China's rich are young and keen to travel - survey

BEIJING (Reuters) - Compared with other countries, China's new urban rich are younger, better-educated and keener to travel, a survey by international credit card organisation MasterCard showed on Monday.

China will have 8.5 million affluent households with annual income above $25,000 by 2015.

The 25 million members of those households will have annual discretionary spending power of $117 billion in constant dollar terms, the card firm estimated.

In 2005, China had 2.9 million such households with $18 billion to spend on things apart from life's necessities.

Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, MasterCard's economic adviser, said China's wealthy were "shockingly young" compared with their counterparts in North America, Europe and other emerging Asian economies.

According to the survey of 900 people in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou with annual household income between $16,000 and $50,000, more than two-thirds were under 40.

"We have never seen such a phenomenon: that is, affluent families are dominated by young people," Wong told a news conference.

The survey found 83 percent of China's young urban rich have a university education and nearly 80 percent of them travelled abroad at least once in 2006. Their purchasing power can be felt "far and wide", Wong said.

In general, Hong Kong and Macau remain the top two foreign destinations for newly affluent Chinese. But among those who have been abroad at least five times, Europe and the United States are becoming the favourite destinations, the survey found.