How to Say Wealth: 财产(cáichǎn) or 财富 (cáifù)

您好!

Today, I want to share with you the myriad ways to say wealth in Chinese. The richest city in China today is Shanghai, generating a fiscal revenue of 410.95 billion Yuan per year. This value equates to $67.81 billion dollars (for just one city!).

Now, let’s move on to language learning! In order to communicate that you mean to say wealth, two words need careful consideration– 财产(cáichǎn) and 财富 (cáifù). These words might seem similar but each one has to be used in a different context.

财产 (cáichǎn) literally denotes “property” and is used in a narrow sense to describe the property/assets of an individual, corporation, country, etc. It directly emphasizes the legal construct of property:

Example:

“国有财产受法律保护”

“guó yǒu cái chǎn shòu fǎ lǜ bǎo hù ”

“Government owned assets enjoy legal protection”

Conversely, 财富 (cáifù) means “wealth” in a broader sense. It’s a word you can use when you want to sound more profound (i.e. Forbes calls itself 财富 in Chinese):

Example:

“中国制造’需提高财富创造力”

“zhōng guó zhì zào ”xū tí gāo cái fù chuàng zào lì”

“Made in China’ needs to increase its ability to create wealth”

再见!

There are 3 comments

  1. Calvin Wang

    It’s not surprise that Shanghai is the wealthiest, richest city in China, since it’s most populated city in China. Chinese language is really unique due to the fact that Chinese words are made up of two or more characters. One interesting fact is when one combines the meaning of the characters, they will yield the definition of the word. In this case, one will be able to understand what a word means by studying and combining the definition of it’s characters. Quite amazing right?

  2. Andrew W.

    I enjoyed this short and sweet article. I didn’t know that 财产 related to property. I now have an extra way to describe someone’s wealth! Keep up the good work!

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