China, which continues to be the country with the most billionaires in the world, lost 155 billionaires in 2023 in the annual list of people with fortunes exceeding one billion dollars (921 million euros) released in the Hurun report.
Although the number of Chinese billionaires has decreased compared to the previous year, China continues to be the country with the most billionaires in the world. The Asian nation has 814 billionaires, surpassing the United States, with 800 billionaires.
At a global level, the Hurun report, with data until January 15, 2024, indicated that the total number of billionaires increased by 167, to 3,279, and the total accumulated wealth grew by 9%, to 108 billion yuan (13.8 billion euros).
The United States is the country that recorded the biggest increase in the number of billionaires, with 109 new names on the list.
India remains in second place, with an increase of 84, while the United Kingdom overtook Germany to come in fourth place, with 146 billionaires.
This growth has been largely driven by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), which will generate more than half of new wealth in 2023.
In the Asian country, Zhong Shanshan, 70 years old, the founder of the Nongfu water company who is known as the “king of bottled water”, remains the richest man in the country, with 450 billion yuan (57.542 billion of euros).
Colin Huang, founder of e-commerce company Pinduoduo, became China’s richest technology entrepreneur, with 385 billion yuan (49.230 billion euros).
Huang moved up the rankings after a rise in the value of his US-listed shares, overtaking Tencent’s Pony Ma with 250 billion yuan (€31.968 billion) and Bytedance’s Zhang Yiming with 245 billion yuan (31.328 billion euros), to rank second in the Asian country.
“For the second year in a row, Huang is China’s richest businessman,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, president and principal investigator of Hurun Report.
At the same time, several executives in China’s rapidly changing technology sector have become some of China’s fastest-growing billionaires, driven by the rise of AI.
They include Cai Haoyu, founder of Shanghai-based gaming studio miHoYo, and Chen Tianshi, founder of Cambricon Technologies, a Beijing-based company developing semiconductors for AI systems.
Hurun’s list highlights that Elon Musk is the richest person in the world for the third time in four years, with a fortune of 231 billion dollarsan increase of 74 billion dollars thanks to the growth of Tesla shares.
