China's parliament a billionaires' club
Where in the world of politics would you find the greatest concentration of billionaires? Looking at the annual Hurun list of China's richest people, a good start may be with the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which opened their annual meetings last week.
Where in the world of politics would you find the greatest concentration of billionaires?
Looking at the annual Hurun list of China's richest people, a good start may be with the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which opened their annual meetings last week.
The NPC has 86 yuan billionaires, while the CPPCC, the nation's top political advisory body, has 69 billionaires. The richest NPC members have seen their average wealth multiply more than four times over the last eight years while the 1,000 richest folks on the mainland only managed to average a threefold increase. The average fortune of the 155 NPC and CPPCC billionaires is 9.7 billion yuan, compared with the average 6.4 billion yuan of Hurun's list of the 1,000 richest people in China.
The number and wealth of the richest lawmakers are almost certain to be underestimated because the enforcement of disclosure rules ranges from lax to non-existent.