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Anhui Province is considered one of the poor houses in China.

Li Bin was born there in 1974, during the last phase of the Cultural Revolution.

His family sent him to Beijing to study, and at the age of 26 he founded his first company, a service provider for the auto industry.

A few more companies were founded, but none were as successful as Nio's in 2014: a manufacturer of luxury electric cars.

In 2020, Li had the final breakthrough - and his fortune has increased twelve-fold, to around 7.1 billion dollars.

Li Bin, who also calls himself William Li, not only had a career that corresponds to the American dream of rags-to-riches to become a millionaire.

He is already further: He rose to the league of billionaires in 2020, he even achieved the largest percentage increase in wealth in this elite population group this year, according to data from the financial news service Bloomberg.

Elon Musk's net worth has grown by a whopping $ 131 billion this year

Source: Bloomberg

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But his example is also representative of the upheaval among the super-rich.

2020 was the year of the Chinese and electric car entrepreneurs in this wealth league.

The top 5 billionaires with the greatest relative wealth growth are made up entirely of Chinese names.

So in second place is Zhong Shanshan, who has increased his property almost tenfold.

The pandemic made him rich this year because his pharmaceutical company Wantai is active in the diagnostics business.

Zhong earned his first billion with mineral water, juices and iced tea.

But this year, the pharmaceutical company Wantai in particular increased its fortune

Source: picture alliance / dpa / HPIC

Zhong earned his first billion with mineral water, juices and iced tea as the founder and head of the beverage manufacturer Nongfu Spring.

Zhong is now considered the richest Chinese with a fortune of around $ 68 billion.

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This is followed by Li Xiang, founder of hybrid car maker Li Auto, and He Xiaopeng, founder of electric car maker Xpeng.

A Chinese name is also in fifth place, but Forrest Li was born in Singapore and built his fortune in e-commerce.

Elon Musk gained, but Jeff Bezos remains the richest

But even among the billionaires with the greatest asset growth in 2020, an electric car entrepreneur dominated: Elon Musk.

He increased his property by a whopping $ 131 billion to now 158 billion.

Behind him are Jeff Bezos and Colin Huang, an American and a Chinese Internet entrepreneur, as well as the aforementioned Zhong Shanshan and Dan Gilbert, the founders of the American financial group Quicken Loans - one of the few winners of the year who had nothing to do with the Internet or electromobility.

Jeff Bezos benefited from the fact that shops were closed for months during the Corona crisis

Source: AFP

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For this, Bezos has achieved another record with his company Amazon: It ranks first among the winners of the Corona crisis.

The stores that had been closed for months forced people to shop on the Internet, and most of them got stuck with Primus.

This brought Bezos an asset increase of nearly $ 75 billion.

And that's enough to defend his title as the richest person in the world.

Source: WORLD infographic

But of course there were also losers among the super-rich in 2020, which was mainly due to the pandemic.

The hardest hit was Harold Hamm, founder of the American shale oil producer Continental Ressources.

His fortune was almost halved, to now $ 5.4 billion.

The Russian Leonid Fedun, also active in the oil industry, lost almost a quarter of his property.

Colin Huang worked at Microsoft, then at Google, finally he went back to China, founded the Internet mail order company Pinguoduo and made it to become a billionaire

Source: Bloomberg

There wasn't much to be gained in 2020 with real estate either.

The traces of this can be seen in the fortunes of the American Donald Bren and the Sino-American entrepreneur Sun Hongbin.

They lost 22 or even 38 percent.

The American George Kaiser, head of the financial holding BOK Financial, now owns almost a third less.

However, a Spaniard suffered the highest losses in absolute terms: Amancio Ortega, founder of the fashion group Inditex, lost almost seven billion dollars.

Its branches with brand names such as Zara or Bench were closed for months in many countries this year.

And in many places it is already back.

Other industries were also hit hard, as evidenced by the fortunes of the large American industrialist family Koch.

If you add up the loss of the two main owners, it is even greater than Ortega at $ 10.6 billion.

Also a Chinese among the losers

Since the death of his brother David in 2019, Charles Koch has been the sole head of the brothers' company empire, which has annual sales of over 110 billion, mainly in the oil and chemical industries.

However, this year suffered from the crisis, and so the owners also suffered a loss.

Koch's fortune shrank by an impressive $ 5.3 billion.

Julia Flesher Koch is the third richest woman on earth, behind Walmart heiress Alice Walton and L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers

Source: Getty Images for Time

His brother's widow is Julia Flesher Koch, third richest woman on earth, behind Walmart heiress Alice Walton and L'Oréal heiress Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers.

And like brother-in-law Charles, she suffered a loss of $ 5.3 billion that year.

Your 42 percent of the Koch Group is still worth around $ 56.8 billion.

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But with Hui Ka Yan, founder of real estate developer Evergrande, there is also a Chinese among the losers.

Today the company is the second largest real estate group in the country.

But recently, business went worse and brought Hui a minus of over six billion dollars in his fortune.

Dan Gilbert owns real estate financier Rocket Companies, which went public in 2020.

As a result, his fortune has increased fivefold

Source: Bloomberg

After all, all of the losers in 2020 have the chance to catch up again in the coming year, once the pandemic is over and the economy really takes off again.

But also for the climber of the year, Li Bin, things can go further up in 2021.

Because in the spring he wants to bring his electric cars onto the European market.

Perhaps you will soon hear as much from him in this country as from the great role model Elon Musk.

"In a few years, Musk will be the size of BMW or Mercedes"

The German automotive industry is suffering.

But the effects of the corona pandemic are not the only reason for this.

“The USA, our partner, has damaged our industry a lot,” says automotive expert Prof. Ferdinand Dudenhöffer.

Source: WORLD