China’s property tycoon tops rich list
Print Edition
THE richest man on China’s mainland saw his fortune balloon by nearly US$17 billion — a sum larger than the GDP of Iceland — in the past year, business magazine Forbes said yesterday.
Wang Jianlin, founder of real estate and entertainment conglomerate Wanda Group, saw his wealth rocket from US$13.2 billion to US$30 billion in the publisher’s 2015 China Rich List.
The windfall, which came despite sluggish growth in the world’s second-largest economy, was driven by the flotations of two of his company’s subsidiaries.
Market forces and creative abilities were crucial to building major businesses in China, Wang said, rather than personal connections.
“It’s good to have money,” he said in a brief appearance at the announcement of the ranking.
“The majority of people with money, especially extraordinarily rich people, are good people,” he said.
At his average rate of accumulation last year he would have become more than US$200,000 wealthier during his seven minutes on the stage.
The son of a Red Army captain, Wang was himself a soldier before he founded Wanda in the 1980s.
Now 61, he is the 15th-richest man on the planet according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires ranking.
“To unabashedly go out and make money, then fairly and equitably distribute that wealth — this is what rich people should do,” Wang said.
He has sought to play down overseas media speculation on the link between his success and government ties.
Yesterday, he claimed that market forces and creative abilities were crucial to building major businesses in China, rather than personal connections.
“If you’ve made money, it’s definitely because you have skills; I believe that the majority of people who’ve made money did so through normal channels,” he said.
Overseas acquisitions
Wang is known outside China for his overseas acquisitions, including the organizer of Ironman extreme endurance contests, Swiss sports marketing group Infront, and a stake in Spanish soccer club Atletico Madrid.
He burst into the spotlight in 2012 by buying United States cinema chain AMC Entertainment for US$2.6 billion.
Wang leapt from fourth to first in the Forbes list, one of several charting China’s richest people.
He unseated Jack Ma, founder of tech giant Alibaba, who dropped to second place on US$21.8 billion as his firm’s share price slumped in New York.
The 100 richest people on China’s mainland were worth US$450 billion, Forbes said, up nearly 20 percent in a year — far faster than the country’s current GDP growth of 6.9 percent and despite a rout on its stock markets.
Six out of 10 of the mainland’s richest were in the technology sector, including Ma Huateng of Internet titan Tencent (third), Lei Jun of Xiaomi (fourth) and Robin Li of Chinese search engine Baidu, who slipped four spots to sixth.
“China’s economy is going through a period of structural change,” said Forbes senior editor and list compiler Russell Flannery.
The country’s wealthiest people have found “new opportunities tied to that transition,” he said.
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