China’s 400 Richest
China’s wealthiest are gaining against their U.S. counterparts.
The total net worth of China’s 40 Richest, all of whom are now billionaires, doubled in the past year as bust turned to boom. A quick comparison of our new Forbes China Rich List with that of the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, published in September, appears to tell a expected story. China’s 400 Richest are worth a record $314 billion, just one-fourth the total net worth of their American counterparts. China’s richest person, BYD’s Wang Chuanfu, has a net worth of $5.8 billion, far below the $50 billion fortune of U.S.’s richest citizen, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. In the U.S., Wang would only rank no. 40.
But the more interesting story is the fact that Chinese tycoons are making huge gains, at a time when many of the world’s richest haven’t been as lucky. As a result, there is a record 79 billionaires, up from 24 a year earlier, more than Germany, Russia or India had published in our worldwide billionaire rankings. The U.S. has 391 billionaires, down from 489 a year ago. The total net worth of the China 400 jumped 81%, or $141 billion, at a time when American’s wealthiest lost $300 billion, or 20% of their cumulative total, dropping to $1.27 trillion.
Leave a Reply
