According to the Boston Consulting Group’s 2014 Global Wealth Report, China now has 2,378,000 millionaires but is quite a ways behind the United States which essentially triples the Middle Kingdoms rich with 7,135,000.
That number represents a massive gain in the last couple of years rocketing up 82% since 2012. In the same period of time, millionaire growth was only 18% over the same period of time. That said, the millionaires in the United States got considerably richer over the same time period just lagged in the creation of new millionaires.
China “Shadow Banking”
China largely created these new millionaires through shadow-banking-related financial products according to the report.
With this massive growth, not only did China surpass Japan but nearly doubled the amount of millionaires living in Japan. Japan has 1,240,000 millionaire households at present.
The BCG does not use real estate, collectibles or luxury items in its computations but looks at liquid wealth including cash, financial investments and stocks. The information was compiled by looking at public records and national accounts and then used a curve for distribution along with wealth-distribution statistics available from each country.
Global wealth and additional studies
Chinese private wealth now stands at $22 trillion up a massive 49% since last year. The amount of wealth in trusts rose over 80% “reflecting the country’s rapidly expanding shadow-banking sector.”
The United States saw new millionaires and continuing millionaires profit from a booming stock market where China’s wealth in equities somehow fell 6.8% over the year.
Globally, there are now 16.3 million millionaire households up 19% from the year prior and the world’s private wealth rose 15% to $152 trillion largely fueled by growth in countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
A similar report conducted by Capgemini and sponsored by RBC Wealth Management will be released next week.
