Impressively, “The China Rich List” also has the world’s highest percentage of self-made entrepreneurs with 95% on the list being self-made, and only 5% inheriting their wealth.
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Women made up 21 per cent of the rich list, including Zhou who has a fortune of $7.8 billion and property developer Chen Lihua who is worth $7.7 billion.
Wang Jianlin is now said to be worth around 34-billion USA dollars. “This is the first year we’ve seen they’ve been eclipsed”.
IT was the fastest growing sector for Chinese billionaires, growing by 43 percent on the list year-over-year, but real estate still accounted for the greatest source of wealth.
Wang is known outside China for a string of overseas acquisitions including the organiser of Ironman extreme endurance contests, Swiss sports marketing group Infront, and a stake in Spanish football club Atletico Madrid.
Real estate and entertainment magnate Wang Jianlin dethroned founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Jack Massachusetts Yun as the country’s richest person.
New Chinese billionaires included Frank Wang of DJI, the world’s largest civilian drone aircraft company, with a valuation of $3.7 billion and Cheng Wei of taxi-hailing firm Didi Kuaidi, who just passed the $1 billion mark.
However, all of China’s billionaires have emerged in the past decade. Many analysts suspect that the stock price boom was an artificial phenomenon created by the Chinese government.
Massachusetts Huateng of Tencent Ltd., operator of the popular WeChat social media service, is in fourth place and Jun Lei of smartphone maker Xiaomi is No. 5.
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The list reflects a power shift in China’s economy, with the surge in the number of super rich fuelled by the growth of the nation’s IT and manufacturing industries. About 90 per cent of the companies are listed companies. Hurun said that 16 of the people on the 2014 rich list are in “varying degrees of trouble with the authorities”, with one in jail, four awaiting trial, seven under investigation, one under arrest and three with “whereabouts unknown”. More than 200 of those on the list are delegates to China’s legislature or its advisory body – including retired NBA basketball star Yao Ming, one of several celebrities on the list, who is valued at $330 million.
