China's richest businesspeople got richer in 2019 despite a tariff war with Washington and an economic slowdown, a survey showed Thursday.
The average net worth of China's richest 1,800 people rose 10% over 2018 to $1.4 billion, according to the Hurun Report, which tracks the country's wealthy.
Jack Ma, who retired last month as chairman of e-commerce giant Alibaba, was No. 1 for a second year with a net worth of $39 billion. Ma Huateng of Tencent, a games and social media company, was second at $37 billion, up 8%.
The results reflect the importance of China's consumer market at a time when U.S. tariff hikes have battered export-oriented manufacturing.
The number of businesspeople on the list from the tech, pharma and food industries rose while those from manufacturing declined.
"Wealth is concentrating into the hands of those who are able to adapt to the digital economy," said Rupert Hoogewerf, the report's founder and chief researcher, in a statement.
In contrast to the United States and Europe, where the ranks of the richest people are dominated by inherited wealth, almost everyone on the Chinese list is self-made.
Hoogewerf noted that when the survey began two decades ago, mainland China had no dollar billionaires.
Real estate developer Xu Jiayin, No. 1 in 2017, dropped to third place with $30 billion.
Sun Piaoyang and Zhong Huijuan, a married couple, were No. 5 at $25 billion after their drug company, Hansoh, debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Hansoh makes treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Pharma tycoons account for 8% of this year's list, double the share 10 years ago, according to Hurun.
The net worth of Ren Zhengfei, founder of smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Ltd., which is at the center of a struggle between Washington and Beijing over technology development, rose 24% to $3 billion. He climbed 36 places on the Hurun list to No. 162.
Huawei, which also makes network switching gear, said sales rose 23.2% over a year earlier in the first half of 2019. The company has warned, however, that it will "face difficulties" as curbs on its access to U.S. components and technology take effect.
Consumer industries benefited from an 8.4% rise in retail spending in the first half of 2019. That was despite a decline in economic growth to a 26-year low of 6.2%.
Qin Yinglin and Qian Ying, a married couple who own Muyuan Foods, a pig breeder, profited from an outbreak of African swine fever that pushed up pork prices. Their net worth tripled to $14 billion.
The list included 156 people under age 40, an increase of 24 names from last year.
Colin Huang, 39, of e-commerce company Pinduoduo, ranked No. 7 with $19 billion four years after founding his company.
"Nobody in the world has ever made that much from a standing start," said Hoogewerf.
Hurun Report: www.hurun.net
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Donald Trump is set to meet Thursday at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by then-President Nicolás Maduro before the United States captured him in an audacious military raid this month.
Less than two weeks after U.S. forces seized Maduro and his wife at a heavily guarded compound in Caracas and brought them to New York to stand trial on drug trafficking charges, Trump will host the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Machado, having already dismissed her credibility to run Venezuela and raised doubts about his stated commitment to backing democratic rule in the country.
“She’s a very nice woman,” Trump told Reuters in an interview about Machado. “I’ve seen her on television. I think we’re just going to talk basics.”
The meeting comes as Trump and his top advisers have signaled their willingness to work with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president and along with others in the deposed leader's inner circle remain in charge of day-to-day governmental operations.
Rodríguez herself has adopted a less strident position toward Trump and his “America First” policies toward the Western Hemisphere, saying she plans to continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro — a move reportedly made at the behest of the Trump administration. Venezuela released several Americans this week.
Trump, a Republican, said Wednesday that he had a “great conversation” with Rodríguez, their first since Maduro was ousted.
“We had a call, a long call. We discussed a lot of things,” Trump told reporters. “And I think we’re getting along very well with Venezuela.”
In endorsing Rodríguez, Trump has sidelined Machado, who has long been a face of resistance in Venezuela. She had sought to cultivate relationships with Trump and key advisers like Secretary of State Marco Rubio among the American right wing in a political gamble to ally herself with the U.S. government. She also intends to have a meeting in the Senate on Thursday afternoon.
Despite her alliance with Republicans, Trump was quick to snub her following Maduro’s capture. Just hours afterward, Trump said of Machado that “it would be very tough for her to be the leader. She doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Machado has steered a careful course to avoid offending Trump, notably after winning last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which Trump coveted. She has since thanked Trump and offered to share the prize with him, a move that has been rejected by the Nobel Institute.
Machado’s whereabouts have been largely unknown since she went into hiding early last year after being briefly detained in Caracas. She briefly reappeared in Oslo, Norway, in December after her daughter received the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf.
The industrial engineer and daughter of a steel magnate began challenging the ruling party in 2004, when the nongovernmental organization she co-founded, Súmate, promoted a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. The initiative failed, and Machado and other Súmate executives were charged with conspiracy.
A year later, she drew the anger of Chávez and his allies again for traveling to Washington to meet President George W. Bush. A photo showing her shaking hands with Bush in the Oval Office lives in the collective memory. Chávez considered Bush an adversary.
Almost two decades later, she marshaled millions of Venezuelans to reject Chávez’s successor, Maduro, for another term in the 2024 election. But ruling party-loyal electoral authorities declared him the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary. Ensuing anti-government protests ended in a brutal crackdown by state security forces.
Janetsky reported from Mexico City. AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
FILE - U.S. President George Bush, right, meets with Maria Corina Machado, executive director of Sumate, a non-governmental organization that defends Venezuelan citizens' political rights, in the Oval Office of the White House, Washington, May 31, 2005. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
FILE - Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado gestures to supporters during a protest against President Nicolas Maduro the day before his inauguration for a third term, in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos, file)
