In China, 9 out of 10 billionaires are self-made, the highest percentage of any country (and by self-made we are unsure whether BusinessWeek's Christina Larson [7] means via entrepreurial spirits or government connected handout) but there is another fact that makes the Chinese billionaire different from the rest of the average run-of-the-mill billionaires we discussed here [8]. The average age of the country’s 157 billionaires is 53 years old - nine years younger than the world average. But perhaps the most shocking statistic among the luxury buyer is that the average Ferrari buyer in the U.S. is 47 years old; in China, he is 32.
Here's how the wealth - among the families of Communist China’s “Eight Immortals” - has been grealt rotated and grown among them...
[9]
As Bloomberg BusinessWeek notes, [7]
To be sure, self-made fortunes aren’t always made cleanly in China, as Bloomberg News documented in a 2012 investigative series on the extreme wealth of China’s leading political families, “Revolution to Riches.”
[10]
It’s no surprise, given the deep intertwinement of money and political power in China, that Beijing is home to the country’s highest number of billionaires, with 26. That’s followed by Shanghai, with 19 billionaires, and Shenzhen with 16. The UBS study calculates the combined net worth of China’s billionaires to be $384 billion, roughly equivalent to the entire annual gross domestic product of South Africa in 2012.