
Chinese leader Xi Jinping wants the country’s richest to share more of their wealth. In response, China’s biggest companies and wealthiest individuals have been lining up to make charitable donations in recent weeks, with “common prosperity” now an unambiguous political priority.
Of course, “common prosperity” isn’t a new concept for the Chinese Communist Party. But amid rising wealth inequality and Xi’s crackdown on private enterprise in China, the idea has taken on a newfound urgency.
This week, The Wire looks at the wealth of China’s elite — its rapid growth, and how its origins have changed in the nine years since Xi came to power — to give some background on why Beijing is cracking down now, and who is in its crosshairs.
CHINA’S INEQUALITY PROBLEM
Income inequality in China has crept upwards since the advent of China’s economic liberalization in the 1980s. The country’s Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, peaked at 0.491 in 2008. (The coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, with higher numbers representing greater inequality. Chinese officials believe that a Gini figure above 0.4 risks social instability and political discontent.) After declining for a few years, the figure has rebounded beginning in 2015, and is estimated at around 0.47 today, according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

It’s not just the rising tally of billionaires that’s striking. The amount of wealth accumulated by the top 100 richest people in China between 2012 and 2020 has increased sixfold, from $220 billion in 2012 to $1.33 trillion in 2020, according to data from Forbes’ annual China Rich List.
Two further points stand out. First, the rapid turnover of China’s wealthiest: Over the last nine years, 249 different people have been included in the Forbes list of China’s 100 richest people at different stages.
Second, there’s been a clear shift in the sources of China’s top fortunes over the last nine years, from sectors like real estate and heavy industry to technology, food and beverages, and consumer goods.

WHO ARE CHINA’S WEALTHIEST PEOPLE?
Back in 2012, the wealthiest person in China was Zong Qinghou, the chairman and CEO of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, China’s largest beverage company. Property tycoons made up half of the top 10 richest people in China. And the wealthiest tech entrepreneur was Robin Li, the co-founder of search engine Baidu.
The line-up eight years later shows a country changed. The number one and two richest people in 2020 were Jack Ma and Pony Ma Huateng, founders of Alibaba and Tencent, respectively. Four of the top 10 richest Chinese people are co-founders of China’s hottest technology companies, while another, Wang Wei, is the chairman of one of China’s leading courier companies — a reflection of e-commerce’s ascendancy.
Only two property tycoons made the top 10 list in 2020: One of them, Hui Ka Yan, chairman of Evergrande Group, is currently locked in a battle to save his debt-saddled company from bankruptcy. Another property tycoon, Wang Jianlin, founder of Dalian Wanda Group and the richest person in China in 2016, has reportedly lost $32 billion in the last six years while trying to salvage his own indebted business empire.
2012 | 2020 | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Zong Qinghou | Food & Beverages | $10 billion | Chairman and CEO of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group, China’s leading beverage company | 1 | Jack Ma | Technology | $65.6 billion | Founder and former chairman of Alibaba Group |
2 | Robin Li | Technology | $8.1 billion | Co-founder of Chinese search engine Baidu | 2 | Ma Huateng | Technology | $55.2 billion | Founder, chairman, and CEO of Tencent |
3 | Wang Jianlin | Real Estate | $8 billion | Founder of Dalian Wanda Group | 3 | Zhong Shanshan | Food & Beverages | $53.9 billion | Founder and chairman of Nongfu Spring beverage company, one of China’s largest bottled water manufacturers |
4 | Ma Huateng | Technology | $6.4 billion | Founder, chairman, and CEO of Tencent | 4 | Sun Piaoyang | Pharmaceuticals | $35 billion | Chairman of Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, a Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturer |
5 | Wu Yajun | Real Estate | $6.2 billion | Co-founder, chairwoman, and former CEO of Longfor Properties | 5 | He Xiangjian | Consumer Goods | $32.2 billion | Co-founder of Midea, a consumer goods and appliances manufacturer |
6 | Liang Wengen | Industry | $5.9 billion | Founder and chairman of Sany Heavy Industry, a heavy equipment manufacturer | 6 | Wang Wei | Logistics | $32.2 billion | Founder and chairman of SF Express |
7 | Liu Yongxing | Agribusiness | $5.8 billion | Founder, chairman, CEO of East Hope Group, an agribusiness, chemical, and non-ferrous metal producer | 7 | Colin Huang Zheng | Technology | $30.6 billion | Founder and former CEO of Pinduoduo, an agriculture-focused technology platform |
8 | Hui Ka Yan | Real Estate | $4.9 billion | Chairman of Evergrande Group, a property developer and currently China’s most indebted company | 8 | Yang Huiyan | Real Estate | $28.5 billion | Majority shareholder of Country Garden Holdings, a property developer |
9 | Yang Huiyan | Real Estate | $4.4 billion | Majority shareholder of Country Garden Holdings, a property developer | 9 | Zhang Yiming | Technology | $27.7 billion | Founder of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and news aggregator Toutiao |
10 | Hui Wing Mau | Real Estate | $4 billion | Founder and chairman of Shimao Property, one of the largest property developers in Shanghai | 10 | Hui Ka Yan | Real Estate | $27.1 billion | Chairman of Evergrande Group |
INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION
It’s not just the rise of tech company co-founders that shows how wealth has been shifting in China. The number of billionaires among the top 100 involved in sectors like batteries and electronics also rose sharply between 2012 and 2020. Four of those who made the list last year were co-founders of for-profit education companies.

Despite all the drama, China’s regulatory crackdown on tech companies has had a limited overall impact on the net worth of the sector’s billionaires. When Forbes calculated its 2020 wealth list in late October of last year— just before the postponement of Ant Group’s IPO that kicked off China’s ‘techlash’ — the combined net worth of the 13 tech billionaires on the top 100 list was estimated at $325 billion. That is currently down to $293 billion, with the decline largely attributable to contractions in the personal fortunes of Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma Huateng.
Other sectors have borne a heavier brunt. The regulatory blow against for-profit education has destroyed the business models of companies such as GSX Techdu and TAL Education, all but erasing the fortunes of their founders. In 2020, the four billionaires in the education sector that made it onto the top 100 list were worth a combined $44 billion. As of this week, their personal fortunes are worth just $4.4 billion — a 90 percent decline.

Eliot Chen is a Toronto-based staff writer at The Wire. Previously, he was a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Human Rights Initiative and MacroPolo. @eliotcxchen