The New Rules of Desirability: Inside China’s She Economy

China accounts for about 62% of the world’s self-made women billionaires, according to the Hurun Global Rich List. At the same time, data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's 2023/2024 report shows that China is among the rare economies worldwide where women's startup rates match or exceed those of men, and it has a generation of university graduates that is now majority female. It is also a country where the government actively encourages women to marry earlier, have more children, and return to domestic life. The she economy lives in the tension between those two realities.

China's female consumer base controls an estimated $1.4 trillion in annual spending, according to Accenture research. They influence 70% of all household purchases and, in a shift that would have been culturally unimaginable a generation ago, now direct a majority of their personal spending toward their own needs rather than those of their families, according to a JD.com research.

The she economy did not emerge from a single city or a single demographic. Its most visible architects sit at the very top of global wealth rankings. Zhong Huijuan left a job as a chemistry teacher to found Hansoh Pharmaceutical in Jiangsu, building it into one of China's leading oncology and psychotropic drug companies; by mid-2025 she ranked first in Asia and third globally on Forbes' list of self-made women billionaires, with a fortune of approximately $19.7 billion. Wu Yajun arrived at entrepreneurship from a different direction: factory floor technician earning $16 a month, then property journalist, before co-founding Longfor Properties in Chongqing in 1993, a company that grew into one of China's largest real estate developers. Wang Laichun, chairwoman of Luxshare Precision Industry, spent years on Foxconn's assembly lines before building the company that now manufactures Apple's AirPods and rivals Foxconn across Apple's supply chain; the 2024 Fortune list ranked her the most powerful woman in business in Asia.

The geographic picture is equally important. A significant share of Chinese female internet users now live outside the traditional tier-one cities. Hangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Xi'an, Nanjing: these are not secondary markets. They are where consumption habits are being formed, where new platforms find their earliest adopters, and where brand loyalty, or its absence, is decided. A 32-year-old finance professional in Hangzhou and a 28-year-old designer in Chengdu may have similar purchasing power and entirely different ideas of what makes a product worth owning.