Twelve billion US dollars. That’s what it takes to be named the richest person in China.
A new list of China’s top five richest people released yesterday says drinks billionaire Zong Qinghou (宗慶后), the founder of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group (娃哈哈集團), made the jump from 12th place to No. 1 in the annual rankings.
The Hurun Rich List 2010, China’s equivalent of the Forbes list, also said the country should now have the world’s highest number of billionaires.
The list comes the day after billionaire investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates hosted dozens of China’s richest at a private dinner in Beijing to talk about giving to charity.
Zong this week expressed some of the skepticism among China’s richest about outside pressure to make what he called “donation pledges of rich men’s personal wealth.” The state-run Xinhua news agency carried his comments.
Gates and Buffett told a press conference yesterday that they wanted to focus on China because of its emerging wealth.
“China probably now has the largest number of billionaires anywhere in the world,” Rupert Hoogewerf, who studies China’s wealthy and compiles the Shanghai-based Hurun Rich List, said in a statement. “We already know of 189 US dollar billionaires in China this year, but you can safely say that we have missed at least half again, meaning that there are between 400 and 500 USD billionaires.”
At the release of the Forbes list in March, the magazine said the US had 403 billionaires and Asia overall had 234.
With its emerging wealth, China also has a growing income gap.
The minimum monthly wage in parts of China is as low as 660 yuan (US$95). China’s top leaders have made boosting farmers’ incomes a top political priority as they worry about social unrest.
The complete Hurun Rich List of 1,363 people in China with wealth of at least 1 billion yuan comes out in the middle of this month.
Thursday’s statement said the list is a “snapshot of wealth” as of Aug. 16.
Following Zong in the top five this year are Li Li (李鋰), founder of drug maker Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical (海普瑞藥業); Zhang Yin (張茵), founder of the paper-recycling giant Nine Dragons Paper (玖龍紙業); Liang Wengen (梁穩根) of Sany Heavy Industry Co (三一重工); and a tie between Robin Li Yanhong (李彥宏) with search engine company Baidu Inc (百度) and Yan Bin (嚴彬) of Ruoy Chai International Group (華彬集團), whose brands include Red Bull energy drinks.
The Buffet-backed auto entrepreneur listed last year as the richest person in China, BYD Co (比亞迪) chairman Wang Chuanfu (王傳福), did not make the top five this year.
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