Beijing overtakes New York as billionaire central
Ninety of the 99 new super-rich on the Hurun Global Rich List come from Greater China. However, economic disparity has also grown with 300 million Chinese living below the poverty line.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Greater China, i.e. mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, has more billionaires than any other place in the world, this according to the new Hurun Global Rich List.
Point of pride is the fact that the number of billionaires (in US dollars) in the world grew by 99 to 2,188 last year, with 90 new entries coming from Greater China. Chinese billionaires now number 568 against 535 in the United States.
The world’s wealthiest person remains Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with a net worth of US$ 80 billion, followed by American investor Warren Buffett, whose a net worth is US$ 68 billion. However, for the South China Morning Post, notwithstanding the size of billionaires’ assets, their number is crucial for the future.
Focusing on the notion of ‘self-made man,’ China’s media has noted that the People's Republic came in first in terms of nouveaux riches who made their money without family money. At the same time, China can now boast of having the largest middle class in the world.
However, a recent report by Crédit Suisse found that whilst China’s middle class is indeed large, most of the country’s 1.4 billion people earns less than the world average. In terms of Gross Domestic Product per capita, China is still ranked 90th.
In 2014, some 71 million mainland Chinese lived below the poverty line, earning less than US$ 350 a year (according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics).
This figure rises to 300 million if the United Nations definition of absolute poverty is used, namely living on less than two US dollars a day.
No wonder then that Yu Hua, one of China’s foremost contemporary writers, picked "disparity" as one of ten words that best describe the country today.
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