Economy

Shanghai's super-rich surprise

By Shi Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-05-13 10:26

A Louis Vuitton flagship shop in Shanghai. The number of Shanghai-based consumers of luxury goods has grown by 8.2 percent year-on-year, according to the Shanghai Wealth Report 2011. [Photo / China Daily]

SHANGHAI - Shanghai has some 132,000 individuals with a personal wealth of 10 million yuan ($1.54 million) or more.

That's according to the Shanghai Wealth Report 2011, published on Thursday by the Hurun Report and the Australia-based independent financial adviser Gao Fu.

The figures show that the city is home to the second-largest number of wealthy people in China, after Beijing.

The "pig-feed king" Liu Yongxing, chairman of East Hope Group topped the list of Shanghai's Top Ten wealthy people, with a personal fortune of about $5 billion. Second to Liu is the property tycoon Xu Rongmao, the chairman of Shanghai Shimao Group, with personal wealth of $4,900 million. Zhou Chengjian, the president of the Shanghai-based textile company Metersbonwe Group ranked third.

However, none of the above are home-grown residents of Shanghai. Liu hails from Sichuan province, Xu from Fujian province and Zhou comes from Zhejiang province.

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Therefore, the Hurun Report further concluded that Ye Lipei, the chairman of the property company Super Ocean Group is the richest Shanghainese mentioned in the report. The 30-year-old basketball star Yao Ming is the youngest local billionaire.

The report also found that the city is home to 7,800 super-rich people, those with personal wealth of 100 million yuan. That's a rise of around 7 percent from last year. In total, China has 60,000 super-rich people who are worth 100 million yuan or more, up about 10 percent on last year's figure.

"Shanghai's rapid economic development and exploding real estate market has created a situation where 1 in every 175 people in Shanghai is a millionaire," said Rupert Hoogewerf, the chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report.

The data indicate that the average age of the super-rich is 43, and that there has been a surge of interest in fine wines and collecting art, especially classic Chinese art.

The release of the report is important to luxury brand companies, because wealthy people are, inevitably, the biggest consumers of their goods. The report shows that the number of Shanghai-based consumers of luxury goods has grown by 8.2 percent year-on-year.

Hoogewerf further explained that more than 40 percent of those mentioned are clustered in the Yangtze River Delta region, in places such as the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and in Shanghai.

"These figures should certainly make the ears of luxury brands around the world prick up. If these luxury brands wish to expand in China, they should first of all check the potential market in the three places mentioned," said Hoogewerf.

The Hurun Report is best known for its China Rich List, and this is the first time that it has compiled a report focusing on Shanghai alone.