The widening social gap between the rich and the poor is clearly emerging in China as plans to make a private elite club comprised of the new rich has been revealed in reports on Chinese dailies in Beijing.

Reports said that the setting of the super rich exclusive club is within Beijing's former Forbidden City, now operated as a museum.

The exclusive club membership, according to reports, is priced at one million yuan or close to US$190,000 each.

This exclusive club has been offered and it went viral among Internet users, who openly criticized that this is again the start of a feudalism that persisted during the Chinese Imperial Era led by then Qing Dynasty before it collapsed in 1911.

Authorities at the Palace Museum - as it is known in Chinese - issued a statement late Monday condemning the move.

"At present we have thoroughly put a stop to this inappropriate behaviour and have undertaken comprehensive changes," it said in a related AP report.

The Palace Museum is well-aware of the increasing number of wealthy individuals and families in the country. In a recent Hurun Wealth Report released in Shanghai on Saturday, it has counted 1,900 billionaires now living in China.

Hurun Report: China's New Rich

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Wealth Report, which studies the demographics and other important details of China's emerging higher income group, showed that in the last year and a half, there were 56 new wealthy individuals in China. They under the age of 40 and have at least 1 billion yuan or some US$190 million in their bank accounts.

Of the 1,900 young billionaires, 44 started businesses from scratch, while only 12 inherited fortunes or estates.

Mr Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, suggested that China's young generation of rich people is better educated, more promising and more cosmopolitan. Almost every person on the list had been to college and nearly 20 percent had earned a master's or even higher degree in the United States or Europe.

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