“I spent about 1500 US dollars on him last year and intend to double the budget this year,” said Ms. Wang, the owner of a four-year-old poodle.

Wang says she treats her dog like her own son: Grooming, spas and even dating, she spoils her poodle however she can, regardless of the price. That comes at a cost, of course, but she’s more than willing to pay for everything concerning her dog.

She’s one of the many who spend big sums of money on their furry friends and that has led to a booming pet market. A case in point is Beijing, which in past few years has seen the amount of pet-related shops mushroom. These include pet-themed restaurants and cafés, retail stores and clubs for pet-lovers, most of which target the rising middle-income class.

The Xiaotong Pet Salon in central Beijing has approximately 50,000 members paying a hefty minimum fee of 436 US dollars per month. It also offers a VIP membership cards for superior services that has an annual cost of over 7,000 US dollars. 

Pet fever is also swiftly spreading through major e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao, which have set up categories just for pets. On Taobao, the world’s biggest e-commerce website, approximately 1.2 billion US dollars was spent on items related to cats in 2017 according to the official data.

More pet brands are scrambling to provide services online and offline, and Dogwhere is one such market player. Business director Wang Chao told reporters that a growing number of people are raising pets and treating them like family members. “The Dogwhere app provides a travel service to its three million users and their pets. And our offline pet hotel has welcomed tens of thousands of pets since it opened less than a year ago,” Wang said.

In Beijing alone, more than one million households own at least one dog. A white paper published by Goumin.com, a platform renowned for providing comprehensive services for pet owners, states that China’s pet market is valued at over 19 billion US dollars and has an annual growth rate of 30.9 percent.