Cash crisis hits China's rich
Wed, November 05 2008
The ranking illustrates how fortunes have risen and fallen over the past tumultuous year as the net worth of China’s 40 richest people fell 57 per cent to $61.6 billion from $142 billion last year, Forbes Asia said.
Coming out on top was Shanghai-based agricultural feed tycoon Liu Yongxin with a net worth of $3.5 billion, while 20 billionaires including paper recycling queen Yan Cheung, who was once ranked as China’s richest person, have dropped off the list entirely.
Number two on the list, with $3.2 billion, is Huang Guangyu, founder of Gome, China’s largest chain of consumer electronics stores. Huang, a native of south China’s Guangdong province who also goes by the Cantonese name Wong Kwong Yu, moved up eight spots from last year.
Liu, this year’s number one, started building his fortune in 1982 when he and his three brothers used $142 in savings to start raising quails and chickens, the magazine said.
They split up the business in 1995 and are now China’s only family of billionaires.
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