China’s Wealth Transfer Wave Spurs Family Office Push

China’s wealth transfer market is entering a new phase as regulators and local authorities step up support for family trusts and family offices, according to Jiemian News. In June, China's central bank, the NDRC, the NFRA, the CSRC, SAFE and the Shanghai municipal government jointly issued an action plan for developing offshore finance in Shanghai, which called for studying the orderly development of family trusts and family office businesses. Earlier, the Shanghai municipal government office said it would support family trust development and promote a full-life-cycle wealth management model combining trust services and asset allocation. Market demand is also rising. A wealth report jointly released in June 2026 by Hurun Research Institute and Bank of East Asia said about 21 trillion yuan of wealth is expected to pass to the next generation over the next 10 years, and the scale of wealth transfer could reach 77 trillion yuan over 30 years. Chen Xuebin, chief executive of Shengshi Group, said Asia is becoming one of the fastest-growing regions for global family offices as capital flows shift and China’s intergenerational wealth transfer accelerates. Chen said family office clients are moving beyond managing financial products toward managing a cross-generational, cross-regional and cross-disciplinary family system. He said the focus is expanding to family governance, business succession, tax and legal issues, trust and insurance, education and health. He added that assets under management still matter, but are no longer enough to differentiate a firm, and that the real scarcity lies in turning complex information into judgments aligned with a family’s long-term goals. On asset allocation, UBS’s 2026 Global Family Office Report showed 60% of surveyed family offices plan to adjust strategic asset allocation in the next 12 months, 65% expect confidence in the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency to weaken over the next year, and 65% have invested in AI value-chain sectors. Chen said these shifts reflect a reassessment of concentration risk rather than panic selling, and advised family offices to reduce single-currency and single-market exposure, strengthen multi-currency cash flow and liability matching, and invest in AI in stages after assessing valuation, capital intensity, regulation and liquidity. The report also found only 35% of family offices have a clear succession plan. Chen said succession is often slow not because tools are lacking, but because families have yet to reach consensus on control, ownership, management and beneficiary rights. He said younger clients are becoming more aware of risk earlier, which is pushing family offices to build family balance sheets, risk lists and value goals sooner and update them as circumstances change.