Alibaba and Ant Group founder Jack Ma has lost the title of China’s richest man, a list published on March 2 showed, as his peers prospered while his empire was put under heavy scrutiny by Chinese regulators.
Ma and his family had held the top spot for China’s richest in the Hurun Global Rich List in 2020 and 2019 but now trail in fourth place behind bottled water maker Nongfu Spring’s Zhong Shanshan, Tencent Holdings Pony Ma, and e-commerce upstart Pinduoduo’s Colin Huang, the latest list showed.
His fall out of the top three comes “after China’s regulators reined in Ant Group and Alibaba on anti-trust issues,” Reuters quoted Hurun.
Ma’s recent woes were triggered by an October 24 speech in which he blasted China’s regulatory system, leading to the suspension of his Ant Group’s USD 37 billion IPO just days before the fintech giant’s public listing.
Regulators have since tightened antitrust scrutiny on the country’s tech sector, with Alibaba taking much of the heat; the market regulator launched an official antitrust probe into Alibaba in December.
Chinese regulators also began to tighten their grip on the fintech sector and have asked Ant to fold some of its businesses into a financial holding company to be regulated like traditional financial firms.
Ma, who is not known for shying away from the limelight, then disappeared from the public eye for about three months, triggering frenzied speculation about his whereabouts. He re-emerged in January with a 50-second video appearance.
China’s current richest man, Zhong, made his first appearance at the top spot with a fortune of 550 billion yuan (USD85 billion), largely thanks to the share price performances of Nongfu Spring and vaccine maker Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise.
Tencent’s Ma saw his wealth swell 70 percent over the year to 480 billion while Pinduoduo’s Huang’s fortune grew 283 percent to 450 billion yuan, the list said. In comparison, the wealth of Ma and his family grew 22 percent, to 360 billion yuan.
Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, broke into the top five rankings among Chinese billionaires in Hurun’s Global Rich List for the first time, with an estimated personal wealth of USD 54 billion.
