The number of billionaires in China has overtaken that of the United States for the first time, an annual survey said on Thursday, calling it a “turning point” for the super-wealthy.
Advertisement
China now has 596 billionaires, up a “staggering” 242 over the past year, Shanghai-based luxury magazine publisher Hurun Report said, surpassing the 537 Americans.
The government crackdown on corruption among the Chinese rich also has had ripple effects for several names on the billionaire list.
New Chinese billionaires included Frank Wang of DJI, the world’s largest civilian drone aircraft company, with a valuation of $3.7 billion and Cheng Wei of taxi-hailing firm Didi Kuaidi, who just passed the $1 billion mark.
China has the second-largest economy in the world and the Hurun Rich List attributes the increasing number of billionaires in the country to large growth in the technology, real estate and manufacturing sectors. International Monetary Fund had forecasted that the economy would decline to 6.8 per cent this year from last year’s 7.3 per cent and further to 6.3 per cent in 2016. No. 2 was Jack Massachusetts, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, at $22.7 billion.
The ruling Communist Party promises more market reforms to revitalise the state-owned enterprise (SOE)-dominated export-oriented economy to the one that is led by domestic consumption.
“Despite the slowdown in the economy, China’s richest have defied gravity, recording their best year ever, and creating more wealth than any country has ever done before in a year”, said Rupert Hoogewerf, the Hurun Report’s chairman and chief researcher.
Hoogewerf said Hurun is only able to identify roughly 50 percent of the country’s billionaires, and that 15 percent of China’s wealth is hidden from the public. He was one of the first private Chinese investors to bet on the Indian market.
Advertisement
However, China’s richest tycoons have a few way to go before they catch up to their American counterparts as Mr Wang’s US$34.4 billion ($47 billion) fortune is less than half the wealth of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett.
