China billionaire rich list grows to 49 more

Shanghai, Oct. 29 (ANI): China now has 128 billionaires, which is 49 more that what the country had at this time last year.

According to the China Daily, nine of these 49 billionaires are below the age of 40, and 11 of them women.

The southern town of Shenzhen leads the pack with 17 billionaires, followed by Beijing, with 15 and Shanghai, 10. Topping the list is 65-year-old Zong Qinghou, chairman of the leading food and beverage company Wahaha Group, whose wealth has jumped to eight billion dollars from 4.8 billion dollars last year. Zong also topped the Hurun Rich List 2010, which came out earlier this month.

Robin Li, co-founder of search engine Baidu Inc, is in second place, with a net worth of 7.2 billion dollars, while Liang Wengen, co-founder of the heavy machinery manufacturer Sany Group, with a net worth of 5.9 billion dollars is in third place.

Journalist-turned-property tycoon Wu Yajun is now the country's richest woman, coming in at No 8 on the list, up from No 29 last year. She has a net worth of 4.7 billion dollars, which is shared with her family.

Shares in Wu's Longfor Properties have been up 30 percent since it went public at the Hong Kong Exchanges last year.

Forbes Asia magazine has published this detail in its annual list of China's 400 richest (calculated in US dollars).

It said that China's wealthiest are getting richer: the minimum needed to make the top 400 list has risen to 425 million dollars from last year's 300 million dollars.

"China is leading the world in initial public offerings (IPO) this year. The explosion of wealth and the number of billionaires this year is closely linked to the large number of IPOs by Chinese companies in the past year," the China Daily quoted Russell Flannery, a senior editor at Forbes and chief of its Shanghai Bureau. (ANI)