The story appears on

Page A3

April 13, 2011

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

HomeNation

Housing boosts the rich list

Surging home prices and robust economic growth in recent years has led to one in every 1,400 individuals on the Chinese mainland now having personal assets of at least 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million), according to the latest Hurun Report.

Chinese mainland is now home to 960,000 people with personal wealth of more than 10 million yuan, an increase of almost 10 percent from a year ago, the report, released yesterday, said. Among them are 60,000 "super-rich" with assets of more than 100 million yuan.

Of the 960,000 richest people, 55 percent earned their wealth from private business, 20 percent were property speculators, 15 percent stock market gurus and 10 percent high-salaried company executives, the report said.

"China's fast growing economy was the main driver of personal wealth, and people also benefited from rising prices of property," said Rupert Hoogewerf, the Hurun Report's chairman and chief researcher.

"There was speculation on the growth enterprise market but generally the stock markets in both Shanghai and Hong Kong closed almost unchanged at the end of 2010 from a year earlier," he said.

China's gross domestic product rose 10.3 percent in 2010 and new home prices in 70 cities were up 13.7 percent on average from a year earlier, according to official figures. A report by Knight Frank, a London-based property service company, said high-end property prices rose 21 percent in China last year.

"Owning two or three apartments in Shanghai would qualify an individual to be listed," Hoogewerf said.

China's measures to curb property speculation may affect wealth, he said, but a small portion of the millionaires still predicted prices to rise 50 percent in the next three years.

Millionaires are more interested in investing in art works and old, traditional villas than the stock market.

Beijing has the highest number of rich people with around 170,000 having assets of more than 10 million yuan. Guangdong Province came next with 157,000 and then Shanghai with 132,000.

The average age for the millionaires is 39 and 30 percent of them are female.

The report also said there are around 4,000 billionaires in China, and the assets of 1,363 of them could be tracked through public sources.

The report said its calculations are based on China's Gini Coefficient, which measures the gap between the rich and the poor, and data provided by large banks, car sellers and real estate service companies.

There are 115 individuals on the mainland with personal wealth exceeding US$1 billion as of March 10, almost double last year's number, mainly thanks to funds raised through public listings, Forbes said.

Robin Li, founder and CEO of search engine giant Baidu, replaced drinks maker Zong Qinghou as the richest person on the mainland, with personal assets of US$9.4 billion.


 

Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

娌叕缃戝畨澶 31010602000204鍙

Email this to your friend