Cartier's biggest single sale in China last year was of a diamond necklace valued at ?1.5 million, contributing to a 40 percent surge in sales. Cartier's east China regional manager, Josephine Chien, one of the guests at the banquet, said her firm had two boutiques in China in 2004 but now has 11. By 2010 this will have increased to almost 30 and China will have overtaken Japan as the company's second biggest market.
"There are a lot of people who have become rich all of a sudden and they like to wear things that get them recognition. They want to show people they have made it," she said.
It is not the same everywhere. While rich people in wealthy eastern regions such as Shanghai, Bei-jing, Guangdong Province and Zhejiang Province are happy to talk about their fortunes, Hoogewerf said, it is harder to glean information from their counterparts in western provinces, where tens of millions of people are still living on less than a dollar a day.
With income disparities widening, some question whether the publication of rich lists is good for social stability. At a press conference to announce the results of the lifestyle survey, a local journalist asked: "Don't you think this will make ordinary people hate the rich?"
The hundreds of wealthy people who contributed anonymously to the research appear to accept Hoogewerf's argument that openness will ease suspicion rather than foster resentment. Most have first-hand experience of what it is like to be poor.
"Perhaps some people are envious or angry, but I have never really thought about it. I'm a businessman," said Yu Pang Lin, a former rickshaw driver who now uses a large chunk of the fortune he has made from the Hilton Group to pay for ambulances and cataract operations in China's poorest regions. "When I was young we often didn't have enough to eat. Now I have huge assets, but I don't think about it much. I only see it in terms of how many people I can help."
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