From Shanghai-based data group The Hurun Rich List, via Marketwatch:
There are currently 106 mainland billionaires, up from 15 last year… The
report added that China’s 800 richest individuals have net wealth of $459.3
billion, equivalent to 16% of China’s gross domestic product last year.
Wealth-to-GDP is a silly ratio, but one which refuses to go away: how often
do we hear that "Bill Gates’s wealth is greater than the GDP of [insert
random country here]". A much more interesting ratio would be the net wealth
of those 800 individuals as a percentage of the net wealth of China’s population
as a whole. More interesting still would be to look at China’s Gini coefficient
over the past few years, but the last National
Human Development Report for China seems to have been published in 2005.
(HT: Kedrosky,
who describes the report as "highly dubious"; I’m inclined to agree.)
Update: Forbes lists 40
Chinese billionaires. (Via Rodrik)