China's new rich still hooked on bling
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I recently read an interview with Rupert Hoogewerf, who founded the Hurun Report, China's rich list, in 1999. He said that although China's new rich may be wealthy or powerful, they generally don't have good taste.
While true, it's an unfair thing to say, because taste doesn't come with wealth anywhere in the world. Taste has to be acquired and not bought.
China's rapid economic transformation has led to an unprecedented explosion in the number of newly rich people. China had only 24 billionaires a decade ago. Last year there were 1,363 with an average age of 43. It also has no fewer than 875,000 people worth at least 10 million yuan ($1.52 million), with an average age of 39.
Many from both groups come from modest backgrounds. However, like the Chateau Lafite Rothschild red wine from Bordeaux that rich Chinese prefer, taste has to be carefully nurtured to maximize the chance of successfully maturing.
"The rich are different from you and me," F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly told Ernest Hemingway, who reputedly responded, "Yeah, they have more money." Well, the nouveau riche are fairly similar the world over but are strikingly different from old money.
Most nouveau riche crave recognition. They seem to want the biggest, glitziest, most expensive things. Mere possession is not enough, so their wealth has to be patently obvious to all. Most seem to suffer from extreme cases of the edifice complex.
A successful businessman in China reportedly spent $10 million to erect a replica of the White House in which to live and is addressed as "Mr. President." A Russian oligarch builds the world's biggest yacht at a cost of over $1 billion to compliment his on-land ownership of Chelsea FC. Of course I can understand the urge. When I got to Harvard Law School, I bought the biggest decal I could find that screamed "I GO TO HARVARD" and put it on my ugly unbranded attaché case.
Contrast this with old money. Take David Rockefeller Jr., with whom I worked on several charity projects. He is the most decent and unassuming of people. When I was in middle school in Michigan, our teacher told us that the Rockefellers never wore new shoes, but instead had people break them in both for comfort and so as not to draw attention to themselves. David's shoes were far from new, so it's a pity that I never asked him if what the teacher said was really true.
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