A new report underscores the sense that the economic centre of gravity is moving to Asia from the West.

There are more billionaires in mainland China than there are in the US for the first time ever – a result likely to add to notions of how the balance of economic power is moving east, even though China’s economy is decelerating, reports say.

The mainland had 596 US-dollar billionaires, up 242 from last year, Hurun Report, which ranks wealth in Asia, said, according to the South China Morning Post. That figure compared with 537 billionaires in the US, and 119 in Hong Kong and Taiwan combined, it said.

The company's annual list of China's richest people, released in Shanghai at the weekend, also found that 1,877 mainland entrepreneurs were worth at least RMB2 billion each - 606 more than last year.

Hurun Report founder Rupert Hoogewerf said the rise in China's billionaires was driven by a "remarkable" rally in equities. "It's a contradiction: the country's economic growth is sluggish, but the increase in tycoon numbers is the highest in history," he was quoted as saying.

Chinese equities have fallen this year, erasing gains since the start of 2015 and fuelling some worries that China’s economy is stuttering. The MSCI China A 50 Index (in dollar terms) is down almost 10 per cent this year, while the MSCI World Index of developed countries’ equities is flat for the year.

The list of 100 richest Chinese was topped by 61-year-old Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda, who saw a 52 per cent rise in his fortune to $34.4 billion over the past year. He was followed by Jack Ma Yun of Alibaba, down from the top spot last year after his wealth shrank 3 per cent to $22.7 billion. In third spot, the SCMP reported, was Hangzhou Wahaha Group's Zong Qinghou, whose fortune increased 8 per cent to $21.1 billion.