According to a study by Julius Baer Group and CLSA Asia Pacific Markets, China’s millionaires will account for half of Asia’s rich as well as hold more than half of the wealth in the region by 2015. From Bloomberg:

Asia’s millionaires will more than double in number to 2.8 million, with 1.4 million high net worth people in China, according to the Asia Wealth Report released yesterday. Chinese millionaires will hold $8.76 trillion of the $15.81 trillion that the region’s millionaires are expected to have, it said.

“In terms of the overall amounts of wealth that will increase, it’s very much a China story,” Stefan Hofer, emerging market equity strategist at Julius Baer, said yesterday at a press conference held for reporters in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Expansion in the world’s fastest-growing major economy created 502,000 millionaires in the country last year, according to the report. State and private investments helped drive a 9.5 percent gain in second-quarter gross domestic product from a year earlier, the government said in July, faster than estimated as growth in industrial output and retail sales accelerated and copper and aluminum production reached records.