Rich Pickings

The number of Chinese billionaires is growing on the back of the country's rising affluence, with many drawing their wealth from new and diverse sectors

When Robin Li decided to set up his own Internet company in 2000, he was said to be "chasing a dream to change people's lives" through technology. Few would have dreamed then that his Chinese search engine Baidu would become the largest of its kind a decade later.

Li heads a list of newly rich Chinese whose numbers are burgeoning on the back of the country's growing affluence, with many from the private sector drawing their wealth from new and diverse sectors of the economy including the Internet and education rather than just traditional fields such as real estate and manufacturing.

These helped the number of billionaires from the mainland that made it to Forbes' annual list nearly double to 115 this year.

Sun Lijian, vice-dean of the school of economics at Fudan University in Shanghai, says that China's strong growth compared with Europe, the United States and other countries that were more badly hit by the financial crisis has helped its number of billionaires increase this year.

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Luo Laijun, an expert in international economics at Beijing-based Renmin University of China and a member of the Academy of International Business, says China's economy has offered a "unique" combination to fuel the increasing number of people making it to the rankings.

"The Chinese economy faced many challenges in 2010 following the financial crisis, but the macro economy has started to improve. China saw economic growth of 10 percent and a CPI (consumer price index) growth of 3.3 percent. So far, that is a combination no other country has been able to match. Against this backdrop, it is not hard to understand why there has been a surge in the number of rich Chinese people," Luo says.

"China's stronger national competitiveness in handling the economic crisis has made the world see it in a new light. A more open investment environment has also contributed to greater attention on China.

"As for China itself, its national strategy highlighting innovation and internationalization has promoted the development of mainland enterprises and directly contributed to the emerging group of rich people."

China's economy is now inclining toward industries with intensive technological investment and the technology industry is "best at producing new billionaires".

Fudan University's Sun says China's Internet industry has benefited from the country's enormous number of netizens.

"The swift development of IT infrastructure and the widespread use of computers have led to the large supply of Internet services," Sun says.

Sun and Luo also point out that the departure of US-based Internet search giant Google from the Chinese market helped the rapid growth of Baidu significantly.

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"In future, the technology sector will take an increasingly important position in China," Luo says.

"Newly rich people from the bio-pharmaceutical sector are also high up on the list and that is very eye-catching. It shows how the new and high-tech sectors hold great potential for development."

Underlying these changes is a major shift in the demographics of Chinese business.