With $99.7 billion: Ranking shows: This is China's "new" richest man

The ranking of the richest people in China is published once a year. There are many new names in the top ten this year. An old friend returns to the top spot.

Thanks to the boom in artificial intelligence, Tiktok founder Zhang Yiming has regained the top spot as the richest man in China in a ranking. The 43-year-old's fortune is estimated at 99.7 billion US dollars (currently around 89.3 billion euros), which is 43 percent higher than the previous year. The Shanghai-based research institute announced this in its “Hurun” report.

Zhang is the founder of the ByteDance group, which owns Tiktok. He was last in the top spot in 2024. The experts also saw the group's "aggressive efforts" in the area of ​​AI behind its increase in assets. According to “Hurun” boss Rupert Hoogewerf, there was a two-fold picture this year. "Entrepreneurs in AI, semiconductors and robotics rose sharply, while those in consumer goods, real estate and traditional manufacturing saw their fortunes decline," he said, according to the release.

Last year, Zhong Shanshan was at the forefront. The 72-year-old is the founder of the biopharmaceutical group Beijing Wantai Pharmacy and heads China's largest beverage company. Share losses in its vaccine maker saw its wealth shrink by 23 percent, causing Shanshan to fall to second place with $61 billion.

58-year-old battery giant Robin Zeng Yuqun rose to third place with $57.3 billion, up 17 percent. According to the ranking, his company CATL produces 40 percent of the world's batteries for electric vehicles. He pushed 55-year-old Pony Ma Huateng, the founder of the Chinese internet company Tencent, into fourth place.

Tech bosses at the forefront, the proportion of women is growing

For example, the founder of the Chinese AI company DeepSeek, Liang Wenfeng, was new among the ten richest. The 41-year-old came in seventh place with an estimated fortune of $41.7 billion. Chen Tianshi, who is the same age and from the AI ​​chip developer Cambricon, was in tenth place with an estimated $30.5 billion.

In total, the Hurun Research Institute recorded 1,529 people with assets of approximately $740 million in the 28th edition of its rich list. Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing were the cities with the most super-rich. Women made up almost a quarter of the list (23.2 percent), a small increase compared to the previous year. Two-thirds of them were self-made female entrepreneurs, led by Zhou Qunfei of Lens Technology.

The average age of the list was 61 years. The report said that investor Li Ka-shing was the oldest at 98, and Zhang Junje, founder of a tea beverage chain, was the youngest at 31. The total wealth of those listed has more than doubled in the last decade, the report said, from $2.2 trillion in 2016 to $4.8 trillion this year.

Assets as of September 1, 2026 were taken into account for the list. Some assets, like the TikTok founder's, had to be estimated. According to Forbes magazine, the top ten richest people in the world are led by Americans, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the top with an estimated fortune of around $925 billion.