While Westerners spend cash topping up their tans to appear attractive, many Asians are slathering on lotions to reduce skin coloring as they embrace a different concept of beauty that for them says white is right.
Studies by market research company Synovate say sales of skin whitening products in Asia are soaring as the region's beauty-
conscious try to lose the pigmentation they consider unattractive.
Nearly half of Hong Kong women surveyed by the company last year bought such treatments, up from 38 percent in 2002. Whitening creams were also bought by more than a one-third of females in Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan.
According to Japanese cosmetics giant Shiseido, sales of skin-whitening products in Asia grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2003 and accounted for 23 percent of the company's total sales in the region.
In Thailand, the whitening lotion segment accounts for more than 60 percent of the country's annual US$100 million facial skincare market.
In fashion-conscious Hong Kong, moisturizers account for 60 percent to 70 percent of the multi-million dollar skincare market, of which skin whitening products capture 40 percent.
The reason Asian women favor fair complexions is that a majority of Asian men find lighter skin more appealing, Synovate found. The same view was shared by women.
Another study found that 69 percent of Indonesian males and 65 percent of females preferred fair complexions among the opposite sex as did more than 74 percent of males and over half of females surveyed in Malaysia.
Associating lighter skin with beauty is a deeply rooted perception across much of Asia. As the Chinese say: "One white makes up for three bad things.'" (ㄧ白遮三醜).
"The definition of beauty for Asians is definitely different from that of the Western countries," said Bernice Tse, product manager of L'Oreal Paris skincare products in Hong Kong.
"Asian women dislike freckles. Nowadays they are not only asking for no freckles, they neither want the yellow color on their face. The `white' concept is core."
Tse said the extent of the popularity of skin-whitening products could be seen by the wide range of products available in market that began booming in 2000. They all claim to be able to eliminate skin pigment, bleach the skin or lighten skin tone and dark spots.
Among them are Olay White Radiance Purifying Cloths, Loreal White Perfect Triple Whitening Body Moisturiser, Ponds Double White Eye Stick, Nivea Whitening Toner and Neutrogena Fine Fairness Essence. In late 2002, whitening products also found their way into deodorant roll-ons in Indonesia.
"The market for skin whitening products in Hong Kong is now very sophisticated. Consumers are also very knowledgeable on them. They want something that works instantly," Tse said.
But are these products safe?
Doctor Michael Chan of Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital said that products containing dangerously high levels of mercury are being sold by some unscrupulous vendors.
In Hong Kong in 2002, one woman was admitted to hospital and 13 others referred to specialists after they used one of two whitening creams that had mercury levels between 9,000 and 65,000 times recommended levels.
A study of 38 skin-whitening creams by Hong Kong's Chinese University chemical pathology professor Christopher Lam Wai-kei in 2000 showed eight made by global cosmetic makers exceeded the US Food and Drug Administration safety limits for mercury.
"Excessive mercury is very harmful to the nervous system and the kidneys," Chan said.
High doses of mercury are associated with sight or hearing loss and hand tremors as well as personality changes, anxiety, insomnia, memory loss, progressing to cerebral palsy and potentially fatal kidney failure.
But since the outbreak in 2002, Chan said Hong Kong's public was now more aware of the problems that skin-whitening products could cause.
Reassuringly for those looking for a creamy complexion in Hong Kong, a 2002 Consumer Council study found 32 skin-whitening products tested all passed the safety requirement on mercury and lead content.
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) and the New Taipei City Government in May last year agreed to allow the activation of a spent fuel storage facility for the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Shihmen District (石門). The deal ended eleven years of legal wrangling. According to the Taipower announcement, the city government engaged in repeated delays, failing to approve water and soil conservation plans. Taipower said at the time that plans for another dry storage facility for the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里) remained stuck in legal limbo. Later that year an agreement was reached
What does the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in the Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) era stand for? What sets it apart from their allies, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)? With some shifts in tone and emphasis, the KMT’s stances have not changed significantly since the late 2000s and the era of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) current platform formed in the mid-2010s under the guidance of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and current President William Lai (賴清德) campaigned on continuity. Though their ideological stances may be a bit stale, they have the advantage of being broadly understood by the voters.
In a high-rise office building in Taipei’s government district, the primary agency for maintaining links to Thailand’s 108 Yunnan villages — which are home to a population of around 200,000 descendants of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies stranded in Thailand following the Chinese Civil War — is the Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC). Established in China in 1926, the OCAC was born of a mandate to support Chinese education, culture and economic development in far flung Chinese diaspora communities, which, especially in southeast Asia, had underwritten the military insurgencies against the Qing Dynasty that led to the founding of
RSS