China boasts the third-largest population of millionaires in the world, behind the United States and Japan, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said in a recent report.
The United States still leads with more than 4.7 million “millionaire households” followed by Japan and China. According to the report of the Population reference bureau and Boston consulting group, the U.S. real estate market remained weak, though the stock market rebound helped boost the number of millionaire households by 15.1 percent in 2009. The U.S. had the most millionaires by far, leading second-in-line Japan by 3,485,000 households.
According to the report, it is estimated that there are over 875,000 millionaires in China whose net worth is over $1.46 million and 51,000 people with a net worth higher than $14.64 million.
BCG’s latest research shows that at the end of 2009, China had 670,000 households with more than $1 million wealth, up 60 percent from the same period in 2008. And the country’s composite wealth grew by some 28 percent from the end of 2008 to the end of 2009, to $5.4 trillion.
Entrepreneurs account for the majority of China’s high-net-worth population – those with assets under management exceeding $1 million – but there are growing numbers of wealthy Chinese who have different sources of wealth, such as executives, professional investors, and the independently wealthy, according to BCG’s research.
The possible reason for the increasing numbers of millionaires in China maybe the rapid growth of the Chinese economy which is flourishing day by day.
Also, seeing opportunities in the growing wealthy demographic, luxury retailers have set up operations in major cities in China, and high-end real estate is drawing interest, for example, a $30 million house reportedly sold in Shanghai.
While developed countries struggled through the recession, China’s economy continued to boom, with gross domestic product growing 8.7 percent last year and this year it reached 9 percent. The surge of commercial activity has created a growing rich population in China that includes entrepreneurs and investors, although they still represent a smaller fraction of the total population.
The term Millionaire is used to count the statistics regarding financial assets and net worth that are presented by household; it is also often used to describe only the individual who has amassed the assets as millionaire. A millionaire is an individual whose net worth or wealth exceeds one million units of currency. It can also be a person who owns one million units of currency in a bank account or savings account. Depending on the currency, a certain level of prestige is associated with being a millionaire.
Great wealth, huge amount of money, big package of happiness, that equals to a “millionaire”. Despite its remarkable growth, China’s composite wealth still has tremendous room to expand, according to the report.