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According to the Hurun Rich List ranking, bottled water mogul Zhong Shanshan officially became the richest man in China . The entrepreneur behind mineral water Nongfu Spring and independent pharmaceutical company Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise , surpassed Alibaba’s Jack Ma in fortune a few months ago, and is now far behind him.
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This Wednesday, the annual list of billionaires made by the Hurun Research Institute , a research and investment firm based in Shanghai, was released. According to the institute, Shanshan has a net worth of 60.5 billion dollars , 7% (3.9 billion dollars) more than last year.
The 67-year-old businessman was placed in third place in 2020, behind Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba , and Pony Ma, founder of Tentcent , who ranked first and second, respectively.
In just one year, China’s bottled water billionaire made a huge leap. Specialists have pointed out that the growth in Shanshan’s fortune can be attributed to three factors:
- The massive demand for Covid-19 test kits that benefited your pharmaceutical company.
- Last year, the shares of Nongfu Spring and Wantai Biological Pharmacy began to be sold on the stock markets.
- The Chinese government’s plan to redistribute wealth and regulate the fortunes of the country’s billionaires.
Where’s Jack Ma?
Here ta! #Alibaba https://t.co/kPna37jr9Q– Entrepreneur in Spanish (@SoyEntrepreneur) October 13, 2021
Where did Jack Ma and the other Chinese billionaires go?
Alibaba founder Jack Ma , who held the title of ‘ China’s richest man ‘ until last year, has now dropped to fifth place. His fortune dropped 36% to ‘just’ $ 39.6 billion .
In second place was Zhang Yiming , creator of TikTok and founder of ByteDance , the parent company of the social network. The 38-year-old businessman has an estimated net worth of $ 52.8 billion , after tripling his fortune in the past year.
Zeng Yuqun , better known as ‘the king of batteries’ for his company CATL , came in at third place. Elon Musk’s partner also surpassed Ma last June, tripling his wealth in one year to amassing $ 49.7 billion .
Pony Ma , founder of video game giant Tentcent and owner of WeChat , dropped two spots to fourth place. The restrictions imposed by the government to limit the time that minors use video games , caused a 19% decrease in their fortune to 49,000 million dollars .
The one who suffered the biggest drop in the ranking was businessman Xu Jiayin , founder of the real estate giant Evergrande Group.Although he topped the list in 2017 and was fifth last year, he now plummeted to 70th place , with a reduction of almost 70 % of your wealth to $ 11.3 billion .
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/394118