China's medical cosmetology market has seen rapid development as more people are willing to go under the knife to improve their looks, including those from smaller cities and even rural areas.

Chen Shanshan, a white-collar worker in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, saw a notably increased level of acceptance of medical cosmetology among young people in small townships when she returned to her hometown in the rural area of central China's Henan province during the Spring Festival holiday.

Chen's cousin, whom she hadn't seen for two years, had received intradermal injections and Botox injections at a private cosmetic studio at the county seat, in order to improve her facial skin. Chen also found that plastic surgery were no longer something only urban or rich people could afford.

Public hospitals in northwest China’s Gansu province have been conducting an increasing number of plastic surgeries in recent years. The Second Provincial People's Hospital of Gansu performs over 40 plastic surgeries every month.

Wang Yongxiang, who was previously a doctor specializing in treating burns, has become the chief plastic surgeon of the hospital. “Before, we doctors from public hospitals considered plastic surgery to be sidelined," Wang recalled.

He said that in the past, aesthetic medicine-related academic conferences held in bigger cities, such as Beijing, saw few attendants, but nowadays it is possible to see them attended by more than 1,000 industry insiders.

Men seeking to improve their looks have also been making up an increasing proportion of China's medical cosmetology market in recent years.

During the "Double 11" online shopping festival in November 2020, the number of aesthetic medicine-related orders rose seven times from the same period the previous year, with about 30 percent of them coming from male customers, according to statistics from Tmall, Chinese internet giant Alibaba's online marketplace.

A report on the consumption behavior of Chinese white-collar workers indicated that 72.73 percent of men had undergone facial treatment, while 58.8 percent of them had received plastic surgeries such as intradermal injections and Thermage, a technology that uses heating and cooling to tighten the skin and reduce wrinkles.

Medical beauty consumption has also reached both ends of the age spectrum. Middle school students generally choose to get nose jobs or double eyelid surgery, while the elderly often opt for skin resurfacing or spot-fading surgeries, said Wang Wenjun, an official with the health commission in Gansu.

Despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, 5,150 new cosmetic surgery clinics were established in China last year, with a total value of 197.5 billion yuan ($30.39 billion), 17 percent of the global total.

Many Chinese cities are now looking to aesthetic medicine as a driving force for economic growth. Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan province, looks to reap revenues of 100 billion yuan from its medical cosmetology sector by 2025 and 200 billion yuan by the end of 2030.