While China continues to produce many young self-made billionaires, showcasing its economic dynamism, observers have urged the creation of a more supportive environment, saying that innovation is still being held back.
About 98 per cent of the super-rich in mainland China, with assets valued at US$1 billion or more, are relatively young first-generation entrepreneurs, reflecting the vitality and wealth-creation power of its economy, Swiss bank UBS said in a recent report.
However, Beijing’s tendency to strengthen state ownership and the lack of a loss-proof mechanism – which would shield innovative risk-takers from severe repercussions for failures – have curbed entrepreneurial vigour, according to some analysts.
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“We noticed that self-made billionaires constitute a very high proportion of China’s wealthy individuals, indicating that the Chinese market remains a vibrant and dynamic engine for generating new wealth,” said Marina Lui, the bank’s head of China wealth management, at a news conference in Shanghai on Tuesday.
She said new billionaires in China “tend to be younger – typically in their 40s to 50s, in my observation – compared to those in other regions”.
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UBS’ annual billionaire report recorded 470 billionaires in mainland China this year. That was second only to the United States, which had 924, but those in China were generally younger, with smaller families.
Technological innovation was a major factor driving wealth creation, with Wang Chuanfu and Lu Xiangyang, the founders of electric-vehicle maker BYD, among the prime movers, the report said.