China

A selected list of Chinese billionaires who have been ordered arrested or sentenced over the last decade:

Xu Jiayin, billionaire chairman of the Evergrande Group, lost 98% of his personal fortune after the government insisted he use it to help pay Evergrande’s debts, and was arrested last year and (so far) banned from China’s financial markets for life.

Xiao Jianhua, who was placed under house arrest for corruption and was made to “[cooperate] with the government as it restructured [his] conglomerate.” He was eventually sentenced to thirteen years in prison.

Miles Guo, a billionaire who has appeared prominently in the Western press due to his connections with Steve Bannon, fled China after he was accused of bribery and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Real estate billionaire Ren Zhiqiang, who was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for embezzling millions in public funds.

Sun Dawu, billionaire owner of a private agricultural corporation, also sentenced to eighteen years for a variety of crimes including “coercive trade, illegal mining, illegal occupation of agricultural land [and] illegal absorption of public deposits.”

Despite this large drop in wealth at the very top, the Chinese economy has continued to grow significantly, and income has continued to rise at the very bottom, during this time. All these things cannot be said of “developed” Western countries.

You don’t see a lot of U.S. billionaires enter the U.S. criminal justice system (the case of Donald Trump is very high-profile, but an outlier). Moreover, over the same period (2021-2024), the wealth of U.S. billionaires INCREASED by 26%, from $4.5 trillion to $5.7 trillion.