From 15 Seconds to 67 Trillion: The Jaw-Dropping Rise of China’s Richest Man

Changes in property rankings due to economic recession and stock market downturn

Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance. Reuters Yonhap News

The number of billionaires in China has plummeted by more than 30% over the past three years. There is an interpretation that the economic downturn and stock market decline have had a significant impact on the fortunes of China’s ‘super rich’.

According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 29th (local time), the number of billionaires this year (in US dollars) calculated by China’s Hurun Research Institute is 753. This is a 36.5% decrease compared to 2021, when the number reached 1,185. During the same period, the number of billionaires decreased by more than the 10% decline in the value of the yuan against the dollar.

This is interpreted as the impact of a sharp decline in asset prices such as real estate and stocks as China fell into a serious economic recession. “The number of billionaires has decreased for three consecutive years as the Chinese economy and stock market have had a difficult year,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, director of the Hurun Institute. “This is an unprecedented phenomenon.” The wealth estimates compiled this time were prepared as of the end of August and do not reflect the recent rebound in the Chinese stock market.

There was also a significant change in the wealth rankings of China’s richest people. Zhang Yiming, who founded ByteDance, the parent company of ‘short-form’ TikTok, ranked first among China’s richest people for the first time. His wealth is estimated at $49.3 billion (approximately 68.21 trillion won), pushing Zhong Shanshan, founder of Nongong Santian, who had ranked first among China’s richest people for the past three years, to second place. The fortune of Zhong Shanshan, known as China’s ‘king of bottled water’, was found to be worth $47.9 billion. There are many interpretations that his fortune has also shrunk due to the company’s stock price plummeting this year as the company became embroiled in pro-Japanese controversy.

In addition, Ma Huateng (USD 44.4 billion), founder of Tencent, the parent company of China’s ‘national app’ WeChat, ranked 3rd, and Huang Zheng (USD 34.5 billion), founder of Pinduoduo, Temu’s parent company, ranked 4th. The FT said, “The collapse of the real estate market led to the collapse of developers who had been at the top of the rich list,” and “E-commerce billionaires have been hit by government regulations for a while, but have shown that they are resilient.”