Hurun Rich List: China's Billionaires Decline By 142 In 2024

China's billionaire count dipped 12% in comparison to the previous year according to a report by the Hurun Research Institute. The metric for qualification is if the individuals have more than 5 billion Chinese yuan or $700 million.

There were 753 such individuals, 142 less than last year and around a third less than the high metric of 1,185 billionaires in 2021. However, there were 132 or 21% more billionaires than there were five years ago, when there were 621 billionaires in China, according to the Hurun report that was published on Tuesday.

The total wealth of entrepreneurs was down 10% in comparison to the year before, amounting to the value of $3 trillion.

Industrial and consumer products dominated the Hurun China Rich List, accounting for 13% and 11% of the total respectively, indicating China's manufacturing prowess. Healthcare followed closely, making up 9.7% of the list.

Out of the total, 127 individuals were 40 years old or younger, an increase of 26 from the previous year, with 32 of them being self-made, which is a decrease of 7.

New Media baron Zhang Yiming topped the Hurun China Rich List for the first time with a net worth of $49.3 billion, making him the 18th person to be ranked as the richest person in China since the Hurun Rich List began 26 years ago.

Yiming's upward progress in the list was carried by the growing success of the short video format. With TikTok being its most popular application with 5.8 billion downloads, according to AppMagic and Statista, and around 200 million users in the US.

"ByteDance's global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion" Hurun noted.

Zhong Shanshan, 70, slipped down to the number two on the list, losing the top spot for the first time in three years, beaten by Zhang. Zhong's bottled water company Nongfu Spring faced severe backlash and calls of boycotting from Chinese nationalists following the death of his former business associate turned biggest competitor Zhong Qinghou.

This led to unfavourable comparisons to Shanshan from Chinese social media users ranging from alleged betrayal of Qinghou to Japanese iconography in the bottled water packaging and his son's US citizenship. This dented Shanshan's profits.

"Zhong's other main source of wealth, infectious disease diagnostics business Wantai BioPharm, had a good year," Hurun stated.

Tencent founder Pony Ma arrived at third place, with his net worth up 13% despite slipping down a spot. The video game giant's growth in the overseas games market was marked by a 36% rise in its profit and a 13% rise in revenue.