Chinese tycoons accounted for more than half of the 445 entrepreneurs from all corners of the world who have lost their status as billionaires. 229 residents of the Asian giant who accumulated the previous course a fortune equal to or greater than 1,000 million dollars left at the end of March the list prepared annually by Hurun, considered the Chinese version of Forbes magazine. This is the most pronounced reduction in the wealth of Chinese billionaires since the list began to be published in 2013, reflecting, among other factors, the uncertainty caused, at the national level, by the strict application of the zero covid policy, and internationally, by events such as the war in Ukraine, which triggered inflation and precipitated the fall of the stock markets and the increase in interest rates.

According to Hurun's report, last January the total capital of the wealthiest on the planet decreased by 10%, a drop that was more pronounced (15%) in the case of Chinese members of this superclub of the nine zeros. The richest man in China and fifteenth in the world is Zhong Shanshan, creator of the Nongfu Spring bottled water empire. Zhong, who ranks first on the national list since 2020, saw his net worth decline 4% year-on-year. In the local ranking he is followed by Pony Ma, founder of Tencent, and Zhang Yiming, at the helm of ByteDance, whose fortunes fell by 25% and 31%, respectively.

This collapse with respect to its international peers has been directly related to the confinements implemented by Beijing to curb the expansion of covid-19 in 2022, a black year in which the economy grew at a rate of 3%, the worst figure since 1976 (only behind the 2.2% of the 2020 pandemic). Added to this situation is the harsh supervision campaign that the Government initiated against private companies in 2020, a crusade that has caused large firms in sectors such as real estate, technology or education to lose billions in market value in Hong Kong and Wall Street. In fact, among the Chinese tycoons who have seen their fortunes reduced the most are Xu Jiaying, the former king of brick with the real estate company Evergrande, or Jack Ma, the brain behind the creation of the digital giant Alibaba.

The weakness of the yuan

But, while it is true that all this has contributed to the contraction of wealth, we must bear in mind that many of those Chinese businessmen who left the exclusive group of billionaires have their capital defined in yuan, a currency that has fallen against the dollar in the last year. To illustrate to our readers, in April 2022, a Chinese tycoon needed to enter the list of Hurun (which is prepared in dollars) the equivalent of about 6,300 million yuan; A few months later, in September, 7.300 billion yuan and, in recent days, about 6.900 billion yuan. It means that, without having carried out any type of financial operation, these fortunes have suffered an exponential drop if they are computed in the US currency by the depreciation of the yuan. The appreciation of the dollar has been influenced by the Federal Reserve's interest rate hike.

However, despite the descent to the second division of that couple of hundred super-wealthy of the Asian giant, China continues to be, for the seventh consecutive year, the country in which a greater number of billionaires resided, with a total of 969, 26 of which occupied the top 100. It is also the main nation of origin of the 216 debutants on the list, with a total of 69. The U.S., with 691 billionaires, ranks second.

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