415 billionaires is what the US has. This is by the last count of Forbes magazine. Who’s No. 2 you may ask? China.
A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the widely watched Hurun Report. Forbes has documented the number of Chinese billionaires as 66.
Unlike America’s rich, China’s are hardly famous. Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett are known around the world. But Yang Huiyan and Robin Li?
Yet, who they are, and what they decide to do - or are allowed to do - with their money and newfound influence will have political and economic consequences in China and probably far beyond, analysts say.
‘They could start buying companies in the U.S.,’ Chang Chun, an economist at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, said. ‘They have so much influence.’
On Tuesday, Alibaba.com, one of China’s biggest Internet companies, had a blockbuster stock offering, raising nearly as much as Google and soaring 193 percent on its first day of trading.
That came after the debut on Monday of the state-owned energy company PetroChina on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Its market valuation ran up to more than $1 trillion, topping that of any company in history.
On paper it has dethroned Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world.
Similarly, China Mobile is the world’s most valuable telecommunications company. The state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which was nearly insolvent a decade ago, is worth more than Citigroup.
‘A lot of people are surprised at how fast this has happened,’ said Jing Ulrich, an analyst at JPMorgan. ‘But this is the power of the capital markets. A lot of people’s wealth is based on newly listed companies.’
After a nearly decade-long bear market for Chinese stocks, investors here are in party mode. The Shanghai Stock Market is up nearly 400 percent in two years. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange is shattering records.
The emergence of the superwealthy is a dramatic turnaround in a country that once branded enemies of the state ‘capitalist roaders.’
Robin Li, the 38-year-old founder of Baidu, which is called China’s Google, is now worth about $2.4 billion, making him richer than Jerry Yang of Yahoo. Ma Huateng, 36, of Tencent, another Internet giant, is worth $1.9 billion. And Jason N. Jiang, the 34-year-old founder of Focus Media, is worth $1.1 billion.
