China's USD 11.9B Pet Economy: How Babies Became Pets in 24 Months

Executive Summary#

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China's pet e-commerce category, measured across mainstream e-commerce platforms, reached USD 11.9 billion in 2025, a gain of 17.5% YoY. Consumer conversation moved from baby and maternity content to pet content faster than in any adjacent consumer category in China. Across nine quarters of social listening, the ratio of pet posts to baby posts moved from 1.13× to 3.00×. Several established Chinese FMCG groups are moving strategic investment into pet subsidiaries. With per-pet annual spend at USD 95 in China against USD 961 in the United States, we believe premiumisation alone leaves the category more than a decade of room to grow.

A Category at Inflection#

China's pet category has reached a turning point. E-commerce sales across mainstream platforms reached USD 11.9 billion in 2025, up from USD 10.35 billion in 2024, a gain of 17.5% YoY that is faster than nearly every adjacent consumer category in China over the same period. The composition behind the total is as important as the total itself: pet food now accounts for 45.7% of category sales and pet supplies for 43.1%, while healthcare and accessories are the fastest-growing segments and carry higher margins.

The average price of pet food rose from CN¥ 61 in 2024 to CN¥ 91 in 2025, an increase of 49% that we believe reflects consumers deliberately trading up more than general inflation. The entry tier drove sales in 2024, and in 2025 consumers moved up to the mid-tier, where domestic brands priced at CN¥ 50-150 took the largest share of new sales, while premium imported brands held their share at higher prices. The pattern resembles the premiumisation cycles that beauty and infant formula went through in China.

Pet food and supplies dominate, with healthcare emerging

*Source: Moojing Market Intelligence*

The Conversation Reallocation#

The most important finding in this report is the change over several quarters in the share of conversation about pets compared with baby and maternity topics. Across social listening on several platforms, the ratio of pet posts to baby posts grew from 1.13× in 2024-Q1 to 3.00× in 2026-Q1. That shows consumer attention has moved between two of the consumer categories in which Chinese consumers are most emotionally invested. The ratio rose in each successive quarter with one exception, 2025-Q1 at 1.16×, which we attribute to the timing of Spring Festival, and that consistency makes it unlikely that the trend is a seasonal effect in any single quarter.

The most reliable measure sits in the period from 2024-Q4 to 2025-Q4, when the ratio moved from 1.44× to 1.62×, an increase of 12.5% across the most comparable like-for-like period. The jump to 3.00× in 2026-Q1 includes both a real shift in attention and a partial methodology effect from changes in the baby keyword set, which the report discloses. The direction is clear in either case. The cultural framing of pets as 毛孩子 (furry children) and of 它经济 (the it-economy) has turned what was once a discretionary purchase into a central part of household identity for the post-1995 and post-2000 generations who are most active on social media.

The wider context is well known. China's birth rate has eased for nine consecutive years, and Goldman Sachs projects that urban pets will outnumber young children two-to-one by 2030, a threshold already passed in major tier-1 cities. For brand and investment teams that have historically given their emerging-market growth budgets to baby and infant care, this trend is a reason to review how their portfolios are allocated. The cultural conditions that built China's modern baby category over two decades (emotional investment, premium positioning, gift-giving and anxiety across generations) are now showing themselves in the pet category, which is growing at a considerably higher rate.

The Corporate Signal#

Ten established Chinese FMCG groups launched or acquired pet subsidiaries between 2017 and 2024. We believe this is a deliberate rebalancing of their portfolios by some of the most established consumer-goods companies in China, more than an opportunistic move into a neighbouring category.

Want Want has built a pet snack line and Mengniu a pet line alongside its dairy business, while Tongwei's pet subsidiary is a natural extension of its animal-feed business. Wahaha, Junlebao and Feihe have also launched pet subsidiaries in recent years.

The importance of the pattern is that it turns the shift in consumer conversation into a capital-allocation signal at board level. The same parent groups that built China's modern infant formula, dairy and snack categories are now directing strategic investment into pet sub-brands and setting out that move in their 2025 results. For investors, we believe this means that pet sub-brands inside FMCG portfolios should be valued on growth multiples, separately from the parent group.

The Runway#

China's per-pet annual spend reached USD 95 in 2025, up from USD 83 in 2024, but this is still only one-tenth of the USD 961 spent per pet in the United States. The gap between China and the US is the clearest way to describe the opportunity in China's pet category. The category is large enough to matter strategically and is growing fast enough to shorten the timelines, while spend per pet remains well below that of mature markets.

The two markets are growing at comparable rates, China at 17.5% YoY in value and the United States at 19.7%, on bases roughly twelve times apart, and that combination leaves considerable room for premiumisation. Each of the gaps in per-pet spend can close, and each is closing, as healthcare, services and accessories in China are growing at rates that imply convergence on the per-pet spend benchmark over a five-to-seven-year window. Even with no growth in the pet population, we believe premiumisation alone could raise per-pet spend considerably over that window, with US levels of spend as the long-term ceiling.

Domestic Chinese brands hold an estimated 65-70% of the category, the opposite of the US, where domestic brands hold roughly 5-8% for brands that have not been acquired. Domestic brands have established themselves in the value tier and the mid-tier, and the next area of competition is the premium band at CN¥ 150-400. Domestic brands held less than 1% of sales there in 2020-2021 and have gained ground since. This five-year progress follows the path that domestic brands took in beauty and dairy through their own premiumisation cycles.

Key Takeaways#

• China's pet e-commerce category, measured across mainstream platforms, reached USD 11.9 billion in 2025, a gain of 17.5% YoY from USD 10.35 billion in 2024.
• The ratio of pet to baby conversation grew from 1.13× to 3.00× across nine quarters, and the most reliable comparison, 2024-Q4 to 2025-Q4, moved from 1.44× to 1.62×.
• The average selling price of pet food rose from CN¥ 61 in 2024 to CN¥ 91 in 2025, an increase of 49% that we believe comes mainly from consumers trading up to the mid-tier.
• Ten established Chinese FMCG groups have launched or acquired pet subsidiaries and are directing strategic investment into them.
• China's per-pet annual spend of USD 95 is one-tenth of the USD 961 spent in the US, which we believe leaves more than a decade of room for premiumisation before any growth in the pet population.

About the Data#

This analysis draws on Moojing Market Intelligence proprietary research across mainstream e-commerce and social listening platforms, covering a nine-quarter window from 2024-Q1 to 2026-Q1. Category sizing is aggregated across mainstream e-commerce platforms; cross-vertical conversation analysis applies a category CID for pet content and a keyword set (母婴 * 婴儿奶粉 * 纸尿裤 / 宝宝) for baby and maternity content, with full methodology caveats disclosed in the source whitepaper. Per-pet spend comparisons set China data against a United States benchmark.