After years of waiting for China to lift heavy restrictions on airspace, wealthy travellers and aircraft manufacturers have reason to celebrate — the country’s skies are opening up to private flights.

The makers of helicopters and small business jets are predicting a major bump in sales — France’s Dassault Falcon just moved its Asia office from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, which it called the new “centre of gravity” for the market.

The private air travel industry “will be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the next 10 years”, Frank Lee, chairman of China Private Aviation Company, a consultancy offering aircraft acquisition and charter services, told AFP.

US jeweller Tiffany & Co is aiming to make a major push into China as it seeks to tap a growing appetite for luxury goods among the country’s new wealthy.

“China will rapidly become the place where we will have the greatest number of new stores,” Tiffany chairman Michael J. Kowalski said on Tuesday.

The firm, showcased in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, plans to open 25 to 30 outlets across the country over the next three years.

During its current fiscal year, which ends in January, the company will inaugurate 14 stores around the world, four of them in China, it added.

The Hurun Research Institute published the 2010 Hurun Wealth Report today for the second consecutive year.

The report analyses the number and distribution of China’s wealthy across the nation’s major cities and provinces.

The report shows that there are 875,000 people with more than RMB 10million (EUR 1.1M / USD 1.47M) in China today, an increase of 6.1% from last year.

This growth has occurred against a background of strong economic performance in China‘s economy.

GDP grew by 8.7% in 2009 to RMB 33.5trillion, and the Shanghai Composite Index rose over the same period from 2300 points to 3000, an increase of 30%.

While the rest of the world struggles to bounce back from the global financial crisis, China’s billionaires are living large, snapping up luxury products at a breathtaking pace.

Beijing’s Jinbao Street is the must-visit address for billionaires with yuan to burn.

Once a maze of alleys, the 800-metre (yard) stretch of road is now home to Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Gucci, Cartier, the exclusive Hong Kong Jockey Club and several five-star hotels.

It is official that China has become the country with the second largest population of billionaires in the world, just behind the US.

Revealed by the World Entrepreneur magazine, a list of 2007′s top 500 Chinese magnates determined their combined wealth more than 587 billion dollars.

Though the list included many from Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, the Kwok brothers of Sun Hung Kai Properties in Hong Kong topped the list.