Evergrande's Hui Ka Yan tops Hurun Rich List

Hui Ka Yan, 59, chairman of property company Guangzhou Evergrande Group, saw his wealth quadruple to $43 billion this year to become richest person in China, according to the Hurun Rich List released on Thursday.

Hui Ka Yan,chairman of property company Guangzhou Evergrande Group. [Photo: VCG]

Hui is the 12th person to top the list since the records began 19 years ago.

Pony Ma, 46, chairman of Tencent, rose to the second place with a net worth of $37 billion. The company's shares have surged more than 60 percent this year, propelled by social network service provider WeChat's continued domination and a strong performance of Tencent's online games. Tencent also made into the Fortune Global 500 list this year with a market value of $400 billion.

Jack Ma, 53, founder and chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, dropped one place on the list with his family wealth down 2 percent to $30 billon, despite a double in the share price of Alibaba. The main reason for this is Ma's reduced ownership in Ant Financial, which was from 35.5 percent last year to 1.2 percent this year.

Yang Huiyan, 36, vice-chairwoman of property developer Country Garden in Guangdong province, saw her wealth triple to $24 billion and took the fourth place on list this year. The property company set up by her father Yang Guoqiang, registered a sales of $60 billion in the first three quarters.

Last year's richest man Wang Jianlin, who remained in the top place for three years in a row, dropped to the fifth place this year as his family wealth have shrank 28 percent to $23 billion. With much of Wanda's theme parks and hotels sold to local property companies Sunac and R&F, Wang continues to derive much of his wealth from his cinema chain.

Average wealth of the billionaires coming into the list rose 12.5 percent to $1.2 billion, with the top 100's wealth rallied 60 percent year-on-year. Total wealth of these billionaires amounted to $2.5 trillion.