On March 17th, Hurun Research Institute, a research institute for wealthy people in China, announced ‘2022 World Richest Rankings’. Hurun Research Institute has been publishing a list of the worlds richest people every year. On this list, the “fall” of the rich in China stands out. It seems that the economic reality facing China has nothing to do with the Chinese governments business regulation policy.
The China Hurun Research Institute announced on March 17, 2022 Hurun Report Chinas richest person, 7th in the world last year & 15th this year. Musks fortune stood at 1.29 trillion yuan, an increase of 10 billion yuan over the previous year. In second place was Jeff Bezos, the founder of e-commerce company Amazon, in third place was Bernard Arnault, chairman of the French luxury group Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, and in fourth place was Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Again, the ranking was the same as last year. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebooks parent company Metaplatform, who was in 5th place last year, slipped down to 14th, and instead, “investment genius”, who was 6th last year. Warren Buffett took fifth place. Zuckerbergs crash appears to have been influenced by the decline in stock prices caused by Facebooks sluggish earnings.
Ranked 1st to 5th richest person in the world. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett
The rankings of the richest people in China also fell sharply. The richest Chinese in China is Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nongfushanquan, a Chinese bottled water company. Following last year, he was honored as the richest man in Greater China this year. Zhongshanshans fortune was estimated at 455 billion yuan. However, Zhongshanshans ranking fell eight places from 7th last year to 15th this year. His fortune also decreased by nearly 100 billion yuan from 550 billion yuan last year. Hurun Report wrote, “Nongpu Sanquans performance increased significantly compared to last year, but the stock value fell due to the sluggish capital market.”
Nine out of 10 people with the largest decline in global wealth are Chinese. The second richest person in China is Zhang Ming, the founder of ByteDance, which owns TikTok, and ranked 23rd in the world. Above, Tencent founder Ma Huatong ranks 28th in the world, and Alibaba founder Ma Yun ranks 34th in the world. Ma Huatong was ranked 14th in the world last year, and Ma Yun was ranked 25th in the world, but this year, it fell 14 places and 9 places, respectively. Ma Huatong and Ma Yun both have their fortunes reduced by more than 30%. In particular, Ma, who is studded with ugly hair by the Chinese government, is falling from 21st in 2020 to 25th in 2021 and 34th in 2022.
Furthermore, 9 out of the 10 wealthiest people with the largest decline in their wealth compared to last year were all Chinese. The biggest drop was Hwang Jung, founder of e-commerce company Pinduoduo. Huang Zheng was ranked 19th in the world with a fortune of 450 billion yuan last year, but this year his fortune fell to 93rd with a fortune of 120 billion yuan. The second largest in the world by the drop is Jang Yong and his wife of Haidirao, a hotpot chain, a leading Chinese restaurant company. It was followed by Mark Zuckerberg, Xu Jain, chairman of Hengda Group, a Chinese real estate developer that is in default, and Ma Huateng of Tencent.
Property decline ranking. Nine out of the top 10 are all Chinese. Chinese media “The number of rich people with more than $1 billion in China is higher than that of the United States.” Since last year, President Xi Jinping has been emphasizing the distribution of wealth by promoting “common wealth”. The goal is to reduce the growing gap between the rich and the poor, but this theory of common wealth has led to regulations on giant corporations. An antitrust fine of 3 trillion won was imposed on Alibaba, and Tencent and others fell into a decline in profitability and business contraction. Young founders such as ByteDance founder Zhang Ming announced early retirement, and the contraction of the IT industry led to a slowdown in the real estate market and a rapid decline in the Chinese economys growth engine. The stock price of the companies was not good either. Perhaps the fall of the wealthy in China was foretold.
Still, the Chinese state media reported it as a takeover. The state-run Global Times reported on the 18th that “China still ranks first in the world, adding 75 new billionaires.” The number of rich people in China over $1 billion was 1,133, an increase of 75 from last year, ahead of the United States and India.
Chinas state-run Global Times reports that the number of billionaires in China ranks first in the world again this year.
The Chinese government predicted a change of direction this year as it was judged that the regulations on companies were excessive. At the opening ceremony of the National Peoples Congress, the equivalent of our National Assembly, held on the 5th, Prime Minister Li Keqiang said in a report on government work that “we will uphold the principle of stability first.” It means that we will focus on ‘stable growth’ rather than ‘reform’ such as common wealth and low-carbon growth. As if to support this, the China Financial Stability and Development Committee announced on the 16th that “development in stability” It announced that it will maintain transparent and predictable supervision while upholding the basic principles, and the National Market Supervision and Management Administration, which is called the grim reaper of big tech companies, also declared on the 17th that “this year, we will implement predictable regulations.” It is taken to mean that companies will not tighten their breath any further. However, the re-proliferation of COVID-19, the ongoing lockdown, and the intensifying conflict between the US and China have also added to the war in Ukraine. It remains to be seen how well the Chinese hold their place on the worlds richest list next year.
