The four-day Shanghai Top Marques 2006 was closed yesterday, earning 500 million yuan (US$63 million). Currently luxuries are easily found in Chinese mainland. Extravagant merchandises popular in the Western world have also become fashionable in China.

Yang Qingshan, General Secretary of China Brand Strategy Research Association, reveals that 13% of total population in Chinese mainland can afford to buy luxuries. But numbers of rich people in China are actually increasing slowly compared with the West. However, many investors earn regard China as the most important luxury market in the world.

Luxuries such as 50-million-yuan painting, 20-million-yuan jade, 10-million-yuan racing car and 5-million-yuan article of furniture will never be considered as astonishing gadgets.

But who bought these luxuries at the Top Marques? According to its organizers, buyers are those billionaires listed in Forbes, people who never show off their real wealth, and managers from Chinese private or foreign owned enterprises.

Billionaires from cities like Yiwu, Wenzhou, and Ningbo, in Zhejiang Province enjoy collecting expensive limousines. They are not social celebrities, but they can allocate large sum of money. Some 80% of trade volume of the Top Marques last year were contributed by these people. A staff assistant from the exhibition says these billionaires are frequenters of the Top Marques.

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