Article/Pan Helin, columnist of Sina Financial Opinion Leader (WeChat official account kopleader)
The number of billionaires to some extent indicates the degree of development of the region. Even though there is still much uncertainty in the overall economic environment in the future, the subjective initiative of Chinese entrepreneurs full of creativity and competitiveness cannot be ignored. More billionaires will be born and more industries will develop, Finally, it will become an inexhaustible driving force for national economic development.
On October 26, 2018 Billionaires Insights was released. This report was jointly prepared by UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers and introduced the situation of billionaires around the world in 2018 from a macro perspective.
According to the report, as of the end of 2017, there were 2158 billionaires in the world with assets of US $1 billion as the dividing line, and the total wealth reached US $8.9 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 19%, the largest increase since historical statistics. Among them, the billionaires from China maintained the highest growth rate. In 2017, the annual wealth growth rate was 39% and reached $1.12 trillion. Among the 177 new billionaires born in the Asia Pacific region in 2017, most of them came from China, that is to say, in China in 2017, an average of two billionaires will be born every week.
Another interesting data is that, even from a global perspective, the proportion of self-made millionaires in China ranks first in the world, reaching 98%, while in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the figure is 60%, while in the United States, it is 68%. At the same time, Chinese millionaires are younger, with an average age of only 55 years, nine years younger than the world average. These data all show that the Chinese rich are relatively more creative and competitive.
In fact, the industries that the rich are involved in also reflect the current development trend in China. Data shows that among the industries where the rich are distributed, real estate (20%), technology (19%) and consumer goods retail (13%) rank top three, which fully conforms to the trend of China's vigorous development and rapid rise, Especially in the field of technology and consumer goods retail, it can reflect the new trend of China's economic development.
In the process of China's rapid development, the process of urbanization is also getting faster and faster. For the rural population who want to accumulate wealth, the priority of farming is still declining, and moving to cities to find jobs to earn relatively high wages has become the first choice. At the same time, more and more young people are also choosing to wander in big cities, striving to make their own world. In this context, the rich have also completed the accumulation of capital by virtue of the huge demand of the real estate market. In particular, several rounds of house price rises in the past decade have made the rich in the real estate market make a lot of money. You should know that in 2000, there were only one billionaire in the whole mainland of China, and by 2017, there were 373 billionaires in the whole mainland, One fifth is from real estate.
Although 2017 is the end of this round of house price rise, even in Beijing and Shanghai, where the housing price base is the highest, there is still a small drop in housing prices, but this does not affect the soaring housing prices in second tier cities. The housing prices in Wuhan, Chengdu, Xi'an and other cities have seen strong growth throughout the year, providing a basis for the wealth increase of the rich.
Compared with real estate, the most popular industry in 2017 is still technology, and the Internet is the best example. In 2017, there were 55 new billionaires in the Internet industry alone, which is unparalleled.
This result is not surprising. According to China Internet Development 2018, the number of Internet users in China has reached 772 million in 2017, an increase of more than 40 million compared with 2016. With the continuous growth of the younger generation, we have reason to believe that this number will continue to increase. At the same time, the scale of the mobile Internet market reached 8.23 trillion yuan in 2017, with a year-on-year growth of 48.8%. If this is not a big deal, then the scale of the mobile payment market of 109.1 trillion yuan and the explosive growth of 208.7% on a year-on-year basis are amazing, which indirectly explains why there were 55 new billionaires in the Internet industry in 2017.
Just as the so-called technology changes life, the emergence of the Internet has made this sentence shine into thousands of households. Under the vigorous development of the Internet, not only has online shopping become a conventional shopping method for most people, providing consumers with more convenient shopping channels while enriching consumers' shopping choices, but also under the development of the Internet, technological innovation has come more quickly. For the research and development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, Internet enterprises are at the forefront, and many enterprises have already put them into use, which helps big data to provide consumers with more accurate commodity push and design the best distribution route.
What is more gratifying is that the development of the Internet has also led to the development of the real economy. With the participation of the Internet, it seems to be expected that more billionaires will be born in this industry in the future under the billionaires who have contributed 13% to the consumer goods retail industry.
The number of billionaires indeed indicates the degree of development of the region to some extent. Even though there is still much uncertainty in the overall economic environment in the future, the subjective initiative of Chinese entrepreneurs full of creativity and competitiveness cannot be ignored. More billionaires will be born and more industries will develop, Finally, it will become an inexhaustible driving force for national economic development.
(The author of this article introduces: famous young economist, famous financial commentator)
