Tencent's Pony Ma and real estate tycoon Yang Huiyan both set records in Huron's Global Rich List 2018.

More than one new billionaire a day was created across the world in 2018, four a week were minted in China according to the 7th Hurun Global Rich List 2018.

Indeed, of the 437 new billionaires in 2018, 210 came from China. Of this elite crowd, Pony Ma of Tencent was a leader with $47 billion. «A boom in China, a weak dollar» were two factors contributing to the continued growth in Chinese wealth, according to Rupert Hoogerwerf, chief researcher at Hurun Report.

Among the World's Worst Performers

Chinese stock exchanges were another – 601 Chinese billionaires attributed their wealth in 2018 to the capital markets, a number made particularly impressive by the fact that only 252 billionaires on the list attributed wealth creation to the world's largest capital market, the U.S.

This despite the fact that China’s stock market was among the world’s worst performers last year, with the Shanghai Composite Index ranked last out of 94 primary benchmarks with its 24.6 percent decline. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 13.6 percent in 2018 while the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index fell 13.5 percent.

Politics, Technology and Real Estate Rule 

Whilst technology was the biggest driver of new wealth and real estate overtook manufacturing to take second place, China's legislators are a privileged lot. Compared to the 50 richest members of Congress in the U.S. who had a combined wealth of 2 billion dollars in 2016, the combined wealth of U.S. dollar billionaires in the Chinese legislature came in at $504 billion. 93 billionaires make up the 5,000 delegates in the legislative. 

  • Pony Ma is the richest man in Asia and continues to live in Shenzhen, also known as China's Silicon Valley. 
  • Yang Huiyan, of listed company Country Garden, was a new entrant to the list as her wealth tripled in 2018. Huiyan is also likely one of the few in the Top 100 list to call Ohio State University her alma mater. 

China Outperforms - Again 

Despite the headlines of a trade war with the U.S. dominating the year, China produced 210 new billionaires in the year. Indeed, 32 percent of the world's billionaire population is from China although only 20 percent of its total population is from China. Beijing is now the undisputed billionaire capital of the world, ahead of New York.

«There are now more billionaires in the neighboring cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen than there are in the whole of California, 158 compared with 139,» says Hoogewerf. Guangzhou added 16 billionaires and became one of the Top 10 in the world by billionaire population. 

Female Billionaire

Although the world's female billionaire population remained static at 15 percent, China claimed the lion's share of them with 78 percent of female billionaires coming from China. The richest self-made woman in the world is Zhou Qunfei of touchscreen maker Lens Technology who found her calling in technology quite by accident, having dreamed of being a fashion designer. 

China also led the way for the largest number of self-made billionaires in the world. Despite what he referred to as the «mountain of wealth» being created in Greater China, a banker at an international Chinese bank says the billionaire population here is largely underbanked compared to their peers across the world owing to the concentration of wealth in real estate. 

Music to the ears of the dozen or so international private banks competing fiercely for a piece of the pie.