China’s high-end yacht owners say industry growth stifled by structural gaps

As the country with the world’s largest cohort of billionaires, China is no stranger to wealthy elites engaging in luxurious leisure activities, but one common pastime in the West does not seem to have attracted a commensurate level of interest across the Pacific – yachting.While Chinese e-commerce billionaire Richard Liu recently announced a multibillion-dollar investment in a new yacht company, regulatory hurdles and infrastructure gaps have kept China’s wealthiest individuals from fully embracing the high seas, according to yacht owners and industry players in southern China.The JD.com founder’s launch of yacht brand Sea Expandary last month, with a planned investment of 5 billion yuan (US$723 million), signalled a potential transformation of yachting into a more accessible, mass-market activity in China, as its appeal fades among the affluent, they said.Wang, a Guangzhou resident who bought a two-deck yacht for more than 10 million yuan several years ago, said the experience has fallen “far short” of his expectations.According to Wang, the biggest challenge lies in the water-use restrictions of the Greater Bay Area – the economic and business hub that links the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau with several cities in mainland China’s Guangdong province.“Whenever I sail south past the waters of Hong Kong or Macau, I receive a call from the local police station shortly after returning to Guangdong,” he said.