China’s billionaire lawmakers are fewer and less wealthy, as 2018 stock market rout crimped their ranks and fortunes

The combined fortunes of US dollar billionaires in China’s legislature, who outnumber their peers in the US Congress, shrank by 14 per cent last year, slashed by a rout in the world’s worst-performing stock market.

Their combined wealth fell to 3.4 trillion yuan (US$504 billion) from 3.93 trillion yuan in 2018, according to data compiled by Hurun Report. The number of dollar-denominated billionaires fell to 93, out of 5,000 delegates to the legislative and political advisory branches of the Chinese government, compared with 104 in 2018, Hurun said.

As China’s political elites gather for their annual legislative meetings this week in Beijing, these tycoons – most of them self-made billionaires who’ve earned their fortunes from property, technology or manufacturing – will be the public voice for the rights of private enterprises. China’s private sector contributes more than half of the nation’s tax receipts, 60 pert cent of gross domestic products and generates 80 per cent of urban jobs.

China’s billionaires have flourished during President Xi Jinping’s tenure, as the technology and real estate industries boomed. In 2013 during the first year of Xi’s presidency, there were 87 dollar-denominated billionaires among the delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), according to Hurun’s data.

By comparison, the 50 richest members of the US Congress had a combined wealth of US$2 billion in 2016, according to Roll Call’s data. Darrell Issa, co-founder of automobile components maker Directed Electronics, and the Republican Representative for California, was the wealthiest congressman that year, with a net worth of US$283.3 million. Issa left office in 2019.