The Chinese sports industry keeps growing, but the part almost no foreign brand budgets for is the silver generation. China’s 60+ population is the largest of its kind in the world, and the people retiring right now are not the retirees of ten years ago. They live in cities. They own their apartment outright. They pay with their phone. And they have time.
Most sports brands I meet still treat this group as a footnote. They put a 28-year-old runner on every visual, then wonder why their conversion is flat. Let’s look at the actual numbers, the sports these consumers really practice, and the channels that move product.
Written by Olivier Verot, founder of GMA. I have been based in Shanghai since 2012 and my teams have run China campaigns for sports equipment, footwear and outdoor brands. I have watched the senior segment go from “not worth a line in the media plan” to the fastest-growing buyer group several of our clients have.
The silver market in China: the 2026 numbers
The old figures floating around the internet are badly out of date. Here is what the current official data says.
At the end of 2025, China counted 323.38 million people aged 60 and over, 23.0% of the total population, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Roughly 16% of the country is already past 65. The Chinese government’s own reporting confirms the pace: the 60+ share is projected to pass 30% around 2035.
On the spending side, the silver economy was worth about 8 trillion RMB in 2025 and is projected at 30 trillion RMB by 2035, according to 36Kr Research’s 2026 China Silver Economy report. Sport is a small slice of that today. It will not stay small.
| Indicator | Latest figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Population aged 60+ | 323.38 million (23.0%) | National Bureau of Statistics, end 2025 |
| Silver economy size | ~8 trillion RMB (2025), 30 trillion projected 2035 | 36Kr Research, 2026 |
| Adults exercising regularly | 38.52% of the population | General Administration of Sport, 2025 survey |
| Annual sports spend, 60+ | 1,451 RMB per person | General Administration of Sport, 2025 survey |
| Annual sports spend, 19-59 | 2,428 RMB per person | General Administration of Sport, 2025 survey |
| Residents 15 min from a sports facility | 90.4% | General Administration of Sport, 2025 survey |
| Seniors who received fitness guidance | 47.0% | General Administration of Sport, 2025 survey |
| Square dance participants | 80 to 100 million, ~90% aged 41+ | Industry estimates, 2026 |
| Senior footwear category | ~19.3 billion RMB | AgeClub |
The line that matters most is 1,451 RMB of sports spending per year for the 60+ group, published in the 2025 National Fitness Activity Survey. That is 60% of what a working-age adult spends. It is not a niche budget. Multiply it by 323 million people and the arithmetic speaks for itself.
Why this cohort is different from the last one
Three things changed at once, and they changed recently.
They are urban. The people turning 60 in 2026 spent their working lives in cities, in danwei housing or in apartments bought in the 1990s and 2000s. Most own their home with no mortgage left. Housing cost, the thing that eats a young Chinese consumer’s income, is zero for them.
They have a pension and often a second income. Urban pensions plus rental income from a second apartment gives a lot of these households more free cash per month than their own children have.
They are native to the smartphone. Not “learning” it. Using it daily, for hours. QuestMobile’s 2026 data on silver users in lower-tier cities shows an average of 182.9 hours online per month, up 13.0% year on year, with mobile video taking 44.1% of that time and the first daily usage peak hitting at 8am, right after morning exercise.
Government policy keeps pushing in the same direction
The “Healthy China 2030” program still frames national policy, and the new National Fitness Plan (2026-2030) names older people as a priority group alongside youth. Concretely that means more social sports instructors, more free fitness guidance sessions, and more public facilities. 90.4% of residents already have a sports facility within a 15-minute walk or bike ride. Local sports bureaus in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu hand out subsidised access coupons to seniors.
For a brand, policy is not background noise. It is why the venues, the instructors and the local associations exist, and those are your distribution points for reach.
Which sports actually work commercially
Tai Chi, Qigong and Yangko dance are still there. But if you are selling equipment, the money is elsewhere. Here is where we see real volume.
Walking and hiking
The biggest one by far, and the most under-served. Brisk walking has the highest participation rate of any activity in the national survey. Weekend hiking groups organised by neighbourhood committees fill buses to the hills around every tier-1 city. These people buy trekking poles, lightweight daypacks, sun sleeves, wide-brim hats, cushioned walking shoes and knee support. Average basket is modest, repeat rate is high.
Square dancing (广场舞)
Between 80 and 100 million participants, close to 90% of them aged 41 and over, roughly 70% women, concentrated in tier-2 cities and below. Foreign brands ignore it because it looks unglamorous on a mood board. That is a mistake. Square dance groups buy in bulk: matching outfits, dance shoes, portable speakers, fans, gloves. One group leader placing an order for 40 women is a better sales event than 40 individual site visits.
Swimming
Low impact, joint-friendly, and heavily recommended by doctors for knee and back problems. Public pools in Chinese cities run morning senior slots at reduced rates. Swimsuits cut for older bodies, silicone caps, anti-fog goggles that fit over prescription glasses, non-slip pool sandals. The product specs are different from what you sell in Europe and almost nobody localises them.
Badminton and table tennis
Badminton is in the top participation tier nationally and it never leaves the 55-70 bracket. It is social, cheap, indoor, and every residential compound has a court or a hall nearby. Rackets, grips, shoes with lateral support, shuttlecocks by the tube.
Comfort and support equipment
This is the quiet winner. Knee braces, ankle supports, compression sleeves, insoles, and above all shoes. The dedicated senior footwear category in China is worth around 19.3 billion RMB and is built entirely on three claims: easy to put on, non-slip, supportive. Local brands own it today because they wrote their product sheets around those three words. A foreign performance brand with real biomechanics behind its product could take share, if it stops describing the shoe as a running shoe.
Park fitness and seniors-only gyms
Green spaces across the mainland fill up every morning with people stretching, using the outdoor machines and lifting light weights, in proper technical clothing. Shanghai opened its first elderly-exclusive gym several years ago and now has dozens, with coaching built around mobility, balance and blood pressure rather than muscle gain. These gyms are small but they are excellent sampling and demo venues.
Yoga, and what has changed
Yoga used to be seen as an activity for young women. That has broken down. Older women now make up a real share of studio attendance, especially in chair yoga and restorative classes offered by community centres. The prop market grew with it: blocks, belts, thicker cushions, non-slip mats, soft flexible clothing sized for bodies that are not 25 years old.
Where they are online: Douyin and WeChat, not Xiaohongshu
This is the point I repeat in every meeting, because brands get it wrong by default.
Xiaohongshu is not where this audience lives. Its core user base skews female, urban and under 35. Spending your China budget there and expecting to reach 62-year-olds is how you burn a year. Read our breakdown of who is actually on Xiaohongshu before you allocate.
Douyin is where the attention is. Mobile video takes 44.1% of silver users’ online time. They watch, they comment, they buy inside the app. The mechanism that works for this group is not the fast-cut brand film. It is the long demo: a coach or a doctor, filmed in one take, explaining slowly why a knee brace with a lateral hinge protects a meniscus. Six to eight minutes. Face visible, subtitles large, no music over the voice. Then a livestream where the same person answers questions for two hours and pins the product. Douyin’s recommendation engine will push that content to the right age bracket if your account posts it consistently, which is why our Douyin audience data is the first thing we check on a senior brief.
WeChat is where the decision happens. Almost every urban Chinese senior uses it daily, for family chat, payments, group buying and news. It is the private domain: once they follow your official account or join your group, you reach them without paying again.
The channel nobody budgets for: neighbourhood WeChat groups and local sports associations
Here is the part that separates brands that sell from brands that post.
Chinese seniors organise themselves offline, in structures that already exist and that you can reach. Every residential compound has WeChat groups: the building group, the property group, the group buying group, and usually a walking group or a dance group with a leader. Every district has registered sports associations (体育协会) for badminton, swimming, hiking, table tennis. Community centres run classes. Retired workers’ unions organise trips.
These groups have a leader, almost always a woman between 55 and 68, who chose the route, booked the hall, collected the money and has done it for years. Her recommendation inside her group carries more weight than any paid campaign. The whole group buys the same thing because she vouched for it.
How to work this properly:
- Identify the group leaders in your target districts. They are findable through community centres and district sports associations.
- Give them product to test for real, for weeks, not for a photo.
- Offer a group price with a bulk threshold that matches group size, 20 to 50 units.
- Send a coach to run one free session at their usual venue. That session becomes video content and a group order at the same time.
- Keep a WeChat account of your own where they can ask questions and get an answer from a human within the hour.
This is slow, it does not produce a nice impressions number, and it converts far better than advertising. Think of it as KOC work with real communities instead of paid accounts.
The communication mistake almost every foreign brand makes
Brands talk to Chinese seniors as if they were fragile. Soft pastel colours, a hand on a shoulder, words like “safe”, “gentle”, “assisted”, “care”. The model in the picture is sitting down.
That is not how they see themselves. A 63-year-old woman who hikes 12 kilometres on Saturday and leads a dance group of 40 on Tuesday does not identify with a care brochure. She identifies with capability. Chinese seniors online call themselves 年轻的老年人, the young old, and their most popular content creators are people in their sixties doing things that look demanding.
What to change, concretely:
- Show them moving, outdoors, in a group, with clean modern kit. Not sitting.
- Sell performance benefit, not protection from decline. “Walk further without knee pain” beats “supports fragile joints”.
- Use real technical language. This generation reads spec sheets carefully and compares. Underselling the technology loses them.
- Never build the campaign around the adult child buying for the parent. They buy for themselves and they resent being handled.
- Large type and high contrast, yes. Baby colours, no.
Case study: Tibor, a Hungarian sports equipment brand
Tibor runs a family-owned Hungarian manufacturer of knee braces and joint supports, sold across Central Europe through pharmacies and sports retail. He came to us after eighteen months in China with nothing to show for it.
The problem. He had a Tmall flagship store open for a year. Around 900,000 RMB spent on the store, the operations agency and Tmall traffic tools. Revenue over the same period: roughly 210,000 RMB. Conversion on product pages was 0.4%. His Xiaohongshu account, where he had put most of his content budget, had 3,100 followers and produced almost no orders.
What had failed and why. Two things. First, the channel: Xiaohongshu’s users were 15 to 25 years younger than his buyer. He was paying to reach people who did not need a knee brace. Second, the message. His Chinese product pages were a straight translation of the European ones, medical in tone, illustrated with a close-up of a swollen knee. The pages read as a disability product. Chinese buyers of his age group scroll past that.
What we changed. We moved the content budget to Douyin and rebuilt the format completely: a Chinese sports physiotherapist filming seven-minute single-take videos explaining hinge mechanics and when a walker actually needs support, shot on hiking trails rather than in a clinic. Two livestreams a week, same physiotherapist, questions answered live. In parallel we spent four months on the offline side, working with hiking group leaders and two district badminton associations in Hangzhou and Nanjing: free product for the leaders, a group price at 25 units, and one free posture and gait session per group run by the physiotherapist.
Why it worked. The physiotherapist gave the technical credibility this audience demands, and the format matched how they consume video: slow, one face, no gimmicks. The group leaders removed the risk. A woman who has walked with her group every Saturday for six years does not need a brand to convince her, she needs her group leader to have worn the brace for a month.
Result after eleven months. Douyin store revenue reached 2.4 million RMB, with 61% of buyers over 55. Group orders through the offline associations added about 480,000 RMB with almost no media cost attached. Repeat purchase rate hit 29%, mostly people buying a second brace for the other knee or for a spouse. The Tmall store was kept as a credibility page and stopped receiving paid traffic. Tibor’s cost per acquisition dropped by a bit more than half compared to year one.
Sport is also social, and that shapes the product
Very few Chinese seniors exercise alone. They exercise with the same twelve people, at the same time, at the same spot, every day. Sport is the social calendar. This has a direct commercial consequence that Western brands miss: demand is collective. Matching kit sells. Group discounts sell. Anything that makes an individual look out of place in the group does not sell, however good it is.
It also means your product will be discussed in a WeChat group of 200 people within a day of the first delivery. Quality complaints spread fast in this segment, and there is no recovering from them. On the other hand, one satisfied group leader is worth more than a year of paid media.
FAQ
Do Chinese seniors really buy online, or do they still shop in stores?
They buy online, heavily. Urban seniors average around 183 hours a month on mobile, with 44% of that on video apps, and Douyin livestream commerce is a normal purchase channel for them. Group buying inside WeChat is even more common. Physical retail still matters for first trial on fit-sensitive products like shoes and braces, so the pattern is usually: see it on Douyin, ask the WeChat group, try it once, then reorder online.
Should I use Xiaohongshu at all for a senior sports product?
Only as a secondary channel, and for a different buyer. Xiaohongshu’s audience skews under 35, so what you can get there is the adult child researching a gift, plus general brand credibility that shows up in search. Do not build your acquisition on it. Put your reach budget on Douyin and your retention budget on WeChat, and keep Xiaohongshu as a small credibility layer.
How much budget do I need to test this segment seriously?
A serious six-month test needs a Douyin content operation with a credible Chinese expert on camera, a WeChat official account with a real person answering messages, and offline work with group leaders in two cities. In practice that lands between 400,000 and 800,000 RMB depending on how much video you produce. Anything under that will not generate enough data to judge. Skip the flagship store in year one.
Which product categories convert fastest with this group?
Walking and hiking gear, knee and joint support, cushioned footwear, swimming equipment sized for older bodies, and badminton gear. Square dance accessories convert extremely fast through group leaders but at low unit price. High-intensity training equipment and anything positioned around weight loss or muscle building does not work here.
Working with GMA on the silver sports market
We build Douyin content operations with Chinese coaches and physiotherapists on camera, run WeChat private domain for repeat purchase, and do the unglamorous offline work with neighbourhood group leaders and district sports associations. We have run this for equipment, footwear and outdoor brands entering China from scratch.
If you want to see whether your product fits this segment before committing a budget, we start with a category and channel audit: who actually buys your type of product in China, on which platform, at what price. It takes about three weeks.
Related reading: the premium categories older Chinese consumers are buying, the silver generation on short-video platforms, and China’s sports nutrition market.
Leave us a comment or contact us to discuss your project in China.
