Below the super-rich, Forbes counts 10.3m Chinese as wealthy

Reports about China's uber-rich have become common, with Forbes magazine and the Hurun Report regularly compiling lists of the wealthiest and their relative fortunes.

In September, for example, Hurun published its list of the 1,000 richest people in China, who had average wealth of US$860 million. The list was topped by beverage magnate Zong Qinghou, worth an estimated US$12.6 billion.

Three weeks later, Forbes issued its annual list of the 100 richest mainlanders, again topped by Zong, whose fortune it estimated at US$10 billion.

Now Forbes has turned its focus on the lower rungs of the wealth ladder, calculating that the number of people with liquid assets of between US$100,000 and US$1 million reached 10.26 million last year, and is expected to top 12 million this year.

More than a third of them were born in the 1970s and the top three industries they were involved in are finance, trade and manufacturing, its study said.

Three-quarters of respondents surveyed said they had no plan to emigrate, but the same percentage expressed a wish to send their children to study overseas. The United States was their first option.

Forbes, which surveyed 1,196 people with the required disposable assets and extrapolated the total based on statistical models, said private investable capital on the mainland totalled 83.1 trillion yuan (HK$102.7 trillion) by the end of last year, up 13.7 per cent from 2011.