TikTok’s founder is now China’s richest person. But the country’s total number of billionaires has shrunk

By Simone McCarthy, CNN

(CNN) — China has a new richest person – and it’s the entrepreneur behind the wildly popular, and controversial, app TikTok.

Zhang Yiming, 41, co-founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, topped the 2024 Hurun China Rich List, released Tuesday. His wealth reached $49.3 billion, as assessed by research, media and investment group Hurun Inc, which publishes the ranking of the country’s richest people.

Zhang’s ascendency comes after ByteDance’s global revenue grew 30% last year to $110 billion, Hurun said.

Since its official launch in May 2017, TikTok has been catapulted to mass global popularity as well as becoming an era-defining social media platform beloved by many young people around the world – and a trailblazing example for other Chinese companies eager to break into US and global markets.

But it’s also now facing mounting legal battles in the US, where according to Hurun it has nearly 200 million users.

There, TikTok is battling state and federal lawsuits related to alleged failures to protect children using the app, while it and ByteDance are fighting a law that could force a nationwide ban of the app if TikTok doesn’t spin off its US operations.

The law – signed in April – follows years of US allegations that TikTok’s ties to China could potentially expose Americans’ personal information to the Chinese government. TikTok strongly denies the allegations, which come as a growing China-US rivalry has fueled broader American national security concerns about Chinese tech firms. TikTok has also rejected the allegations relating to child protection.

Other countries have also cited national security concerns, including India which has banned TikTok. Western allies such as Britain, Canada and Australia have restricted TikTok’s use on government devices.

But those regulatory hurdles have done little to dent TikTok’s growing global appeal among users.

Zhang owns 20% of ByteDance, which he co-founded with college roommate Liang Rubo in Beijing in 2012. He stepped down as its CEO 2021 after building ByteDance into one of the biggest names in Chinese tech.

ByteDance also holds China’s popular news app Toutiao and Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China.

Zhang’s rise to the top of the rich list knocked China’s “bottled water king” Zhong Shanshan out of the lead spot for the first time in three years, though he remained second.

Zhong faced a wave of online vitriol earlier this year from nationalists who accused him of a lack of patriotism in a campaign that hit the price of shares of his beverage company.

In third place was Pony Ma, founder of multimedia and entertainment giant Tencent, which owns China’s ubiquitous messaging and payments platform WeChat.

Billionaires on the decline

Overall, the number of US-dollar billionaires in China shrank to 753, down 142 from the previous year. China has also lost 432 or just over a third of its billionaires since a peak of 1,185 in 2021, Hurun said.

The number of people ranked on the list – 1,094 – also shrank overall for the third consecutive year. The list includes those individuals assessed to have at least 5 billion yuan (roughly $700 million) as of the end of August. The list also includes those living in Hong Kong and Macao as well as in the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan.

Hurun Report chairman Rupert Hoogewerf chalked the decline up to a “difficult year” for China’s economy and stock markets.

China is grappling with steep economic challenges, with a real estate crisis, high local government debt and lagging consumer spending among factors ratcheting global concern about the health and trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy.

“The number of individuals on the list was down by 12% in the past year to just under 1100 individuals and 25% from the high point of 2021, when we managed to find 1465 individuals with 5 billion (yuan),” he said in a statement.

“The old guard, represented by real estate developers, have given way to a new guard of tech, new energy, consumer electronics, especially smart phones, ecommerce, especially cross-border ecommerce, consumer products and healthcare,” he said.

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