中国富人增多 私人飞机崛起

Like any winner in the globalization lottery, the Chinese rich are quickly bringing on the bling.

Wealthy Chinese are buying vintage wines by the caseload. They are buying (or at least looking at) $45 million apartments with crocodile-skin bedposts, hand-carved bronze doors with Swarovski crystals, according to The New York Times.

They are even buying jets. An article in China Daily says that one jet broker expects to sell 20 private jets to mainland Chinese this year. That is up from just eight sold in 2008.

Last year, wealthy Chinese spent $9.4 billion on luxury goods, making it the second-largest luxury market after Japan. Many of these purchases are given as business 'gifts,' with price tags intact and clearly visible.

All this newfound wealth is leading to worries about a wealth bubble or the rise of a new, more gaudy and unphilanthropic class of global rich. But China's government will manage the bubble down (the brutal, er, virtue of central planning), while the Russians, Saudis and Americans have been practicing flashy wealth for much longer than the Chinese.

And, of course, all the Chinese-wealth hype needs to be put in perspective. There are, according to the China Daily article, only about 100 people in all of China who can afford a private jet. There were about 364,000 millionaires in China as of the last count in 2008 by Capgemini/Merrill. Even with the growth since then, China's millionaires are still a fraction of the more than 2.5 millionaires in the U.S.

The point is that China's millionaire population is increasing-and spending-at a much faster rate than America's. Within the next year or two, the Chinese may be crowned the new kings of bling.