China overtakes US as the richest country in the world

Washington, Nov 16: China has overtaken the United States (US) to become the richest nation in the world as global wealth tripled over the past two decades.

According to a report by McKinsey & Co, China accounted for almost one-third of gains in global net worth over the past two decades. McKinsey & Co focuses on ten countries that together account for about 60 percent of global GDP:
Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

China's wealth leaped to $120 trillion in 2020 from just $7 trillion in 2000, marking a hopping of $113 trillion in 20 years. While the US saw its net worth more than double to $90 trillion.

Richest 10%

However, in both the US and China, more than two-thirds of the wealth is held by the richest 10 per cent of households, and their share has been increasing, according to the McKinsey & Co report quoted by Bloomberg.

As reported by Bloomberg, 68% of global net worth is stored in real estate. The balance is held in such things as infrastructure, machinery and equipment and, to a much lesser extent, so-called intangibles like intellectual property and patents.

Financial assets are not counted in the global wealth calculations because they are effectively offset by liabilities: A corporate bond held by an individual investor, for instance, represents an IOU by that company.