70% of Chinese people want to lose weight: white paper

GUANGZHOU -- China has witnessed increasing public awareness of weight control, with 70 percent of its people hoping to lose weight and more than 60 percent willing to spend time and effort on achieving this goal.

This was revealed by a white paper on the health and weight control of Chinese adults, which was made public at an obesity prevention conference held in Foshan, South China's Guangdong province, on Saturday.

The white paper showed that half of Chinese adults have made self-assessments that do not match their actual body mass index (BMI), while 14 percent who consider themselves to be in the healthy range are overweight in terms of the BMI measurement.

Such inaccuracy in self-assessment makes it tougher to prevent and control cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes and other chronic diseases, indicating an insufficient understanding of obesity's risk to health, according to Liang Xiaofeng, vice-chairman of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, the organization which authored the white paper.

Currently, 34.3 percent of Chinese adults are overweight and 16.4 percent are obese, according to the National Health Commission. It warned that 70.5 percent of Chinese adults would be overweight or obese by 2030 without steps to control the threat -- which would result in medical expenses amounting to $61 billion.

In response, authorities launched a nationwide campaign in June 2024 to foster a supportive environment for weight control within the space of three years. More hospitals have been encouraged to set up obesity prevention and control centers to provide in-patient weight management services -- and it is expected that near-complete coverage of such services will be achieved by June 2025.

The white paper added that more than half of the Chinese population are now taking active steps to control their weight, prioritizing diets with less oil, salt and sugar while opting for appropriate meal replacements.

It also called for more active, comprehensive and continuous social support by building a weight-control knowledge system and adopting scientific and effective measures that focus on the actual needs of the public.