The world officially has a new billionaire capital. For the first time ever, more billionaires are housed in Beijing than New York City, according to Forbes’ annual world list of billionaires for 2021.
The Chinese capital acquired 33 new billionaires in 2020, raising its total to 100 billionaires and knocking out only the 99 billionaires from New York via Forbes. The Big Apple added only seven new billionaires at the same time. In terms of total population, New York City is about 40% of Beijing’s size, with a population of 8.4 million compared to Beijing’s about 21 million.
The richest resident of Beijing is Zhang Yiming, the founder of the TikTok parent company ByteDance, which is worth $ 35.6 billion. In New York City, former mayor Michael Bloomberg is the richest with a net worth of $ 59 billion.
TikTok founder Zhang Yiming is the richest resident of Beijing with a net worth of $ 35.6 billion.
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The US has long been home to more billionaires than any other country in the world, but China is catching up. According to the Forbes report, China and Hong Kong have minted 210 new billionaires in the past year, more than any other nation.
Five Chinese cities are among the ten cities with the most billionaires, including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in third place with 80 billionaires, Shenzhen in fifth place with 68, and Shanghai in sixth place with 64.
The only other American city to make the list was San Francisco, with eight billionaires in eighth place.
The world’s ultra-rich became even richer last year despite a pandemic and economic recessions. Worldwide, 660 people have become new billionaires, bringing the total of 2,755 billionaires per Forbes to $ 13.1 billion.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the gap between the billionaires and everyone else. In the US, for example, billionaires have become 44% richer in the pandemic, Lina Batarags recently told Insider. In the same period, 80 million Americans lost their jobs and nearly 8 million fell into poverty.