According to a new report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, the number
According to a new report by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, the number of millionaires in China grew by 12% to 535,000 in 2010, propelling the Asia-Pacific region past Europe to become home to the second-largest population of wealthy people, with a total of 3.3 million millionaires. North America leads the way, with 3.4 million millionaires.
Australia helped boost the Asian region. The number of millionaires in Australia jumped by 11.1%, according to Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, with total numbers now at 192,900. And we’re still punching well above our weight in terms of wealth – we might contribute just a few percentage points of global GDP, but we are home to the ninth-largest population of high-net-worth individuals in the world.)
The report also underlines China’s growing influence on the sector of the economy that sells goods and services to the rich.
Mercedes Benz sales jumped 112% in China and Hong Kong in 2010. Ferrari’s sales climbed 50%. Demand from China and Hong Kong helped push jewellery and watch sales at auction house Christie’s to a record $US91.2 million.
According to Forbes, the number of billionaires in China surged from 64 to 115 in 2010 as the rich surfed the country’s economic growth rate of 10%.
What’s really interesting here – and perhaps is this is why the lovelorn songs of billionaires attract so much attention – is that these fortunes are so new.
As Bill Gates said at a news conference in Shanghai last September: “The thing that’s unusual is that 30 years ago, there really weren’t people of great wealth, so what you have is first-generation fortunes.”
Nearly every wealthy entrepreneur has a brilliant story behind them.
The eloping Wang Gongquan is a great example.
The businessman quit his job as a provisional public servant in 1988 and made his first fortune in property development with the company Vantone International Group. In 2002, he founded a venture capital and private equity firm called CDH Investments, which now manages $US3.5 billion in funds and has a reputation for investing wisely. So much so that Wang has previously been named one of China’s top-10 entrepreneur investors.
Some other great rags-to-riches stories have recently been unearthed by author and filmmaker Nick Rosen in a series for the BBC.
One of those profiled, Zong Qinghou, started his Wahaha beverages empire with a shop in a school selling vitamin drinks and icy poles. Two decades later, his company commands 15% of China’s soft drinks market.
Yet Zong remains a man whose habits are frozen in China’s austere past – he lives on just $20 a day.
“My only exercise is doing market research… my only hobbies are smoking and drinking tea,” he told Rosen.
Or take Zhou Xiaoguang, who has turned her company Neoglory into one of the world’s leading costume and fashion jewellery companies.
Zhou left school at 16, and started out selling trinkets and on China’s night train. She built her business, got her MBA at the age of 35 and is now part of a $US3 billion jewellery industry in her home town of Yiwu.
There are, of course, plenty of questions surrounding China’s wealth explosion.
Can these billionaires and millionaires hold onto their wealth if the economy slows or turns down? Will the wealthy elite become as powerful or more powerful than China’s political elite? If democratic unrest were to increase, on which side would billionaires line up? How will the wealthy handle the transition of wealth to the next generation?