Athira Sethu
Kochi, 29 October 2024
The latest Hurun China Rich List has seen Zhang Yiming, the founder of ByteDance, taking the position of being China’s richest person. Zhang Yiming, 41, has made a personal fortune of $49.3 billion according to the list that was released this week.
Zhang had resigned as the CEO of ByteDance in 2021. ByteDance is the parent company of TikTok. He is the 18th person to win the title in the 26 years since the list was first compiled.
This year, Zhang edged out bottled water tycoon Zhong Shanshan, whose wealth dropped 24% to $47.9 billion, putting him in second place. Even though ByteDance faces legal challenges in the U.S., the company saw global revenue jump 30% to $110 billion last year, which helped push Zhang’s net worth up, Hurun said.
In the third place of the list was Tencent founder Pony Ma, and at fourth came Colin Huang, the chief executive of PDD Holdings. His e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo and Temu, are still at the top. His ranking only dropped to fourth from being third in the list.
In general, China’s number of billionaires has decreased. The list of billionaires is down 142 from last year with 753. This is the biggest fall since 2021 when the list peaked. Chairman of the Hurun Report Rupert Hoogewerf says that this is a result of the economy and stock markets in China. While the real estate sector plunged, tech and consumer electronics, such as Xiaomi, did well. Founder of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, increased his fortune by $5 billion.
This year was also tough for the industries of the solar panel, lithium battery, and electric vehicles (EV). Competition made it reach oversupply levels and, naturally, tariffs. According to Hurun, the companies making the solar panels have seen their wealth go down by up to 80% from last year, the wealth in the batteries has come down by half, while that of the EVs has declined by a quarter.
