While the surge in sales of smart wearables, nutritional supplements and organic food made headlines during the just concluded Spring Festival holiday, economists and policy researchers view this trend as far more than a seasonal retail spike.

They said, this shift represents a profound structural evolution — moving away from reactive healthcare toward preventative wellness — that is redefining China's human capital and urban productivity.

The emergence during the holiday of health-related, green and smart products as the retail sector's "new three items" signals a fundamental change in how Chinese people allocate their wealth.

Jiang Zhao, an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, points out that this emergence marks the coming-of-age of quality-driven consumption growth in China.

"Health consumption has evolved from a niche necessity to a mass-market, high-frequency demand," Jiang said. "We are witnessing a profound transition from passive medical treatment to proactive health management."

Jiang noted a transformation in the very nature of consumer purchases. "Health consumption is upgrading from mere physical goods to a fusion of products and services," he said. "People are no longer just buying a device; they are investing in continuous, integrated health management solutions."

Looking ahead, Jiang noted that the sector presents a sustained trajectory of compounding growth, where hardware sales will increasingly integrate with data and personalized services, permeating everyday scenarios from homes to offices and everything in between.

If consumption is the primary engine of economic growth, health-related spending serves as one of its most high-performance fuels. Shi Mingming, an associate professor at the business school of Renmin University of China, noted that health consumption is fundamentally an investment in human capital.

Shi said that by shifting the focus from simply "curing illnesses" to "improving the quality of life", health consumption enables workers to participate in economic production with better physical and mental states.

Crucially, this demand is forcing innovations on the supply side."The pursuit of high-quality health products is creating new economic growth poles across multiple sectors," Shi explained."In agriculture, the massive appetite for organic and additive-free foods is pushing enterprises toward ecological and smart farming. In manufacturing, the demand for sophisticated health devices incentivizes companies to adopt new materials and processes, thereby upgrading the entire industrial chain."

To sustain this momentum, Shi emphasized the need for a multilevel market. This includes expanding the "silver economy" for the elderly while guiding younger generations toward fashionable, health-oriented lifestyles."We must coordinate both the supply and demand sides," Shi said. "Enhancing the supply of high-quality health products while creating a regulated, transparent market environment."

The ripple effects of the wellness boom are also transforming how Chinese cities are developed and governed. For a long time, healthcare was primarily viewed through a "cost perspective" — a burden on public funds. However, the rise of proactive health consumption is shifting this narrative.

Li Dong, a senior researcher at the institute for sustainable urbanization at Tsinghua University, observed that health consumption has become a "new engine" for urban development.

"Investing in preventative health yields massive social returns, significantly lowering the overall societal burden of disease while building a reservoir of high-quality human capital for cities," Li said.

Li's research shows that leading cities are tapping into this by pioneering "scene-based innovations". A prime example is the "ice and snow economy" in South China. Cities like Guangdong province's Guangzhou and Shenzhen have used indoor ski facilities to break geographical limits, turning "cold resources" into "hot economies" and proving that health demand can be "created out of thin air" through commercial innovation.

Furthermore, digitalization is bridging the gap in healthcare accessibility. AI-assisted diagnostics, wearable monitoring devices and remote health platforms are allowing top-tier medical resources from metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai to reach remote regions like Xizang autonomous region and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. This technological leap not only democratizes health services, but also cultivates new quality productive forces within the healthcare sector, Li said.

This bottom-up market surge is being met with a top-down policy push. Driven by the Healthy China 2030 strategy and targeted action plans to boost health-related consumption, the country is actively enhancing the supply of high-quality health products and services to meet people's expanding needs in their pursuit of a better life.

China's per capita spending on health care stood at 2,547 yuan ($368) in 2024, accounting for 9 percent of the country's total per capita consumption expenditure, official data show.

"Health is the '1' before all the other '0's — without it, everything else is meaningless," Li said. By vitalizing health consumption, China is not merely stimulating short-term economic growth; it is fundamentally safeguarding its most valuable asset: people.

Ultimately, as prevention, nutrition and digital health become deeply embedded in the social fabric, health consumption is proving to be much more than a retail trend. It is a strategic pillar driving domestic demand, industrial modernization and high-quality development.