Wang tops more Hurun lists

After being proclaimed the richest Chinese by the Hurun Rich List 2013, real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin came out on top again on the Hurun Real Estate Rich List 2013, released Tuesday.

The Hurun Real Estate Rich List said that Wang, 59, the founder and chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, was the richest entrepreneur in the property industry in China with a personal fortune of 101 billion yuan ($16.5 billion).

It is the third time in the past four years that real estate tycoon Wang has topped the industry rich list, the list report said, noting that his fortune in real estate increased 124 percent from last year.

The Hurun Rich List 2013, which is an annual ranking of China's 1,000 richest individuals, was released by Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute on September 11. The Real Estate Rich List is a sub-list of the wealthiest in the real estate industry, while the IT and entertainment rich lists also do the same for their respective industries.

The threshold of the Real Estate Rich List 2013 reached a new record of 7.5 billion yuan, 25 percent up from last year and the average wealth of the richest 50 individuals also stood at a historical peak, which is 15.7 billion yuan, 22.5 percent up year-on-year, according to a reading report released by the institute Tuesday.

Many of China's richest individuals are from the real estate industry.

One in four of the wealthiest Chinese is in the real estate industry and about three yuan out of every 10 yuan of the listed individuals' total fortunes are made in the same industry, the list report said.

Most of the wealthiest real estate individuals only do business in China and have not expanded to other countries yet, Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the institute, said in the list report.

The report did provide examples of several Chinese real estate companies doing business out of China, such as Wang's Wanda Group, which is currently building a hotel in London, among other overseas properties.

However, expanding to other countries and regions will not likely become common in the Chinese real estate industry because it is hard to find another market like China which has such a high population density and where house ownership is so strongly valued, Zhang Dawei, research director at the Beijing office of Centaline China Real Estate, told the Global Times Tuesday.

In addition to his great fortune in commercial property, Wang also came in first on the entertainment list with 16.5 billion yuan fortune in department stores, entertainment and art investment, according to the Hurun Entertainment Rich List 2013.

The second-richest person on the Hurun Rich List 2013 is Zong Qionghou, board chairman of the Wahaha Group whose major business is beverages. The third-richest individual is Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent Holdings.

Ma ranks first in the IT Rich List 2013, followed by Robin Li Yanhong, chairman and CEO of Baidu Inc, and Jiang Bin, founder of GoerTek.

Among the 1,000 richest individuals, the number of people from the IT industry grew the most with an increase of more than 20 percent from 2012.