Sometimes you can’t really tell who is super-rich in Hong Kong. The chances are, though, that there’s someone in your building who qualifies.
Here’s the evidence. According to Knight Frank’s latest Wealth Report, seven people out of every 10,000 in Hong Kong are super-rich.
Hong Kong has an estimated 5,140 super-rich, up by 20% in 2017. In other words, there is one super-rich individual – defined as someone with more than US$50 million in net assets – for every 1,429 Hongkongers.
What this also means is that in a typical housing estate with 50 floors, each with eight units containing an average of three family members, there’s a good chance someone lives there who is super-rich.
The numbers also make Hong Kong second only to Monaco for the density of its super-rich population. The independent city-state has 13 super-rich per 10,000.
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The same trend is found in luxury property. According to Knight Frank, US$1 million will buy you 237 square feet at the top-end of the Hong Kong market. Again, this puts Hong Kong second only behind Monaco in terms of price.
Hong Kong’s super-rich own an average of three investment properties, which puts them in sixth place, behind the top echelon of Saudi Arabia, who have an average of five.
The total number of super-rich in the world grew 10% to reach 129,700 last year, largely thanks to buoyant equity and asset markets.
No, we gave HKG to China to build trade agreements. The protests were caused by mandatory education reform, and destroying the democratic process in HKG. By removing the right to vote they officially declared HKG a communist country. It was wealthy waaaayyyy before we handed to back to China, it was wealthy because it was British in the middle of Asia.
The West has already tried to destroy Hong Kong in the 1997 Asian Financial crisis. Thanks to Hong Kong’s smart residents and China backing, the West’s attempt ended in a painful failure.