Trade sales and sponsor-to-sponsor, or secondary, deals gained importance as exit channels, and will likely broaden and deepen in the year ahead, she said.

Zhu Lei, an analyst with Aijian Securities Co Ltd, said more than half of the more than 100 enterprises that withdrew initial public offering applications in the past few months have shareholders that are private equity or venture capital funds.

"IPOs are no longer one of the major considerations for private equity investors to exit their portfolios as the channel has been frozen, and no one is sure about when it will be reopened," said Zhu.

Buyout deals were the only deal type that did not decline in value or volume in 2012, the report said.

In a sector-to-sector view, financial services and information technology were the most active sectors for private equity in 2012, whereas Bain found that healthcare and consumer products would be the sectors of highest interest in 2013.

"I think an obvious change in the private equity market is that investors are attaching more importance to value creation," said Yin Hao, a Suzhou-based private equity professional.

Although 2012 was not as good as previous years, the outlook for China's PE market over the next five to 10 years is positive because it has something fundamental to push forward development, said Bain's Bhatia.