Are China’s ‘weight loss prisons’ the new Ozempic?

It might be the era of Ozempic and Mounjaro, but China is going viral for a different type of extreme weight loss formula: fat loss boot camps. Chinese Gen Zers are documenting weeks spent inside facilities that combine military-style discipline, strict diets and relentless exercise. Known as “fully enclosed weight-loss training camps” (全封闭式减肥训练营),” the Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) hashtag has hit 1.1 billion impressions, with #weightlosscamp at 2 billion. Some participants are vlogging about their experiences living in hotels with closely controlled workouts and daily routines. Some camps encourage 28-day stays, with attendees training for several hours a day and eating carefully measured nutritional meals. The trend has gained traction on Xiaohongshu through before-and-after photos, daily weigh-ins and videos showing the highly regimented routines inside the camps. What was once a niche weight-loss service is increasingly being presented as a lifestyle experience — one that users can document, compare and share online. Restrictions differ by operator. At the stricter facilities participants share dormitories and surrender any outside food on arrival, and they cannot leave the grounds during the program without a reason the camp accepts. One recent viral account came from Australian blogger Eggeats, who documented a 28-day stay at a Chinese facility, showing group aerobics, HIIT, spinning sessions and tightly controlled meals — she reported losing 13.2 lbs (5.98kg) in 30 days, paying around 600 Australian dollars ($420). The phenomenon reflects a broader appetite for intensive, highly structured approaches to weight loss in China — and Xiaohongshu is turning the experience itself into content. For participants, the transformation is no longer just about losing weight; it is becoming something to watch, document and share. The Jing Take A climbing obesity rate provided an opening. Weight-loss boot camps for children have operated in China since at least the mid-2000s. The rate of overweight and obese children has quadrupled since 2000, according to UNICEF and Peking University, and a National Health Commission report published in December 2020 found more than 50% of adults overweight, 16.4% of them obese. Jiemian put the total at about 300 at the end of 2019 and more than 500 by mid-2023; Global Times reported about 1,000 nationwide in December 2024. Business registration data cited by Guangming Daily logged more than 100 new weight-management companies in a single year, a measure of how low the barriers to entry sit. Yet the expansion also reveals a contradiction at the heart of the country’s shifting relationship with health, beauty and social media. Even as the overweight population grows, the appetite for thinness is spreading well beyond those with any medical reason to slim down. Criticism aimed at participants who are already at a healthy weight shows how entrenched ultra-slim beauty ideals remain. Vlogging the experience on Xiaohongshu turns weight loss into entertainment, and younger consumers are the ones making it visible, though the trend is not confined to Gen Z. Medical stakes sit behind the aesthetics. Cardiovascular disease is China’s leading cause of death, accounting for close to half of all deaths in 2020, according to the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, with obesity, hypertension, smoking and sodium-heavy diets among the risk factors. Urbanization has compounded the problem, increasing reliance on processed food while cutting levels of physical activity. CNN reported in 2023 that an influencer died at a facility in northern China while attempting to lose more than 100kg. Boot camps also sit within a wider global turn toward extreme self-optimization, the biohacking impulse in a Chinese register. “Yangsheng” (养生), the Daoist practice of nourishing life, now runs alongside modern coping mechanisms for burnout: “punk yangsheng,” in which an all-nighter is offset by goji berries in a thermos, or desert sand therapy to draw out “dampness.” Public health data gives the industry its justification but does not explain its clientele — the participants already at a healthy weight, or the vloggers for whom the transformation arc is the product. Operators work the gap between a real public health problem and a much older aesthetic one, and as long as that gap stays profitable there is little incentive inside the industry to distinguish between them. The Jing Take reports on a piece of the leading news and presents our editorial team’s analysis of the key implications for the luxury industry. In the recurring column, we analyze everything from product drops and mergers to heated debate sprouting on Chinese social media.

Are China’s ‘weight loss prisons’ the new Ozempic?

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag

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Are China’s ‘weight loss prisons’ the new Ozempic?

How Bottega Veneta weaved China’s forever it bag