Beijing's Billionaires Top NYC

Beijing is now the "Billionaire Capital of the World,” having 100 of the super wealthy compared to New York City's puny 95 super rich.

The Chinese capital added 32 new billionaires last year while New York City only gained four, The Associated Press reported.

Other top cities also lagged. Moscow, Hong Kong and Shanghai have 66, 64 and 50 billionaires respectively.

The new ranking was released by Shanghai research firm Hurun and was based on stock prices as of Jan. 15, on the heels of a 40 percent drop in the Chinese markets. During the market’s peak the previous summer, Hurun would have found 150 billionaires in China, spurred by a flood of initial public offerings, the AP said.

"What we showed today is that at the super-wealth creation level, the Chinese are now leading," said Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf. "People will look at China the same way that people looked at Stanford or Silicon Valley in the 1990s."

He estimated that the Hurun report, which listed five Chinese cities among the top 10, identified only about 50 percent of China’s billionaires, said CNN. 

"Think of it like an iceberg, the tip of it is much smaller than the whole," said. "We do our best to find [hidden money], but they go to such extraordinary lengths to hide it."

In October, Forbes reported a record 335 billionaires from mainland China, up 93 from the previous year but still trailing the 500-plus in the United States.

Forbes pointed to growth in Internet and mobile phone industries as a source of China’s growing wealth.

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