According to the Global Luxury Report, BMW was voted the top luxury brand by 600 China’s richest individuals. Second came Louis Vuitton, followed by Mercedes-Benz and Rolex.

Even the global economic downturn has failed to sour the Chinese appetite for luxury goods.  By January this year, China's consumption of luxury goods reached 8.6 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 25 percent of the world total, surpassing the United States to become the second biggest luxury goods country (Japan is the No. 1), a report released by the World Luxury Association showed.

Bain & Company projected that sales of luxury products on the mainland would grow 12 percent this year from the year-earlier level, compared with an estimated 8 percent decline globally.

Even though with tremendous economic progress, China is still a developing country.  Given that, what does the excessive consumption of the luxury goods mean?

An article from the People's Daily made a very good point.  China's luxury good consumption is basically consistent with China's wealth distribution structure "20% of the population possesses 80% of the wealth".  There are still several million people in China who live on less than 1 dollar a day.  As such, there is nothing to be proud of being the number two in luxury goods consumption.  The phenomenon only means China's wealth distribution is abnormal.