Chinese billionaires get poorer because of real estate crisis

China's Hurun newspaper recently released a list of the richest people in China. The number of people with assets of over 690 million USD (nearly 17,000 billion VND) in this country has decreased by 15% compared to the peak in 2021.

This year's list features 1,241 individuals whose total wealth fell 4% from last year to $3.2 trillion. Of those, 898 individuals saw their wealth decline or remain the same.

Hurun said this reflected an economy hit by the property crisis and increased competition in the e-commerce industry.

"The number of Chinese dollar billionaires has decreased by 51 in one year and 290 in two years. However, China is still the country with the most billionaires in the world with 895 billionaires, about 200 more than the US and nearly three times more than India," Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman of Hurun, shared with Nikkei Asia .

Of the 179 individuals who left the China Rich List this year, 15% were from the real estate sector. The sector has been in crisis for the past two years and shows few signs of recovery.

Các tỷ phú Trung Quốc nghèo đi vì khủng hoảng bất động sản - 1 — Top 10 richest billionaires in China (Photo: Nikkei Asia).

Notably, Zhong Shanshan, the owner of the Nongfu bottled water empire, has topped the rich list in China for the third consecutive year, with a fortune of 62 billion USD. Next is Pony Ma of Tencent with a fortune of 38.6 billion USD.

The biggest losers this year have been real estate tycoons. Wang Jianlin, founder of the Dalian Wanda real estate group, saw his fortune "evaporate" by $7.3 billion. He fell 57 places to 89th place with $6.4 billion. Wang was once the richest man in China.

Billionaire Richard Liu, founder of e-commerce company JD.com, also saw his fortune drop by $6.2 billion to $8.26 billion. The company’s shares hit a record low earlier this month after banks lowered their price target forecasts due to a weaker-than-expected recovery in consumer spending.

Meanwhile, Alibaba founder Jack Ma fell to 10th place in the rankings, mainly due to the decline in the valuation of financial company Ant Group. The number of Alibaba shareholders on the list also dropped to 12, instead of 18 like last year.

The biggest gainer this year was Colin Huang, founder of low-cost e-commerce company Pinduoduo. He added $13.8 billion to his fortune in the past year, making him China’s third-richest person with $37.2 billion.

The change in China's economic landscape in recent years has produced many wealthy individuals in the fields of healthcare and advanced technology, replacing individuals in the traditional real estate and manufacturing sectors.

"Compared to 10 years ago, 80% of the individuals on Hurun's latest list are new faces, showing China's huge transformation," Hurun's chairman told Nikkei Asia.

Samuel Chen, who recently entered the top 100 richest people in China thanks to the listing of pharmaceutical company Polaris and a stake in video-sharing platform Zoom.

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