A worker in a Nongfu Spring facility in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province in February 2020 Photo: cnsphoto

Economic opportunities brought along by the COVID-19 pandemic and China's fast-growing new industries are thrusting more new faces from the Chinese mainland into this year's Forbes list, as the world saw the ranks of ultra-rich swelling and the largest number of new faces during a year marked by the pandemic that forced billions of people to spend more time to stay home.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX and the Bernard Arnault & family of the luxury seller LVMH were the world's top three richest, according to the Forbes' 35th Annual World's Billionaires List released on Tuesday.

Zhong Shanshan, chairman of bottled-water company Nongfu Spring, ranked the highest among Chinese billionaires in the list with a net worth of $68.9 billion after taking his company to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Zhong ranked 13th on the global list.

Zhong's company, which advertised itself as a mere transporter of mineral water, saw its market cap swelling during the pandemic.

Pony Ma Huateng, chairman of Chinese Internet giant Tencent, came in the second on the China list and the 15th on the global list. 

Tencent's revenues, from media contents to games and music livestreaming, grew 28 percent to 482.06 billion yuan ($73.67 billion) in 2020, barking the pandemic and partly benefited from more media consumption by consumers during the lock-downs.

Jack Ma Yun, Asia's richest man in the 2020 list, came in No.26. 

Besides the more familiar names that have occupied the Forbes rich list for some time, the economic opportunities brought along by the pandemic have also helped the fortunes of those who have positioned themselves in the right place multifold. China's booming equity market in 2020 also contributed.

More than 40 percent of newcomers to Forbes list are from China.

Steven Meng Yang, founder of Anker Innovations Technology that sells charger, portable battery packs and other electronic items, was among the newcomers to the list with a net worth of $4.2 billion.  

As the stay-at-home economy boomed amid global scale lockdown, consumer electronics sales thrived.

Anker's revenues surged 40.54 percent to 9.35 billion yuan in 2020, according to its annual report, after posting over 30 percent annual growth in the Japanese, European and North American markets.

Global Times