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SHANGHAI - THE United States has more billionaires than any other country: 415 by Forbes magazine's last count.
No. 2, and closing fast? China.
A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the Hurun Report, and 66, according to Forbes.
Unlike America's rich, China's are hardly famous. Mr Bill Gates and Mr Warren Buffett are known around the world. But Ms Yang Huiyan and Mr Robin Li?
Yet, who they are and what they decide to do - or are allowed to do - with their money and new-found influence will have political and economic consequences in China - and probably far beyond, analysts say.
'They could start buying companies in the US,' Dr Chang Chun, an economist at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, said of China's new rich. 'They have so much influence.'
Aptly, China's new billionaires are building their staggering wealth on the backs of the richest companies you have never heard of. Among the most celebrated are the young Internet tycoons. Mr Li, the 38-year-old founder of Baidu, China's Google, is now worth about US$2.4 billion (S$3.5 billion), which makes him richer than Mr Jerry Yang of Yahoo.
The richest person in China, since last April, is a woman: Ms Yang Huiyan of Country Garden, the real estate company.
Ms Yang, 26, is easily the richest woman in Asia. A graduate of Ohio State University, she is worth about US$16 billion, which makes her richer than Mr George Soros, Mr Rupert Murdoch or Mr Steve Jobs.
Because of the capitalist stock mania sweeping the communist mainland, Chinese private and state-run companies issuing stock for the first time are becoming the most valuable companies in the world - sometimes overnight.
On Monday, the first day state-owned energy company PetroChina listed shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, its market valuation ran up to more than US$1 trillion, topping that of any company in history.
Analysts are sceptical about the way China's stocks are valued. But on paper, at least, PetroChina has dethroned Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the world.
On Tuesday, another newcomer, Alibaba.com, one of China's biggest Internet companies, had another blockbuster stock offering, raising nearly as much as Google.
But many analysts argue that there is nothing underlying the skyrocketing values, or that the obscure finances of the companies make it impossible to know their true value. And if China's stock market is a bubble, the new billionaires will disappear as quickly as they shot into view.
'A lot of people are surprised at how fast this has happened,' said JPMorgan analyst Jing Ulrich. 'But this is the power of the capital markets. A lot of people's wealth is based on newly-listed companies.'
After a nearly decade-long bear market for Chinese stocks, investors here are in party mode. The Shanghai stock market has gone up 400 per cent over two years. The Hong Kong stock exchange is shattering records.
The emergence of the superwealthy is a dramatic turnaround in a country that once branded enemies of the state 'capitalist roaders'. But in the 1980s, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping broke with Maoist dogma by saying 'to get rich is glorious', setting off a wild scramble that has produced a generation of hungry entrepreneurs.
Who the shadowy billionaires are will matter because the super-rich tend to make a name for themselves far beyond their borders. They gobble up global assets. They change cultural landscapes with their charity.
NEW YORK TIMES
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