Editor’s note: The following article was edited and translated from a brief article that appeared on Renmin.com and from the original Hurun Report white paper. This article discusses the number of wealthy Chinese and tracks their recent consumer habits, which provides some insight into the changing social makeup of China. 

Source: http://lc.cf8.com.cn

On March 27th, Hurun Report and the Industrial Bank jointly published a report entitled "The Chinese Luxury Consumer White Paper 2012", which tracked the recent consumer habits of "high-net-worth individuals" (HNWI) in China. To gather the data, Hurun Report and Industrial Bank interviewed dozens of private banking clients and also surveyed HNWIs in 29 cities from October 2011 to January 2012.

There are 2.7 million HNWIs in China

In the report, a high-net-worth individual is defined as someone who has investable finance (financial assets not including primary residence) in excess of 6 million RMB. According to a separate investigation conducted by Hurun Report, following this definition, there are currently 2.7 million HNWI in China, with an average age of 39. The investigation also found that of these 2.7 million individuals, 63,500 also qualify as  "ultra-high-net-worth individuals" (UHNWIs), which is more broadly defined as someone who has investable finance in excess of 100 million RMB, with an average age of 41.

Big three expenditures: travel, health & wellness and children's education

According to the report, consumer services in the travel, health & wellness and education sectors saw the biggest increase in recent years. Of the 878 surveys used in the study, 60% of respondents listed travel services as a major expenditure, while about 50% of HNWIs listed "health & wellness" services, and over 30% listed "children's education". Below is a more detailed list of the interesting spending habits of HNWIs:

-The average time spent travelling per month is 6.9 days for HNWIs and nine days for UHNWIs.
-Gift spending accounts for an average of 10% of HNWIs annual expenses. 80% of gift giving is done in the business setting. The most commonly gifted items for HNWIs are designer watches and expensive bottles of wine for UHNWIs.
-Hong Kong is the top choice for purchasing luxury goods, while 28% of HNWIs purchase luxury goods domestically.
-13% of UHNWIs are interested in owning a private jet.
-Among HNWI Weibo users, former Google-China chief Li Kaifu (李开复) is the most popular, followed by China Vanke CEO Wang Shi (王石), China SOHO CEO Pan Shiyi (潘石屹), Huayuan Real Estate CEO Ren Zhiqiang (任志强) and Giant High-Tech Group CEO  Shi Yuzhu (史玉柱).

-70% of HNWIs are interested in attending advanced training courses, with topics related to “networking” being the most popular choice. 
-HNWIs exercise an average of 2.3 times per week, while UHNWIs exercise an average of  2.7 times  per week
-33% of HNWIs “go green”.
-60% of HNWIs collect art. HNWIs started collecting around 2008 and UHNWIs started collecting around 2006.
-50% of HNWIs are religious.
-35% of HNWIs own pets.

-85% of HNWIs and more than 90% of UHNWIs listed that they planned to send their children abroad to study.
-66% of HNWIs have considered sending their middle school and high school-aged children abroad.

Source: travel.people; hurun
 

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Keywords: Hurun report wealthy Chinese China high-net-worth individuals Chinese consumer habits The Chinese Luxury Consumer White Paper 2012 consumer habits wealthy chinese