Beijing is home to the world's most billionaires, edging New York City out

 

Night view of Central Business District with the new CCTV Tower, right, and other skyscrapers and high-rise office buildings in Beijing. Beijing is home to the world's most billionaires, pushing New York City out of the top slot. [Photo/IC]

Story Highlights:

--Beijing is home to 100 billionaires

--Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda is the richest Chinese

--China overtakes the US with the most billionaires

Beijing is home to the world's most billionaires, pushing New York City out of the top slot it had held for years, according to a Shanghai-based research and media outlet that keeps track of the world's wealthiest.

Despite a slowing economy, the Chinese capital added 32 billionaires, bringing its total to 100 and New York added four, giving it 95 billionaires, according to the Hurun Global Rich List 2016.

Moscow came in third with 66, and Hong Kong and Shanghai came in fourth and fifth with 64 and 50, respectively, Hurun said in its ranking of US dollar billionaires as of Jan 15.

Wang Jianlin of Dalian Wanda, one of China's top real estate developers, was the wealthiest Beijing resident with a net worth of $26 billion.

New York's top billionaires were businessman David Koch and Michael Bloomberg, the city's former mayor and media company owner. His wealth increased $16 billion to $37 billion, according to Hurun. Another city resident whose wealth increased is Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. He added $5 billion to go to $6.5 billion.

While China has passed the US with the most billionaires, the Hurun report noted that none of the richest billionaires are from China. Eight of the world's 11 wealthiest, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, the world's wealthiest with $80 billion, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg are from the US.

And the combined net worth of US billionaires is still nearly double that of Chinese billionaires, for a total of $2.4 trillion, just a little less than the GDP of France, according to the report.

Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of Hurun, said initial public offerings are behind the rapid expansion of Chinese wealth.

In October, China overtook the US for the first time as the country with the most billionaires within its borders. About 568 billionaires now live in China and 535 in the US.

Hoogewerf said the number of billionaires for the rest of the world was held back by a slowdown in the global economy, the strengthening of the US dollar and the drop in oil prices. - China Daily/Asia News Network


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We don't need billionaire philanthropists, we need change !

An elderly woman sitting inside a store at a border village near the demilitarized zone in Yeoncheon, South Korea, Jan on 8, 2016. PHOTO: REUTERS 

Society needs people who adopt business models that can enrich ordinary people's lives and free them from a life bound by servitude and dependency.

These days we praise charitable donations and philanthropy; however, we must understand that they are the symptoms of a dysfunctional society, not the remedy.

It’s similar to the Red Cross during wartime; they can’t stop the war. In many ways, they propagate the dysfunctions because the biggest funders of these temporary resolutions are also the greatest oppressors of our society, from whom these dysfunctions stem.

There are, for example, many people suffering around the world from curable diseases simply because they don’t have access to proper medical assistance. Why do they have no access? Because they are too poor.

That is to say, this problem is derived from the massive income inequality around the world. If they could earn a sufficient living on their own, they wouldn’t need any charitable aid from developed nations. They don’t need rich philanthropists giving them millions of dollars. What they need is rich philanthropists to stop hoarding money and allow them to make a sustainable living.

Let’s look at Bill Gates, who was simply driven to make as much money as possible at any cost. Along the way, he has smothered many smaller companies, copied others’ ideas, and snuffed out many innovative competing products. Yet, all is forgiven and forgotten because now he donates a lot of money.

It is exactly this type of thinking that breeds income inequality around the world, which leads to people dying from poverty, and thus preserves the need for these billionaire philanthropists to remedy the situation.

Another exemplary indication of this problem is Lance Armstrong. He cheated to further his career and eventually got caught. Yet, today he is still a millionaire and is respected by millions of people: 3.8 million followers on Twitter to be exact. Why? Because he is a philanthropist who donated lots of money to cancer charities. None of this would have happened had he not cheated, but people forgive and forget. In our society, winners prosper no matter the means, as long as they become philanthropists in the end.

Take a moment to think of the other cyclists who didn’t allow themselves to cheat. Where are they now? Can you name them? Are they rich and famous?

To address the real origin of the problem, we need to change the way we go about earning and spending money at the very basic level. Instead of being driven to become philanthropists, treat people around you without greed and with consideration. Make your living and enable others around you to do so as well. If you aim to save money in order to be a philanthropist, you provoke everyone to be protective and hoard money also in order to control how the money gets spent. The more everyone does it, the more we are compelled and even forced to do it. We need to stop this vicious circle.

The resolution I’m putting forward is not a utopian concept. We simply need more people investigating and adopting business models that can enrich ordinary people’s lives, which can free us from a life bound by servitude and dependency.

In turn, this would empower us to solve our societal problems without asking such billionaires to solve them for us with their accumulated wealth. Nowadays I’m starting to see more and more entrepreneurs and business owners trying to figure this out, and it is quite inspiring. I think the real change derives from the ordinary things we do.

If this type of mission is to succeed and be sustained, the principal function of business must be ordinary. It is impossible for a sustainable economy to remain healthy and upright if it is only supported by the crutch of charitable donations and philanthropy.

The principal drive to better our society must come from ordinary businesses.

Hero-worshipping rich benefactors and philanthropists encourages everyone to accumulate more wealth than they need. We do not need billionaire philanthropists; we need ordinary business owners who treat other humans with respect and encouragement.

They are not rare or even uncommon; they exist all around us if we look carefully enough. It’s just that we are so busy looking up to iconic figures like the Bill Gateses of the world that we can’t see them.

By Justin Hiraga
  / 
Asia News Network

Justin Hiraga is an assistant professor at the Department of International Business Languages of Seokyeong University in Seoul. He can be contacted at jthiraga@gmail.com. –Ed.

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