More than 200 Chinese magnates left the list of people with a fortune of more than a billion dollars in 2022, according to a report by Hurun, China’s Forbes believes.
A total of 229 Chinese businessmen saw their fortunes drop below that figure. This represents more than half of the 445 people in the world who are no longer on that list.
This is the biggest drop for Chinese billionaires since Hurun began compiling the annual ranking in 2013. The publication attributed the decline to economic uncertainty, volatility in financial markets and the depreciation of China’s currency, the yuan.
The accumulated wealth of the Chinese billionaires on the list – which includes 77 people in Hong Kong and 46 in Taiwan – fell 15% last year. In the rest of the world, the decrease was 10%.
But China was also the country of origin of the most new billionaires, with the fortunes of 69 people surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time.
The richest person in the Asian country, for the second consecutive year, and number 15 in the world is Zhong Shanshan, 69 years old. The founder of bottled water company Nongfu is worth $ 69 billion (63.3 billion euros), 4% more than the previous year.
Second place goes to the founder of the Tencent group, Pony Ma, with 39,400 million dollars (36,151 million euros). In third place is the creator of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, with 37,000 million dollars (33,948 million euros).
British Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of the Hurun Report, found that the combination of factors such as rising interest rates, appreciation of the US dollar, the ‘zero covid’ policy, devaluation of the price of companies in the technology sector and the impact of the war in Ukraine has damaged multimillion-dollar fortunes.
“The year 2022 has been difficult for Chinese businessmen due to epidemic prevention measures, which in some cases crippled their operations, in addition to reducing demand for products and services,” said Wang Feng, president of consulting firm Ye Lang Capital.
Wang predicted that after the end of the ‘zero covid’ strategy and given the huge size of the Chinese market, large fortunes will continue to be generated in the country in the coming years.
China leads the world with fortunes over a billion dollars with 969 people, followed by the United States with 691.
China’s economy grew by 3% in 2022, below the government’s target of 5.5%, according to official data, due to the impact of the Covid-19 ‘zero cases’ policy, which weighed heavily on economic growth due to restrictions. activity. strict lockdowns have been imposed to contain outbreaks caused by the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Source: DN
