A recent survey shows that in 2006, beauty consumption became the largest consumption item for women in cities, with every woman spending an average of 3,618 yuan on things related with beauty, which range from clothes, facial beauty and hairdos, to figure shaping.

The report, titled "2006 Chinese Women's Consumption Investigation and Statistics", was released Thursday by Huakun Female Consumer Center and Huakun Female Investigation Center, which had interviewed women in 20 cities across China to make it.

The report shows that young career women spend the most on beauty services and goods. Among all the 727 women interviewees who earn an average salary of 4,378 yuan a month, 80 percent have their hair permed, 72 percent have their hair dyed, and 65 percent do hair care regularly. In addition, 43 percent of the women wear make-up regularly and 32 percent go to beauty parlours regularly and spend an average of 354 yuan every month in beauty parlours. They spend 3,977 yuan every year on average on clothes, 1,761 yuan on shoes, and 1,276 yuan on bags. They spend 1,749 yuan to buy watches, 936 yuan on ordinary ornaments and 6,110 yuan on expensive ornaments.

The report also shows that 36.9 percent of women in the survey often use credit cards when buying things and 61.9 percent of the women have had credit cards. To them, credit cards have replaced cash to become the most important way of buying things.

(China News Service January 27, 2007)