they become baseline expectations. The consumer demand data and the sales data point in the same direction, and we believe the focus of innovation has moved from functional basics to safety certification and ingredient provenance.

Panty liners are one specific result of this wider trend towards safety and wellness. They grew 64.9% YoY in January–August 2025, driven by rising consumer awareness of daily intimate hygiene. The growth parallels the adoption of panty liners in Vietnam's feminine hygiene market (+141% YoY), which suggests a similar pattern of adoption in markets at different stages of development.

Brand Response Strategies#

Reformulating products around verifiable safety credentials is necessary, but it has commercial effect only when it is communicated. Medical-grade certification, third-party ingredient testing and sterilization certification all give a verifiable basis for safety claims. These credentials need to be turned into consumer-facing content in live commerce and short video, which have become a major route to purchase in the category.

Ingredient storytelling in content-led commerce is the main way demand is generated for functional products. B5, cranberry, prebiotics, snow lotus and mugwort are functional concepts that have each passed CN¥ 1 billion in sales, and what they have in common is a specific consumer benefit that is easy to communicate. B5 (provitamin B5) is marketed on skin comfort, mugwort on the warming principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which gives it cultural resonance, and cranberry on a benefit that takes more explaining to consumers. Each suits the storytelling format of live commerce and short video.

Packaging integrity is an opportunity for differentiation that brands have so far used little. The high rate of negative feedback on packaging, which affects every major brand, points to a problem across the category that no brand has yet solved systematically. The first brand to introduce credibly tamper-evident, batch-traceable packaging at scale could turn a weakness shared by the industry into a competitive advantage, at a time when packaging authenticity is a main consumer concern.

Conclusion#

The CCTV 315 incident accelerated a shift in demand in China's feminine hygiene market that the data shows was already building in consumer feedback, ingredient innovation and social media discussion. Safety and ingredient credibility had been growing as purchase criteria well before March 2025, and the incident shortened the time it took for that shift to become commercially decisive.

By the second half of 2025, safety had become the price of entry in China's feminine hygiene market. We believe brands that treat medical-grade certification as a niche proposition, or that do not communicate their safety claims in live commerce and short video, will find it harder to compete as live commerce becomes a more important route to purchase in the category.

For the complete analysis of brands, channels and innovation trends across China's domestic hygiene market and Southeast Asia's cross-border opportunity, see the linked report below.