Opinion / China Watch
China's great haul: 15 billionaires
(USA TODAY)
Updated: 2006-11-02 14:23
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-02-chinese-billionaires_x.htm?cs
p=34
SHANGHAI -- Forget Chairman Mao's workers' paradise. China is taking a
great leap toward huge private fortunes.
Forbes' annual list of the richest Chinese out today includes a record 15
billionaires, up from 10 last year and just three in 2004.
That's chump change in the USA, where all 400 on Forbes' list of richest
Americans are billionaires. Still, a country that once persecuted
disciples of free enterprise is now barreling down the capitalist road.
China's new billionaires have profited from enterprises ranging from
selling TVs to recycling paper to building condos. "Chinese are born with
entrepreneurialism in their genes," says Russell Flannery, who compiled
Forbes' list.
The combined worth of China's richest 40 jumped nearly 50% from last year
to $38 billion. The minimum fortune to gain entry to the exclusive club:
$514 million.
Topping the list is electrical appliance king Wong Kwong Yu, 37, whose
worth is estimated at $2.3 billion. That's 4% of the value of the world's
richest man, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
China's recent surge in mega-wealth is "comparable to the U.S. at the end
of the 19th century, when you had the Rockefellers and Carnegies," says
Rupert Hoogewerf, CEO of Hurun Report, a rival list of the rich.
The late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping paved the way for today's
billionaires in the 1980s, when he freed the economy from the
straitjacket of central planning imposed by Mao Zedong, the revolutionary
founder of the People's Republic of China.
The percent of households with large fortunes in a country of 1.3 billion
is still tiny. Los Angeles County has 263,000 millionaire households,
about the same number as all of China, according to an April 2006 survey
by the research firm TNS Financial Services.
The prospect of many more millionaires in coming years has lured
representatives of companies that peddle high-end goods to Shanghai this
week for China's Luxury Summit. They are talking about how to cash in on
China's burgeoning wealth.
Tom Murry, president of New York-based Calvin Klein, says on his first
visit to China in 1974 that he saw "dirt roads and everybody wearing the
same clothes."
Today, Calvin Klein has 43 stores in China. In March, it plans to open
its first Calvin Klein Collection luxury store in Beijing. China, Murry
says, has undergone "a radical change, the biggest transformation in any
country I've ever observed."
Bill Hutchinson, general manager of Simpson Marine, a yacht dealer based
in Hong Kong, agrees. "The wealth and speed of growth in China is
staggering," says Hutchinson, who predicts boat sales will soon rival
those in the USA. "The lure of China's riches are profound for all the
luxury goods purveyors. We're like chickens sitting on an egg. When it
hatches, it's going to be a big chicken."
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