The jets and the sharks

anti-corruption drive may have taken a substantial toll on the sales of luxury cars, watches, jewellery and liquor by government officials, but private aviation has dodged the crackdown. What's more, the latest forecast from Bombardier, a Canadian company that makes jets for the well-to-do, projects 2,420 business jets will be delivered on the mainland in the next 20 years - 1,000 of them in the next decade.

"[Orders haven't dropped] as much as one might have thought. Our prediction is that there will be substantial purchases this year," said Wealth-X CEO Mykolas Rambus, as the anti-graft push is mostly against wealth the public can see.

When it comes to privately owned private jets on the mainland, living large means exactly that.

"They are really focused on the large cabin aircraft, the large business jets, the ones that have an ultra-long range, intercontinental range," said Felicia Knippa, a designer of plane interiors. "It really suits the Chinese way of doing business. You could be eating dinner, playing cards, doing karaoke. They like to travel in larger groups."

Bjorn Naf, Metrojet CEO, adds: "As a general rule, Chinese business jet buyers tend to opt for mid-sized to large, long-range to ultra-long range aircraft."

With the rise of new mainland wealth, tables for chess or checkers on planes gave way to mahjong tables. "What was neat was the appearance of red," Knippa said. "Westerners are very shy with colours, and red was more or less a no-no inside an aircraft. And of course the integration of special symbols. Karaoke machines and mahjong tables, that was a novelty."

But the Chinese tend to want delivery as soon as possible, Naf said, so rather than opt for time-consuming customisations, "they often settle with the standard configurations offered by the original equipment manufacturers, but with their own choice of fabric, veneer and colour scheme."