The crisis and the pandemic have not shaken the business world in China.
On the contrary, the country saw the number of its dollar billionaires increase last year, according to the annual ranking of the firm Hurun.
The Middle Empire now has 992 super-rich (including Hong Kong), 253 more than last year.
For the first time in ranking history, the biggest fortunes in this country are no longer tied to real estate, a sector on which the country's growth has long depended.
"The new economy, driven by digital technology, has reached unprecedented levels since June," explains the Hurun firm, adding that China has seen this year "more wealth created than the previous five years combined" despite the epidemic!
Thus, Wang Xing, founder of the Meituan meal delivery company, quadrupled his wealth this year, to become the 13th fortune in China.
Richard Liu, boss of e-commerce giant JD.
com, doubled his fortune by weighing 19.9 billion euros.
He is now the 16th fortune in the country.
Health was also a promising sector: Jiang Rensheng, founder of the vaccine manufacturer Zhifei, tripled his fortune ...
Bottled water, the empire of the richest businessman
But now, China's richest man is the low-key boss of bottled water giant Zhong Shanshan.
The latter did not appear in the ranking of the world's top 100 fortunes last year.
Today, his fortune is valued at 70.71 billion euros after the IPO of his company Nongfu Spring last year.
This podium features the bosses of Tencent (Internet, video games) and ByteDance (owner of the TikTok short video app in particular), which rank second and third respectively.
On the other hand, Jack Ma, the boss of Alibaba who has long been the first fortune of the country, fell to fourth place after allowing himself to criticize the regime.
At the end of 2020, Beijing put an abrupt halt to the IPO of payment giant Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba which should have been the biggest stock exchange transaction of all time.
Jack Ma can still count on a jackpot of 45.75 billion euros.
By number, China is the best breeding ground for billionaires.
It greatly exceeds the United States which has 696 and India 177.
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos remains the richest man on the planet (around $ 191.2 billion) almost on a par with Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla and Space X. This podium is completed by Bernard Arnault, the boss of LVMH.
