America Is Still the Best Country for Millionaires

Forbes has declared that wealthy Americans are becoming even wealthier. On average, there’s 13 percent more wealth to go around. On the other hand, Chinese tycoons saw their wealth dwindle by as much as 9 percent. This was revealed, almost simultaneously, by the Hurun Report, the publication that is attempting to become in China what Forbes has been in the United States for decades: an authority on the art of creating lists of the rich. Weird numbers, right?

Bill Gates is still the richest American (and, worldwide, is second only to Mexican Carlos Slim). The list of the 400 richest Americans reveals that Microsoft’s founder has a net worth of $66 billion. Investor Warren Buffett follows, with his personal fortune of $46 billion.

The figures for Chinese millionaires are more modest. Zong Qinghou, who has made rivers of money in the beverage industry, spearheads Hurun’s list. He has $12 billion. Following him is Wang Jianlin, the man who aspires to build a mall in every Chinese city. His wealth is somewhere around $10.3 billion.

The Hurun Report does not include Hong Kong’s magnates, old millionaires such as Li Ka-Shing. Even so, it is quite telling that the richest man in the People’s Republic is behind 20 Americans when the time comes to weigh the gold in everyone’s treasure trove — a consequence of the fact that it was only three decades ago that the Chinese regime announced that getting rich is glorious, creating a clash between Mao Zedong’s revolutionary legacy and Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic adhesion to the spirit of capitalism.

Such contradictions are nowhere to be found in the United States. The right to get rich is a part of the American dream.

The strange thing is comparing the evolution of two economies by comparing its moguls. In 2012, the United States economy is expected to grow by 2.1 percent, China’s by 7.8 percent (predictions made by The Economist). And yet, American capitalists celebrate a wonderful year while their Chinese counterparts mourn their losses. It’s all a matter of perspective. China, accustomed to 10 percent growth rates, is scared by the deceleration of its economy, causing a drop in security values and pessimism in the stock market. And this is what’s reflected in the Hurun Report, created in 1999 in Shanghai by Rupert Hoogewerk, a Luxembourg-born British citizen who graduated in Chinese and even worked for Forbes.

There’s still a decade left before China overtakes the United States as the world’s leading economic power. With four times the population, it is merely imposing the natural order of things and returning to the leadership role it held until the beginning of the 19th century. But it will be a victory of quantity rather than quality.

Today, just as each American has an income ten times greater than that of a Chinese person’s, the wealthy also know that the United States will be, for years to come, the best country for millionaires.