A total of 1,305 individuals with a minimum personal wealth of 5 billion yuan ($710 million) entered the Hurun China Rich List 2022, which was released by the Hurun Research Institute
The number of affluent Chinese individuals is down 11 percent from last year. Their total wealth has also shrunk 18 percent year-on-year to 24.5 trillion yuan.
Sixty-eight-year-old Zhong Shanshan, founder of bottled water company Nongfu Spring, topped the Hurun China Rich List for the second time in a row this year. His personal wealth surged 17 percent year-on-year to 455 billion yuan, a record in 20 years.
The drop in ByteDance's market cap pushed 39-year-old founder Zhang Yiming's wealth down by 28 percent from a year earlier to 245 billion yuan, keeping him at the second place.
Zeng Yuqun, 54, founder and chairman of battery provider CATL, rose to the third place this year, despite the fact that his wealth has decreased 28 percent year-on-year to 230 billion yuan.
In general, only 411 entrepreneurs saw their wealth increase this year, of which 133 were new faces. As many as 1,187 entrepreneurs saw their wealth decrease or remain unchanged and 293 dropped off the rich list this year.
According to Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report's chairman and chief researcher, this has been the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List in 24 years, in both the metrics of overall number and total wealth.
"Part of the reason has been a global economic downturn, led by the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, a sharp drop in tech prices and the generally slow post-COVID economic recovery," he explained.
Meanwhile, Hang Seng Index and Shenzhen Component Index have both shed by more than 20 percent compared with the same period last year, while the Shanghai Composite Index is down by over 10 percent. Public companies' market valuation has slashed amid indexes slides, resulting in the record-low numbers in the rich list, he added.
