Affluent Chinese families reach new wealth highs

The total wealth of affluent families in China reached 160 trillion yuan ($25.12 trillion), growing 9.6 percent from previous year, which is much faster than GDP, according to the Yi Tsai · Hurun China Wealth Report 2021 released on Thursday.

The report was jointly issued by the Hurun Research Institute and the wealth management platform, Yi Tsai. It looked into the number of wealthy families in China across 100 geographical regions.

The report showed that the number of affluent families with at least six million yuan of wealth saw an increase by 1.3 percent to 5.1 million, while the size of high net worth families with 10 million yuan saw an increase up 2 percent to 2.1 million and that of ultra high net worth families with 100 million yuan raising 2.5 percent to 133,000.

"China's private sector is incredibly resilient and innovative. This year, we had over 800 new faces on the latest Hurun China Rich List and only 300 drop-offs, resulting in a net increase of 520 individuals to take us to a new record of 2,918 individuals with $300 million.

The new faces were mainly from new energy, semiconductors, biotech and fitness-related sectors, whilst the drop-offs were mainly from real estate and online education." Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, said.

Over the next 10 years, these affluent families will pass on a wealth of 18 trillion yuan to the next generation, 49 trillion yuan over 20 years, and 92 trillion yuan over 30 years, according to the wealth report.

"These last 20 years have seen China create more private wealth faster than any country in the history of the world. This suggests that the next 20 years will be the turn of wealth managers," said Hoogewerf.

These affluent families owned 49 trillion yuan of investable wealth, accounting for 30 percent of the total, the report revealed.

The performance of Chinese wealthy people in investment is becoming more and more mature. They lowered the proportion of real estate investment, increased the proportion of financial assets, diversified investment targets and categories, and held multicurrency. Post-pandemic, what wealthy people are most likely to increase their holdings in next year is the A shares, but security is still their first consideration, said Hoogewerf.