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Themis Qi

China’s millionaire population and personal wealth levels are estimated to have grown much more slowly than the global average last year, partly owing to the sluggish property market, though wealth creation in the world’s second-largest economy is expected to continue, according to UBS, the world’s largest wealth manager.
Mainland China saw a net addition of 14,079 individuals with US$1 million or more in assets in 2025, inching up by 0.3 per cent to a total of 5.3 million, according to estimates in UBS’ latest Global Wealth Report. The Swiss bank analysed 56 markets understood to represent over 92 per cent of the world’s wealth.
UBS found that global wealth expanded for the third consecutive year in 2025, boosting the global millionaire population up by 1.5 per cent year on year to about 57.5 million people – about 2,680 per day.
The Swiss bank cited the strong performance of financial markets in most of these economies and real estate-dominated non-financial assets, in addition to currency appreciation outside the United States.
Global personal wealth expanded for the third consecutive year and grew by over 10 per cent last year, the fastest since 2017. But personal wealth in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan increased by only 4.6 per cent year on year, lagging the global average.
Home prices in mainland China fell by a further 4.1 per cent in 2025 from a year earlier, offsetting robust stock markets driven by renewed enthusiasm in the tech sector. The mainland’s CSI 300 Index jumped 18 per cent while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index soared 28 per cent.
However, the UBS findings on affluent Chinese were also affected by currency effects and insufficient access to wealth data there, said James Mazeau, an economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, in a media briefing on Tuesday.


Though equities traded in mainland China and Hong Kong underperformed during this year’s chip supercycle, Mazeau saw only a low possibility that the millionaire population would shrink in the coming years.
“We need to understand that China is also a big economic powerhouse as [the second-largest] economy, and we are to expect also a rising share of millionaires with time, just as we’re seeing in the US,” Mazeau said.
“Mainland China remains a powerful engine of long-term wealth creation, with one of the fastest expansions in high-net-worth segments globally over the past two decades,” said Amy Lo Choi-wan, chairman of UBS Global Wealth Management Asia and head and chief executive at UBS Hong Kong.
Last year’s global wealth growth was still led by the US, which added a net 441,078 millionaires, the highest rate in the world. With 1.9 per cent more, the country was home to over 23.6 million millionaires last year, holding the global crown.
Hong Kong also logged a 0.3 per cent rise in its number of millionaires, bringing the total to 628,000 by the end of 2025, while individual wealth averaged US$648,267 per adult, making it the fourth richest on the list globally.
The city’s average wealth trailed only Switzerland’s US$910,382, the US at US$696,277 and Luxembourg’s US$654,732.
Mainland China’s average wealth was not included, as it was outside the top 30 markets for 2025.
For those owning assets of US$1 billion or more, over 1,000 lived in the US last year, followed by 562 in mainland China and 211 in India.


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Global personal wealth rose at its fastest pace in nearly a decade last year, though China saw only modest gains, according to a new report


Global personal wealth rose at its fastest pace in nearly a decade last year, though China saw only modest gains, according to a new report.


China’s millionaire population grows slower than global average. Is the wealth boom over?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Global personal wealth rose at its fastest pace in nearly a decade last year, though China saw only modest gains, according to a new report

Global personal wealth rose at its fastest pace in nearly a decade last year, though China saw only modest gains, according to a new report