Only the lonely? Cats, cuddly toys and those who keep them company

Two mobile games have recently been hugely popular in China. One is Love and Producer, in which players can experience romantic relationships with four different handsome men. It beat Honor of King on the Apple Store's free download charts, but was soon supplanted by a traveling frog developed by the Japanese company Hit-Point.

The two games are said to be mostly played by single young women who desire romantic relationships or to play the role as the mother of a frog who loves traveling and mailing postcards back as the only interaction with players who help harvest clovers in a yard and prepare food and tools for the frog. Some people spend a lot of money on the games.

These mobile games are just two examples of the rising consumer demand by the increasing single population in China, who tend to spend more money on themselves, which is creating new businesses and economic opportunities.

You need only look at other economies such as Japan and South Korea, which are experiencing similar trends, to get a glimpse of China's future.

In Japan, for instance, one-fourth of men and one-seventh of women stayed single all their life according to a survey by Nikkei in 2015. The money single women spent on food and clothes was 2.7 times that of married women, showing that single people pay more attention to their quality of life, the survey said.

As early as 2007, a survey established by New Weekly magazine about singles in China took 1,024 samples from 16 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu.

Of the respondents, 28.6 percent said they would buy luxury goods without much hesitation and 16 percent said they frequented bars, including karaoke bars, at least once a week. About 31.6 percent said their biggest expense every month was entertainment, partying or other social occasions.

A travel report issued last year by the travel agency website lvmama said bookings for people traveling along were 1.8 times those of 2016, the report said. Usually 80 percent of customers, mainly from first-tier and second-tier cities, would book travel one or two days before departure for the May Day holiday, National Day Holiday and the Spring Festival. On average, they spent 14 percent more money than married peoples.

Chen Zhiya, a student at Peking University, says that in a restaurant called New Yorker in the Zhongguancun area of Beijing recently, a diner sitting next to her asked her to take photos of him with a big toy bear that waiters usually place opposite diners who are alone.

"I found it all a bit embarrassing, but he looked happy," Chen says.

New Yorker is not the only restaurant that provides such a service. At one of the most popular hotpot chains, Haidilao, staff members also put fluffy toys across from consumers, which are presumably supposed to provide companionship.

Recently, reflower.com.cn, a delivery service in which bouquets of flowers with various themes are delivered regularly to one's home or office has become popular, and the company says that 78.8 percent of buyers are women, of whom 53.5 percent buy flowers for themselves.

Chris Guo, 36, who is in the IT industry in Beijing, and says she lives alone, is one of Reflower's customers.

"There is time when everything goes wrong but beautiful flowers can cheer me up because from them you can see how great the world is, no matter how things are," she says.

Because of the development of social networks, singles are not as isolated as they used to be, but they inevitably feel lonely sometimes, which is why many are choosing to raise pets, especially cats.

"More and more people seem to be getting cats," says Charlotte Qiu, 34, who has done exactly that.

Qiu, of Suzhou, has her own home and lives alone, and the cat has become an important companion, she says.

"She's a bit noisy and clings to me a lot, but every morning when I open the bedroom door and see her sitting there waiting for me it's such a wonderful feeling.

"At first I spent a lot of money on her, buying quality toys, food and other cat products, but now she has grown up and I know more about what she likes and dislikes, so I buy less."

China is estimated to have had more than 58 million pet cats and more than 27 million pet dogs by 2014, becoming the second largest pet market after the United States, according to Zhiyan Consultancy in Beijing.

The market value of pet care in China will reach $2.6 billion next year according to the market researcher Euromonitor International, overtaking the US as the world's largest market for pet care.