Policy and economic shifts can have a groundbreaking impact in China with 40 percent of the country’s largest wealth owners two years ago failing to make this year's list of the richest.
1,819 mainland Chinese ranked amongst the wealthiest with a minimum net worth of 2 billion yuan ($281 million), according to the Hurun List – China’s domestic version of the Forbes List. 266 of last year’s wealthiest did not make the 2019 list compared with 456 in 2018.
«The rising penetration of new technologies have had an impact on the manufacturers that were unable to follow the pace [of digitalization],” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, highlighting that the 40 percent turnover marked the biggest drop since the start of such record-keeping 21 years ago.
Tech and Consumer
Whilst economic growth in China has slowed to the lowest rate since 1992 at just 6.2 percent in the second quarter this year, it continues to outpace its global peers and generate wealth in sectors outside of the old economy that was focused mainly on industrialization.
In addition to staple figures such as Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma (net worth: $39 billion) and Tencent co-founder Pony Ma Huateng (net worth: $37 billion), other emerging fields also produced new names. F&B was among the most notable sectors with Muyuan Foodstuff’s Qin family tripling their wealth to $14 billion and Chinese hotpot specialist Haidilao’s Zhang family doubling their wealth to $17 billion.
