The world officially has a new billionaire capital. For the first time ever, Beijing is home to more billionaires than New York, according to the annual list of billionaires around the world compiled by Forbes for 2021. The Chinese capital won 33 new billionaires in 2020, bringing its total to 100 and narrowly ahead of New York City’s 99 billionaires, according to the magazine. The Big Apple added just seven new billionaires in the same time frame.
In terms of total population, New York City is about 40% of the size of Beijing, with a population of 8.4 million compared to 21 million for the Asian city. Beijing’s richest resident is Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, with a fortune of $ 35.6 billion (around € 29.9 billion). In New York, the city’s former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is the richest person, with a fortune of $ 59 billion (around 49.6 billion euros).
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The world’s great fortunes have grown even richer last year
The United States has long had more billionaires than any other country in the world, but China has caught up. China and Hong Kong created 210 new billionaires last year, according to Forbes’ ranking, more than any other nation. Five Chinese cities are among the ten cities with the most billionaires, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, third with 80 billionaires, Shenzhen, fifth with 68 billionaires, and Shanghai, sixth with 64 billionaires.
The only other US city to make the list is San Francisco, ranked eighth with 48 billionaires. The world’s great fortunes grew even richer last year, despite a pandemic and economic recessions. Globally, 660 people have become billionaires, bringing the total to 2,755 billionaires, for a global value of $ 13,100 billion (approximately 11 trillion euros), according to Forbes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the divide between the world’s billionaires and others. In the United States, for example, billionaires got 44% richer during the pandemic, Lina Batarags recently told Insider. At the same time, 80 million Americans lost their jobs and nearly 8 million fell into poverty.
Original version : Katie Warren/Insider
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