China’s Super-Rich Are Big Foreign Spenders

When the Chinese market is usually invoked, it’s only a short segue to the rise of its ultra-powerful (as a consumer demographic) middle class. With the potential to rise into the billions itself, it’s this market that most Western retailers salivate over, but for China’s super-rich, it’s those Western goods they desire.

A new report compiled by Alibaba on the Chinese retailer’s top-spending consumers, defined as those who spend more than about $46,000 per year through sites like Taobao and Tmall, uncovered some key details about how frenzied the market for foreign, high-priced goods is among these shoppers, Internet Retailer reported. While there are only an estimated 40,000 members to Alibaba’s “Apass” grouping, as opposed to 400 million annual active users, they make more than 60 percent of all retail purchases online and most of those through Alibaba channels.

That’s all in addition to every order Apass members make being 10 times larger than the average Chinese online shopper.

However, a much larger cohort of high-spending consumers — those who spend about 5.5 times the average Alibaba shopper — could count as high as 61 million people by 2020. This might be the honeypot that Alibaba wants to chase, considering the ever-increasing members of the country entering what’s commonly referred to as its “middle class” will likely continue to balloon its ranks well beyond the next decade.