Pandemic failed to stop this juggernaut — the billionaire class

FORBES, the magazine that made its mark tracking global wealth like no other, has reported that from Mach 2020 to March 2021, the world’s dollar billionaires soared to a record high of 2,755, with Beijing as the most prodigious minter of new billionaires (it has now one or two more billionaires than New York City). There is a lot of irony in the fact that Mao plotted his revolution to make China and the world a more equal and fairer place, with a classless society as the ultimate goal, while attending a university in that city.

Of course Mao is history. What has been the mantra for decades — for China and the rest of the world — is that straightforward phrasing from Deng: To be rich is glorious or versions of it. That remains the paramount goal. We in the country just don’t see that because we see a Beijing that is bent on grabbing more territories in the West Philippine Sea and grabbing all the fishing rights in our territorial waters, then selling our galunggong (blue mackerel scad) back to us — only frozen and labeled “Product of China.” And all we can do is file diplomatic protests, which China waves off with impunity. But the bullying and terrorizing intensifies by the day.