Cosmetic surgery a booming business in China

LONDON - Despite a wave of disasters in recent years, cosmetic surgery is a big business in China where the industry is now worth 10billion pounds a year.

The death of an aspiring Chinese singer during plastic surgery last year has not reduced the growing obsession with beauty that millions of Chinese still go under the knife each year to improve their appearances.

And unlike in the West, the most popular procedure here is not a facelift or breast enlargement but something known as ‘double eyelids’, reports the Sky News.

The operation begins with a thin layer of fat being sliced from above the eye and is completed with a crease being stitched into the socket.

The goal is to make the eyes appear less Asian and more European.

Other common procedures aimed at making Asian faces look more Caucasian include nose enlargements, jawbone reshaping or ‘grinding’, and liposuction on the cheeks.

“Foreigners think that the Chinese all have flat faces and small eyes, because that’s what our race looks like,” said Dr Shi Sanba, the founder of a high-end clinic in Beijing.

“But now that China’s getting richer people are no longer satisfied with their appearance. We think Westerners are more beautiful,” she added.

Dr Shi has herself had more than 60 operations, and said she liked to experiment with new techniques on her own face before recommending them.

China was stunned last year by the death of singer Wang Bei during plastic surgery to grind back her jaw.

Bei’s mother was having the same procedure at the clinic when her daughter died.

Thousands of other women who do not make the headlines are also victims of surgical errors.

China’s blossoming market economy is short on regulation, and lax on enforcement.

For unscrupulous doctors, the cosmetic industry is a golden, money-making opportunity where even disastrous surgeries are unlikely to come with legal consequences.

It is believed that several hundred thousand women were injected in the face and breasts with a toxic substance known as Aomeiding.

Photographs posted online show women with the greenish, carcinogenic substance leeching from their skin.

Bao Bao, a 28-year-old former dancer from Shanghai, had Aomeiding injected into both her breasts and chin and says she is now in constant pain.

The self-confessed cosmetic surgery addict has also had over 100 other procedures, including three facelifts, laser skin whitening and implants in her heels in an attempt to add stature.

“I’ve lost everything, my youth and my career,” she said in a tearful interview.

“No man wants to be with me, and sometimes I look so frightening that I don’t even want to leave the house,” she added. (ANI)