There are wealthy entrepreneurs, there are children of wealthy entrepreneurs, there are wealthy landlords.
A lot of my customers, who are white-collar, have made good money in the stock market over the past decade and also in the real estate market.
But to be honest a lot of it is a matter of confidence. My Chinese customers definitely don't make as much as their American counterparts on average, but there is a sense that life is getting better and better, they're making more and more money, they have savings in the bank, so it's OK to splurge from time to time. I would say 40-50% of my Chinese social circle owns an iPad, even though they probably only pull in 20-30k USD a year.
It's all about "face." Modern urban Chinese care more about name-brands than their American counterparts - you've got French-branded grocery chains, Australian jean stores and German cars in all major urban cores. People judge you based on solely three things, prestige of the University you went to, prestige of the Company/Dan-wei you work for, the prosperity of the region you came from (coastal or inner region). All of these three things point to one thing: how much you money you've got.
In a country that's more capitalistic than America and yet still have inferiority complex still fresh from 50 years ago, you've got to flaunt your wealth even if you don't gotta it.
Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the Chinese index was up to 10x from 2000. "Stir-fry stocks" is a national obsession as much as Sunday football states-side; and even now, the real estate market speculation is climbing northward to basically match NYC condo price for a Shanghai condo.
So like the 1920's America, no the average Chinese citizen is not making all of this money but a select few have's are making money hand over the fist off the have-not's. Modern China is a rich man's heaven and a poor man's hell.
> you've got to flaunt your wealth even if you don't gotta it.
I've noticed this trend with folks who came from an emerging economy. In my case, growing up in an immigrant rich area, it was hard not to notice all of the Korean kids with the designer clothes, and parents picking them up in new BMW, Benz and Lexus cars -- most of whom worked their tails off to get into the choicest colleges. Inquiring about their first generation immigrant parents almost always revealed they worked their asses off in low-end jobs like grocery stores, cleaning services or dry cleaners and often as not lived in crummy apartments in a sketchy part of town. The need to project a "wealthy" image was so great that they often were in deep debt to buy all that stuff. It seemed crazy to me till years later I started to understand better the social pressures that caused this phenomenon.
