China is surpassing the United States
Where are all the billionaires? In China, despite an economy slowdown, corruption, crack down…
According to The Hurun Report, a China-based wealth research firm, China has 568 billionaires whereas the United States has 535 becoming the first in the world list. It surpassed the U.S. in summer 2015 and has grown by 90% last year only.
However, Hurun’s list is subject to debate, because it is different from Forbes’ list and other wealth expert firms, which keep the US as the country with the highest number of billionaires. According to Forbes’ 2015 China report, China has 335 billionaires whereas the US has 536.
Usually, when an economy is slowing down, billionaire growth decelerates too. But from 2014 to 2015, the total wealth of the world’s billionaires grew by 9 percent, reaching $7.3 trillion in 2015.
According to Hurun, Beijing would have surpassed New York as the billionaire capital of the world.
Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, declared “Despite its own slowdown and falling stock markets, China minted more new billionaires than any other country in the world last year, mainly on the back of new listings”.
Hoogewerf was not been able to explain why Hurun’s numbers are so different from Forbes‘, just claiming people’s personal wealth is hardly an exact science — especially in the unclear Chinese economy.
He also said that was a low count; he estimates they missed, at least, two, because “Some people deliberately make their wealth a secret because … they gained it through illegal ways.” and “Some others simply prefer to keep a low profile.”
Hurun lists the different main sources of wealth in China. Real Estate, Manufacturing and technology are the 3 biggest sources of wealth in China, the first one produces 117 billionaires, the second one 94 and the last one created “only” 68 billionaires.
According the report, China also has the largest number of young billionaires (under age 40) and of self-made women: 93 out of 124 self-made women billionaires worldwide are from China.
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