This Is Where You Live if You're a Chinese Millionaire

By Dexter Roberts September 17, 2014

---

Everybody knows China has a lot of millionaires, but where do they live and how do they make their money? In its sixth annual Hurun Wealth Report released on Sept. 11, the Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute provides some detail.

For starters, there are more than 1 million millionaires, defined as those with at least 10 million yuan, roughly $1.6 million. (The U.S. has 9.6 million millionaire households.) Their ranks grew 3.8 percent from a year earlier, to 1,090,000. Meanwhile, the number of super-rich, those with at least 100 million yuan ($16 million), grew 3.7 percent to 67,000. Those numbers are expected to rise to more than 1.2 million millionaires and 73,000 super-rich in the next three years, predicts Hurun.
Any visitor to Beijing, where Bentleys, Lamborghinis, and Ferraris are a common sight, will not be surprised to hear the Chinese capital has the most millionaires, with
192,000, 17.6 percent of China’s total.
China’s commercial capital of Shanghai comes in second with 159,000, followed by the southern city of Shenzhen with 50,400. Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Foshan, Tianjin, Suzhou, and Dongguan, round out the top 10, all cities along China’s more developed eastern seaboard.
Given the explosive growth in value of China’s real estate in recent years, it seems surprising that only 15 percent of millionaires, or 160,000 people, have made their money in the property market, according to Hurun. Senior executives at both Chinese companies and multinationals in China, who as elsewhere in the world benefit from salaries and bonuses, accounted for 20 percent, while the largest group of millionaires were private business owners, making up just over half. Just 5 percent of millionaires made their money as professional stock investors.

Roberts is Bloomberg Businessweek's Asia News Editor and China bureau chief. Follow him on Twitter @dtiffroberts.

---

NRE-Account