China’s ageing pets create a booming market for funerals and elder care

China’s ageing pets create a booming market for funerals and elder care

In the outskirts of Shanghai, a small cabin offers a quiet place for grieving families to say goodbye to their pets. The process involves white funeral flowers, brick cremation furnaces, urns, and Buddhist statues — a sign of how deeply pet funeral services have taken root in China’s changing society.

What was once an informal or taboo subject is now part of a rapidly expanding industry, the Financial Times reported. With over 120 million cats and dogs in China’s urban areas, many of them ageing, pet death is no longer rare. Funerals can cost over Rmb1,000 ($140), with some premium services charging as much as $550.

The rise of pet ownership in modern China China’s pet population has grown alongside urbanisation, rising incomes, and changing lifestyles. Pet ownership gained momentum in the past decade as childbearing declined, with cats and dogs now reportedly outnumbering toddlers in cities. According to a report by Beijing Paidu, the pet industry was worth Rmb300bn ($42bn) in 2023 — a 7.5 percent increase from the year before.

Low birth rates have made pets increasingly central to family life. Goldman Sachs estimates that China’s pet food market is nearing the size of its infant milk formula sector and could grow to $12 billion by 2030.

Caring for an ageing generation The maturing pet population is changing how families spend. About 28 percent of dogs are over seven years old and 10 percent of cats are over eight, the Beijing Paidu report said. Consultancy iResearch estimates that more than 50 million cats and dogs in China will be elderly by 2025.

Guo Weike, COO of PetKit, said the shift is transforming the industry. Originally focused on automated feeders and litter boxes, the company is now expanding into diagnostics and pet health. “The first generation of pets is getting old, so future consumption will all be about pet health,” he said.

Veterinarian Zhang Changli in Chengdu noted a clear shift. A decade ago, 70 to 80 percent of his patients were young. Now, about 40 percent are middle-aged or elderly, and pet funeral businesses have surged “like mushrooms after rain.”

Pet funerals and generational change Pet funerals were once rare, but attitudes are changing quickly — especially among young owners who increasingly treat pets as family. “In the past people didn’t really know how to deal with it [the death of a pet],” said Eric Lin of the Silk Initiative. “50 or 60-year-olds probably won’t spend money on pet funerals, but the young generation will.”

Some pet owners, like 30-year-old publisher Jiang Ziyue, care deeply for their ageing companions but remain unsure about formal services. His 17-year-old dog can no longer walk unaided. “When he leaves one day, I think, for both of us, it will be a relief,” he said.

As China’s first pet-owning generation nears the end of its journey, a new cultural and economic era is emerging — one shaped by grief, memory, and a growing market for pet elder care.