The number of billionaires in China has overtaken that of the US for the first time, an annual survey said yesterday, despite slowing growth in the world’s second-largest economy.
China now has 596 billionaires, up a “staggering” 242 over the last year, Shanghai-based luxury magazine publisher Hurun Report said, surpassing the 537 Americans.
“Despite the slowdown in the economy, China’s richest have defied gravity, recording their best year ever,” Hurun Report chairman Rupert Hoogewerf said in a statement.
Real estate and entertainment magnate Wang Jianlin (王健林) dethroned Alibaba founder Jack Ma (馬雲) as the country’s richest person, Hurun’s annual wealth ranking showed.
Wang, who founded conglomerate Wanda, saw his fortune jump more than 50 percent to US$34.4 billion, helped by a surge in the stock price of a listed unit.
Wang is known outside China for a string of overseas acquisitions including the organizer of Ironman extreme endurance contests, Swiss sports marketing group Infront, and a stake in Spanish soccer club Atletico Madrid.
He burst into the spotlight in 2012 by buying US cinema chain AMC Entertainment for US$2.6 billion.
Wang took the top spot back from Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, because of a collapse in the Internet company’s New York-quoted shares, which were the world’s biggest initial public offering when it listed last year. Ma’s wealth still stands at US$22.7 billion.
Beverage tycoon Zong Qinghou (宗慶后) of Wahaha remained in third place with just over US$21 billion, while Pony Ma (馬化騰), founder of Internet giant Tencent, which operates popular messaging app WeChat, took fourth place with a little under US$19 billion.
Lei Jun (雷軍) of smartphone maker Xiaomi, which is seeking to challenge Apple, jumped five places to fifth by doubling his wealth to more than US$14 billion.
Yan Hao (嚴昊) of road builder China Pacific Construction was sixth while the founder of search engine giant Baidu, Robin Li (李彥宏), dropped to seventh amid worries over his company’s huge spending to expand its business.
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
‘VERY DIRE’: This year’s drought, exacerbated by El Nino, is affecting 44 percent of Malawi’s crop area and up to 40 percent of its population of 20.4 million In the worst drought in southern Africa in a century, villagers in Malawi are digging for potentially poisonous wild yams to eat as their crops lie scorched in the fields. “Our situation is very dire, we are starving,” 76-year-old grandmother Manesi Levison said as she watched over a pot of bitter, orange wild yams that she says must cook for eight hours to remove the toxins. “Sometimes the kids go for two days without any food,” she said. Levison has 30 grandchildren under her care. Ten are huddled under the thatched roof of her home at Salima, near Lake Malawi, while she boils
RSS