BEIJING, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The number of Chinese mainland millionaires with more than one million U.S. dollars in assets, excluding their own homes, rose by 7.8 percent year on year to 345,000 last year, says a report jointly released by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini.
The rise resulted from the nation's growing gross
domestic product (GDP) and returns from capital market, says the report.
China's GDP has kept growing at a speed of over 10
percent for four consecutive years and topped 20 trillion yuan (2.7 trillion U.
S. dollars) in 2006. The country's stock market recovered from a five-year
plunge last year and has since almost doubled.
Meanwhile, increasing exports and domestic
consumption also contributed to the growing number of millionaires, said Merrill
Lynch Asia-Pacific marketing director Francis Liu.
Chinese millionaires accounted for 20.6 percent of
the wealth in the Asia-Pacific region, second only to the Japanese.
The millionaires chiefly invested in property and
stock markets, but they will invest more in the financial derivative markets
along with the development of the capital market, the report said.
