Night view of Lujiazui Financial District in central Shanghai.
Dai Yongyuan | E+ | Getty Images
Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance, made his first Became the richest man in China, According to the Hurun Research Institute’s list, Nongfu Spring Chairman Zhong Shanshan has topped the list for three consecutive years.
Zhang, 44, has a personal fortune of $49.3 billion, beating out “bottled water king” Chung, whose fortune fell 24% to $47.9 billion after public backlash against his company in February. Zhang is Ranked fifth last year.
ByteDance is best known for its popular app TikTok, which has over One billion monthly active users worldwide. Hurun Report said the company’s profits surged about 30% last year.
Ma Huateng, chief executive of Chinese internet giant Tencent, dropped one spot to third place, although his wealth rose 13% to $44.4 billion as Tencent’s revenue and profits surged.
Huang Colin, founder of e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, ranked fourth with a 9% decline in wealth. Midea founder He Xiangjian and CATL CEO Zeng Shuqun ranked fifth and sixth respectively.
According to data from the Hurun Research Institute, there are 1,094 people in China with wealth exceeding 5 billion yuan (US$700 million), a decrease of 147 people or 12% from the previous year. The combined wealth of these entrepreneurs reached US$3 trillion, a decrease of 10% from last year.
The number of billionaires in the country fell by 142 from a year earlier to 753, down more than 30% from a high of 1,185 in 2021.
“The Hurun China Rich List has seen an unprecedented shrinkage for the third consecutive year as China’s economy and stock market have experienced a difficult year,” said Hurun Report chairman and chief researcher Hurun Report.
Hurun pointed out that the current rich list is mainly composed of entrepreneurs from the fields of technology, consumer electronics and new energy, and these fields were dominated by real estate developers in the past.
“The stories of the people on the Hurun China Rich List tell the story of the Chinese economy,” he said.
Hurun observed that the new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs are also more international than their predecessors, citing how ByteDance’s Zhang went global through TikTok and how Pinduoduo’s Huang made Temu a global e-commerce hub.
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