According to Forbes, it dethroned Jack Ma, having a fortune estimated at 61.9 billion US dollars
China’s richest man, Ma Huateng (also known as Pony Ma), chairs Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings, which is listed among the country’s largest companies by market value. Tencent’s WeChat application has more than 1 billion users. In addition, in December 2018, the group registered its music streaming subsidiary, Tencent Music, on the New York Stock Exchange. Ma now ranks 18th in the ranking of the richest in the world.
Soon after, in the 19th place in the world ranking, Zhong Shanshan appears, a businessman who never finished primary school, giving up during the cultural revolution in China. Zhong previously worked in construction and also as a journalist, before founding Nongfu Springs in 1996. Today, through the growth and acquisition of other companies, he has become China’s largest producer of bottled water. Nongfu Springs is among the three largest companies in the country in the tea and juice market. However, despite being Zhong’s main source of income, he is not the only one. The “Lone Wolf” – as he is nicknamed – is the largest shareholder in Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, which makes test kits for Covid-19 and is now in the race to manufacture a vaccine against the disease. The second richest man in China is worth $ 56.3 billion.
Jack Ma is probably the best known on this list. In recent years, the creator of AliBaba Group – one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world – has topped the table for China’s richest, but this year is different. According to Bloomberg, the volatility of shares in companies like Huawei, TikTok and WeChat, due to American sanctions, affected the market value of Chinese technology. As a result, the country’s food and household products sector is now competing with the technology industry among those with the most millionaires. Currently, in the 22nd place in the ranking of the richest in the world and third in his country, Jack Ma has a fortune worth 52.3 billion dollars.
See more rankings of the richest in the PLATAFORMA:
The richest in São Tomé and Príncipe
