Cranes are seen at a construction site of a housing complex in Beijing on Thursday. Photo: VCG

The average wealth of real estate entrepreneurs in China shrank by 3 percent compared with last year, according to the Hurun Global Real Estate Rich List 2022 - a list of the real estate billionaires in the world - released by the Hurun Research Institute on Wednesday.

Li ka-shing, the 94-year-old, topped the world's richest real estate entrepreneur with $33 billion, Lee Shau Kee of Henderson Land came second with $27 billion, while Yang Huiyan, the co-chair of Chinese real estate giant Country Garden, ranked the third with $26 billion.

A total of 32 entrepreneurs on the global list saw their wealth dwindle compared with last year, among which Chinese entrepreneurs took up two-thirds. Hui Ka Yan, chairman of China Evergrande Group - the world's most indebted property developer, saw the biggest drop in wealth by $23.4 billion.

In 2020, Hui topped the list with wealth of 231 billion yuan ($36.29 billion).

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Research Institute, said that Chinese real estate entrepreneurs' woes were further compounded by the financial challenges across China's real estate industry since the second half of last year, coupled with weakening confidence among home buyers, leading to a drop in sales. 

However, "we can see from the list that among the top 100 entrepreneurs in the global real estate industry, there are more Chinese entrepreneurs than other countries combined," Hoogewerf noted.

China's urbanization rate has exceeded 60 percent. From the fact that 40 percent of the top 100 real estate entrepreneurs focus on building and selling properties, it can be seen that there is still room for urbanization to develop in the future, he added.

Global Times