Top Billionaires & The Hungry in Asia: China

Top Billionaires
According to the Forbes list of the world’s richest, China boasts of 28 billionaires with a combined net worth of $43.8 billion, averaging $1.56 billion each.

• Topping the list in China is Liu Yongxing who ranks as the 205th richest in the world; he has a net worth of $3B.  Mr. Yongxing heads the East Hope Group, one of China's biggest feed producers, the very industry in which he first entered to build his fortunes from scratch.¹

Hong Kong is home to only 19 billionaires, which is nine short compared to its governing nation.  However, the combined worth of those 19 billionaires is one and half times higher than of their mainland counterparts—that is, $66.9 billion in total, averaging $3.52 billion each.  Three billionaires account for the major share of such wealth in Hong Kong.

• One of them accounts for 24 percent.  In fact, Li Ka-shing, whose net worth is $16.2 billion, ranks 16th of the world’s richest.  He is a self-made entrepreneur with holdings in container terminal operations, health and beauty retailer, energy and oil, and real estate development.

It’s worth noting that Taiwan has four billionaires who have a combined net worth of $10.5 billion averaging $2.1 billion each.

The Hungry
An estimated 13 million are currently living in hunger in China.  This assumes that the estimated level of the undernourished in India remains unchanged at 10% as last reported by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.²)

According to a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), out of 84 countries China ranks 5th in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) which ranks countries on a 100-point scale, with 0 being the best score (no hunger) and 100 being the worst.³

Hong Kong and, for the matter, Taiwan are not reported separately in the FAO or IFPRI report.

¹forbes.com
²fao.org
³ifpri.com