Walking around Shanghai it appears that the city’s sidewalks have turned into a catwalk for dogs.
Chinese animal owners adore their pets, often dressing them up in bright and colourful outfits and showing off their fashionable clothing on the city’s streets.
Not only is it a hobby for animal lovers, its since become a booming business generating sales of around £13 billion ($17 billion) a year.
At least 40 percent of pet merchants in China sell pet clothing.
The industry is expected to grow by 20 percent annually, according to a Yourpet Market Research Institute which has been studying the country’s huge pet industry.
Zhang Jiequn, a psycologist at Shanghai’s Huada Institute of Applied Psychology told AFP that pet ownership is ‘a kind of escape from interpersonal relationships.
‘The pet becomes a projection of the opposite sex for some people who do not find a partner.’
Millennials are said to be the main customers who are spending more on their pets as dog ownerships continue to rise alongside China’s fast expanding middle class. For many of these, clothing and accessories for their dogs is a status symbol showing off wealth.
One shining example of this is Wang Sicong, the son of China’s richest man Wang Jianlin. There have been multiple reports of the dog being bought countless amounts of iPhones and iWatches.
In 2015, a survey by China Daily stated that there were at least 100 million registered pets in China with dogs making up the vast majority.
Shanghai which is home to 24 million people has an estimated dog population of around one million.
In 2011, the city was forced to install a ‘one dog policy’ to curb noisy barking and waste on sidewalks.
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