China's CN¥ 383.2B Proactive Health Economy: From Treatment to Precision Prevention

Executive Summary#

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China's online health and wellness market reached CN¥ 383.2 billion in 2025, up 15% year on year, as the category's centre of gravity moved from treatment to prevention and from general supplementation to precision nutrition. Online dietary supplements reached CN¥ 124.5 billion (+19.9% YoY) and online functional food and beverage reached CN¥ 78.8 billion (+11.1% YoY), together CN¥ 203.3 billion and more than half the market. Buying supplements was the most common health habit among wellness shoppers in 2025, at 75.6%, and the buyer base broadened across gender, age and city tier. Policy is also widening the category's room to grow, from Healthy China 2030 to a medicine-food homology catalogue that had grown to 106 substances by 2024. For brand and investment teams, this means that value is moving toward ingredients with a specific mechanism, formats built around a use occasion and claims backed by credentials.

A Market Reallocating From Treatment to Prevention#

Dietary supplements, the largest category, kept growing into 2026, with sales of CN¥ 34.9 billion in Q1 2026 (+15.7%). Prescription medicine grew faster, by 34.0% to CN¥ 42.8 billion in 2025, but from a much smaller base.

Supplements and functional F&B anchor the prevention layer

*Source: Moojing Market Intelligence*

The Proactive-Health Behaviour Map#

Wellness shoppers lean on prevention far more than on medical care. Ranked by share of wellness shoppers, buying health supplements leads at 75.6%, ahead of fitness exercise (61.0%), diet-based wellness (59.8%), self-managed sleep (55.0%), and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapy (42.2%). Wearable health devices (31.8%) and functional F&B purchases (29.4%) follow, while medical visits sit far lower at 19.3%, which suggests that many consumers act before symptoms appear.

What people buy maps directly onto what they worry about. Top health concerns over the last 12 months span body-image (46%), memory (43.4%), emotional wellbeing (42.2%), immunity (41.9%), neck-shoulder-back comfort (39%), sleep quality (38.7%), vision (38%), and hair (34.4%). Each concern has a segment of products made for it.

The Buyer Base Is Broadening From Both Ends#

The proactive-health consumer is widening across every demographic axis. Health engagement is becoming more gender-balanced: male participation reached 46.8% in 2025, up from 39.4% in 2024, as men move from passive to active health management. Consumers aged 31-35 remain the core cohort at 19.2% of buyers, with younger groups gaining influence as Gen Z adopts health routines early and favours convenient, snack-like formats.

The base also expands from the senior end. China's national census counted more than 260 million residents aged 60 and over, and they lift demand for joint, brain and heart care, anchoring the category in durable, recurring need. Geographically, demand concentrates in higher-tier cities: Tier-1 (44.0%), New Tier-1 (22.9%) and Tier-2 (14.0%) cities together account for roughly 81% of buyers.

Policy Widens the Runway#

China's prevention shift is reinforced by a coordinated policy backdrop. Healthy China 2030 and the 14th Five-Year Health Plan set prevention-first national goals, while a 2025 government plan to boost health-related consumption promises to improve the market supply of special foods. For product developers, the most consequential change is to the medicine-food homology catalogue, China's official list of items that are both food and medicinal materials, which had grown to 106 items by 2024. Each addition widens the legal raw-material base and brings traditional Chinese wellness ingredients into mainstream formulation. Alongside this, sales of "Blue Hat" products, which carry the blue mark of a state-registered health food, grew 21.8% across 2025 and Q1 2026 to roughly CN¥ 20 billion, a sign that regulatory backing helps products sell at a premium.

Three Findings That Hold Across the Report#

First, prevention became the mainstream consumer habit in 2025, with the buyer base widening among men, Gen Z and the over-60s at once.

Second, specialisation is where the growth is reallocating. Supplements moved from general to targeted: sleep, brain health, and anemia are the emerging high-growth segments, while large established segments such as immunity, bone, protein and oral beauty sustain sales through product upgrades. Ingredient value depends more on the biological mechanism and the use occasion than on novelty.

Third, credibility and format innovation unlock the next demand layer. Doctor-endorsed and certified products convert at a premium, and novel delivery forms such as freeze-dried rapid-dissolve tablets, oral films and sprays post triple-digit growth.

About the Data#

This analysis draws on Moojing Market Intelligence proprietary research across mainstream e-commerce and social listening platforms, covering 2025 full-year online consumer purchasing with partial Q1 2026 data across China's health and wellness categories. Category sizing aggregates mainstream e-commerce platforms. Full methodology caveats are disclosed in the report.