Beijing Becomes Billionaire Capital of the World

Beijing has become the new capital of billionaires after overtaking New York’s long-time position.

The Chinese capital has been named the city with the highest number of billionaires for the first time, a new report by China-based research firm Hurun says.

A total of 100 billionaires are now living in Beijing, compared with 95 in New York, the report says.

Shanghai, China’s center of commerce, comes in fifth place.

Hurun, which tracks wealth in China, has released an annual Global Rich List for the past five years measuring billionaires’ wealth in US dollars.

The private research firm, which also publishes luxury magazines, uses a mixture of information from publicly traded companies plus interviews to compile its data.

Other companies such as Forbes and Bloomberg use different methodology and arrive at different conclusions.

Hurun found that Beijing had welcomed 32 new billionaires since 2015, allowing it to vault past New York which it calculated only saw four new billionaires.

Moscow was in third place with 66 billionaires, according to Hurun.

Overall, China has overtaken the US as the country with the highest number of billionaires. However, the top 10 billionaires in Hurun’s list is still dominated by Americans.

China has 568 billionaires after gaining 90 new ones, compared with the US which has 535.

China’s billionaires boast a combined net worth of $1.4 trillion, which is similar to the GDP of Australia.

Hurun’s chairman Rupert Hoogewerf noted that the growth in China’s wealthy took place despite an economic slowdown and stock market instability.

He told the AP that it could be due to Chinese market regulators allowing a flood of new share issues after holding back Initial Public Offerings for several years.

Hurun found that the richest man in China is still Wang Jianlin, with an estimated worth of $26 billion.

However, Wang Janlin he has not cracked the top 10 billionaires in Hurun’s list, which is dominated by Americans.

The list is topped by Bill Gates with a net worth of $80 billion, followed by Warren Buffett with $68 billion.

In third place is Spanish fashion tycoon Amancio Ortega with a net worth of $64 billion.

Hurun’s report found that overall there are now 2,188 billionaires in the world, a new record.