Room for growth 

The report predicted that with the second-child policy taking effect and the nation's consumption upgrade, the market will grow at about 5 percent annually until 2022, so there is still plenty of room for development.

Adorable children can easily attract attention, especially online, and an outfit can become a hot seller, sometimes shifting as many as 200,000 units, after being modeled by a star child.

In August, Jiang Shuxiao shot a video of her 6-year-old daughter attending the final of a modeling contest and uploaded it to Kuaishou, a widely used short-feature app.

To her surprise, her fan numbers rose from 28 to 80 in just a few hours, and within half a day the figure had hit about 1,000.

Jiang said: "I just shot a short video casually. She (her daughter) did nothing in the video-she was just dressed in an evening gown. I couldn't believe that for the next five days, my fan numbers on the app rose by 1,000 a day. I felt happy because it proved my daughter is cute."

The flourishing children's wear industry and the kids' star effect have given birth to a commercial chain for young models.

Kidstar, a training school for child models headquartered in Hangzhou, has thousands of students, even though it charges 30,000 yuan for a 24-month course. The classes are so popular that the school is opening branches in other provinces.

"A child can graduate after a two-year course, and we have various commercial opportunities such as model shows, posing for photos for Taobao retailers and even movie roles. We offer agents the chance to represent the best children, which means they have more opportunities," said a member of the client service staff, who declined to give her name.

According to the staff member, children ages 3 to 15 who are 95 to 120 centimeters tall are the most sought-after models. Some have become so popular that they are too busy to complete their courses at Kidstar and have already earned far more than their tuition fee.