China’s Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has passed new regulations, effectively banning brands from marketing their beauty products as ‘medical’, ie. claiming they have medical benefits for the users.
These regulations aim to stop the prevalent misleading practice in China and ensure alignment with the international FDA standards, Jing Daily writes.
After the new regulations were passed, China’s e-commerce site Taobao, owned by Alibaba, has issued a warning to sellers that searches for “medical cosmetics” would be blocked on the website. Other Chinese e-commerce sites have also blocked similar searches.
Medical cosmetics industry in China was worth $9.7 bn in 2017, up from $3.4 billion in 2013, and these regulatory changes will greatly impact this industry. The new laws will bring the market in line with other countries and will put pressure on brands to ensure translations of language and terminology are correct and keeping with the guidelines.
