Beijing City, now houses more billionaires than any other city in the world as reported by Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires List for 2021. China’s capital gained 33 billionaires last year bringing the total to 100. The city surpasses New York City, which has 99 billionaires and has held the top spot for the last seven years. The city’s number one ranking is owed to China’s fast containment of COVID-19 and its thriving technologie industries. However, the combined net worth of New York City’s billionaires of US$80bn (£58bn) is still larger than that of their counterparts in Beijing. Zhang Yiming, the founder of the video-sharing app TikTok and chief executive of the multinational internet company ByteDance is Beijing’s richest citizen whose net worth doubled to $35.6bn. Conversely, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a net worth of $59bn, is New York’s richest citizen.

Both China and the United States have seen the boom of their e-commerce industry during the global pandemic as more people used online shopping and entertainment websites. This resulted in the accumulation of personal wealth for the creators and shareholders of many tech giants. A large number of Chinese billionaires also made their fortunes from manufacturing or technology enterprises. China’s current total of 698 billionaires is catching up to the US’ total of 724 billionaires. India comes in third place with 140 billionaires. Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, is still the world’s richest person for the fourth consecutive year. He saw his net worth grow from $64bn to $177bn in the past year.