Thaindian News

Beijing, April 13 (IANS) China has a mind-boggling 960,000 millionaires, said an annual wealth report that noted it was a jump from 825,000 millionaires two years back.

The 960,000 millionaires have personal wealth of 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) or more, the China Daily reported.

Of them, 60,000 are considered super rich with 100 million yuan or more in wealth, up 9 percent year-on-year.

The GroupM Knowledge-Hurun Wealth Report 2011 said that it is up 9.7 percent year-on-year.

China has a population of 1.34 billion.

The report said that rising property prices and a rapidly-growing GDP have led to an increase in the number of Chinese millionaires.

As many as 55 percent of Chinese millionaires got their wealth from private businesses while 20 percent were property speculators. About 15 percent are stock experts and 10 percent are high-earning executives, China Daily said.

In 2009, there were 825,000 millionaires while last year the number went up to 875,000.

The media report said that housing prices went up in the country by 13.7 percent in 2010 and luxury property prices rose even faster.

“The overall confidence of China’s millionaires in the property sector and China’s overall economy remains very high,” Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, was quoted as saying.

The report said that the average age of the Chinese millionaires was 39 years, a good 15 years younger than those in Western countries. Thirty percent of the millionaires were women.