Fewer billionaires in mainland China as ultra-wealthy feel pain of Beijing’s tech, property crackdowns, study says

The number of billionaires in mainland China slipped slightly last year as wealth creation in the world’s second largest economy was subdued by Beijing’s crackdown on the technology and property sectors, according to the latest study by New York-headquartered Wealth-X.

Hong Kong, which hosts the sixth-largest billionaire population in the world, ahead of countries such as Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, experienced relatively slow wealth creation too, as it lost some of its shine as an international business hub, the wealth data provider said.

From 410 in 2020, there were just 400 billionaires in 2021 in mainland China, a drop of 2.4 per cent. This was still enough to put it in second place, ahead of Germany but a long way behind the US which boasts 975 billionaires with a nest egg that grew by a fifth to US$4.45 trillion.

“In Asia’s largest billionaire markets, robust gains in India contrasted with more subdued development in China and Hong Kong. This partly reflected differing approaches to virus suppression, but also regulatory factors,” the latest report said. India’s billionaire population rose by 19.2 per cent to 124, while their cumulative wealth surged 21.4 per cent to US$384 billion.