Wanted: 'Innocent' brides for China's ultra-rich

They have to be serious about getting married. These guys are looking for good wives

Money can't buy you love, but it helps. Screening events are being held around China to find suitable women for a matchmaking party for 32 rich men, each worth the equivalent of £10m. So far, 2,700 hopeful young women have signed up just for the interviews.

Matchmaking is big business in China and finding partners for multimillionaires is a lucrative game.

Forced to focus on building their pile of wealth during their early careers, many tycoons don't have the time to follow the advice of their parents on who to marry.

Although the Chinese economy continues to slow, the ranks of the ultra-rich continue to swell. One out of every 1,300 people in China has an annual income of one million yuan (£100,000) or more, says the latest edition of the Hurun Report on wealth in China, while those with more than 10 million yuan (£1m) broke through the one million mark for the first time, up 6.3 per cent on 2011.

The Guangzhou-based China Entrepreneurs' Club for Singles (CECS), a high-end matchmaking company targeting rich men, charges 200,000 yuan (£20,000) a year for membership fees. Candidates must be single, over 30 and have personal assets worth more than £10m, or be the CEO of a big company.

"They want women to have good looks, figures, manners and characters. And most important, they have to be serious about getting married. These guys are looking for good wives, not just pretty faces," Wendy Dai, a senior consultant at CECS, told the Shanghai Daily.

The women must be "tian su chun" or "sweet, simple and innocent", according to the promotional material. This is characterised by a lovely smile, "minimal materialistic demands" (no gold-diggers, please) and "minimal previous relationships" (a virgin, preferably).

Frank Chen, 32, an investment tycoon using a pseudonym, is looking for Ms Right. "I already have beautiful girls around me and I like them, but I won't marry them," he said. "I'm looking for a good woman, good wife and good mother to my children."