According to figures from Bain & Company, China had 1.04 million millionaires at the 2014, an increase of 330,000 compared to 2012. Another study predicts that Asia will become the centre of billionaire growth.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – As China celebrates its million millionaires, Asia is getting ready to become the centre for billionaire growth.

According to a report by Bain & Company and China Merchants Bank, China was home to 1.04 million millionaires at the end of 2014 – an increase of 330,000 compared to 2012 and double the number in 2010. This year, the number of millionaires is expected to rise to 1.26 million.

The areas with more than 50,000 millionaires are Guangdong Province, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and Sichuan.

The report said growth in the central and western regions of China is accelerating and narrowing the gap with other regions.

"Fast growing innovative industries are creating a new class of 'newly rich' Chinese younger than 50," the report said.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang Beijing himself recently said that China should focus on small and medium e-commerce enterprises. According to the cabinet’s new ten-year plan, economic growth will be centred on new technologies.

More young self-made billionaires are set to emerge from China’s tech and finance sectors thanks to capital market expansion and official boosts for start-ups, making Asia the centre for billionaire growth in the next five to ten years, another study found.

The latter, jointly released by investment bank UBS and accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), found that most of Asia’s billionaires were from China and had an average age of 57, a decade younger than their US and European peers.

“We expect the trend, with more, younger billionaires from Asia, to continue,” said James Zhang, PwC’s partner for China financial service consulting management.

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