China is enforcing stricter cosmetic safety and risk regulations this year as part of a phased approach towards market standardization, and it's a move set to shake up business significantly, said an expert.

China's beauty market had already faced “growing pains” in the wake of the Cosmetic Supervision and Administration Regulation (CSAR), issued on January 1, 2021, as “the first comprehensive and systematic overarching law in the Chinese cosmetics industry in over 30 years,” said Chris Wang, Senior Regulatory Affairs Researcher and Head of Operations at China-based cosmetic compliance firm ZMUni Compliance Centre. 

Since then, more than 200 supporting regulations and policies had been introduced to address areas like ingredient submission codes, efficacy claims, and on-pack labeling, Wang said, including the Technical Guidelines for Cosmetic Safety Assessment, Standards for Cosmetic Efficacy Claim Evaluation, and Provisions for Supervision and Administration of Manufacturing and Marketing of Cosmetics. Regulatory authorities had also clamped down, with inspections, emergency controls, and violation penalties sharply focused on ingredient safety, labeling and advertising, microbial and hygiene standards, good manufacturing practices, and e-commerce and cross-border management.

“The development of cosmetics regulation in China started relatively late,” Wang told BeautyMatter. 

The past four years have created significant waves of change across the cosmetics supply chain as regulatory oversight has turned “stricter and more mature, with institutional, legal, and standardized management of cosmetics,” she said.

According to Wang, this year China was getting ready for even more regulatory change in cosmetics, with new laws and measures around safety and risk evaluations set to come into force. 

A Focus on Safety and Risk Monitoring

In May 2025, a full version of the country's cosmetic safety regulation—the Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CPSR)—would be enforced, demanding much stricter requirements around ingredient safety data and necessitating detailed evaluations of physical and chemical stability and microbiological safety for all newly filed or registered cosmetics. Testing for children's and special cosmetics still requires animal data. 

Subsequent regulatory updates could also be expected, Wang said, mainly around supplementary documentation for ingredient evaluation, as well as dynamic regulatory updates of certain components and usage standards for specific ingredients. “Additionally, there may be draft proposals regarding new cosmetic ingredients that could be revised and formally released,” the expert added.

Short-term, Wang said these regulatory changes would increase operational costs, create R&D challenges, and prolong product notification/registration timelines for businesses operating in China, ultimately morphing the market. 

“This regulatory shift will likely precipitate market consolidation, as noncompliant manufacturers exit while companies with robust R&D capabilities and production capacity capture greater market share. The resulting industry realignment will concentrate market dominance among technically proficient enterprises,” she said.

But, in the long term, the expert said full CPSR adoption promised “sector-wide benefits,” such as enhanced safety benchmarks, superior product quality, and the establishment of a more rigorous, standardized industry framework conducive to sustainable growth.

In addition to the CPSR, China's National Medical Products Association (NMPA) is also set to enforce new Administrative Measures on Cosmetic Safety Risk Monitoring and Evaluation in August 2025. Initially issued on April 9, 2025, the new regulations are designed to monitor and evaluate safety risks across cosmetic and toothpaste products. 

“China's implementation of higher cosmetic safety standards is not an abrupt decision but rather the culmination of a carefully planned regulatory transition that began with the enactment of the CSAR in 2021,” Wang explained. The “phased implementation approach,” she said—bringing in full safety and risk assessment measures four years on from CSAR—had been conducted in consideration of China's vast cosmetics market and the fact that businesses would need time to evolve from the “previous relatively lenient regulatory environment.” 

Innovation Support and Future Growth

Ultimately, Wang said the past four years had provided both regulators and industry players time to “progressively adapt.” And as China's cosmetics market continued to grow—predictions from Statistica pegged CAGR growth at 4.76% over the next five years—the country was working to support beauty innovation in the wake of tighter regulations, she explained.

In February, this year, China's NMPA issued Several Provisions on Supporting Cosmetic Ingredient Innovation, for example, which was meant to encourage and promote high quality ingredient innovation in the field—aiming to accelerate application processes for new ingredients and reduce or waive certain toxicology or human testing requirements for safety. The goal, she said, was to “optimize the safety evaluation requirements for new ingredients based on the actual level of risk.”

Looking ahead, Wang said it would be important that cosmetic companies operating in China stayed informed about evolving regulatory requirements and changes to laws, policies, and guidelines, particularly this year with shifts around safety regulations.

A Spotlight on CSAR

The CSAR covered two key compliance areas: cosmetic product registration and/or notification and new cosmetic ingredients application. 

Cosmetic products—split into two groups in China, either special or ordinary—had to be registered (special) or required notification (ordinary) with China's NMPA. Special cosmetics were products with anti-freckle/whitening functions, sunscreen, hair dye, hair perm, anti-hair loss, and any others with new efficacies. Ordinary cosmetics were all other cosmetic, beauty, and personal care products. 

Any new ingredients entering the market—those not already included in the Inventory of Existing Cosmetic Ingredients in China (IECIC)—also require mandatory notification and registration applications.