Meet China’s five richest billionaires who’ve gone from nothing to $166bn

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China’s meteoric rise to become a global economic superpower has helped propel some of its citizens to vast fortunes that are growing by the day. The richest person in China saw their wealth increase fourfold in the last year to $42.5bn (£32.2bn), according to Forbes.

Unlike the UK’s rich list, there are no trust fund billionaires or aristocratic heirs among China’s economic elite; all of the top five are self-made. And all are men. Most are not afraid to flaunt their wealth, splashing it on private jets, yachts and lavish events with appearances from film stars, among other status symbols. Here are the top five:

Wang Wei is the chairman of SF Holding, known as the “Fedex of China” and has increased his wealth by almost $6bn over the past six months alone. Like many among China’s richest, Wang started from nothing. In the early 1980s he was a delivery driver, dropping off parcels around Hong Kong from the back of his car.

Unlike his namesake at number 4 on the list, however, Wang is intensely private. The South China Morning Post claims to be the only newspaper ever to have interviewed him. “When SF started delivering packages in the 1990s, it was still an illegal business called ‘black delivery’,” Wang told SCMP in 2011.

“My parents were university professors in the mainland but their academic records were not recognised when we moved to Hong Kong when I was little. So we started from scratch,” he said.

His big break, according to the Hong Kong Economic Times, came during the Sars outbreak in 2003. The commercial airline industry had crashed, but Wang managed to procure a license to run charter flights to keep deliveries flowing. It now delivers to 200 countries.

Flashy billionaire Wang Jianlin is said to favour lavish private jets and owns a Sunseeker, the British yacht brand seen in the James Bond films. In 2015, he celebrated a $1.2bn business deal with blaring disco music, champagne and numerous models, starting first thing in the morning at one of Beijing’s most luxurious hotels. Wang owns 20 per cent of Atletico Madrid but has made most of his massive $25bn fortune from property.

His father was a Communist military hero who fought alongside Mao during the the Long March. When he was just 15, the younger Wang followed his father into the People’s Liberation Army where he worked his way up from border guard to regimental commander over 16 years. Now he lives a life of luxury courtesy of Dalian Wanda – the world’s largest private property developer.

Not content with being China’s land king, Wang is bidding to take over the entertainment world too. He flew in Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Beckinsale, and John Travolta to help launch an $8bn mini-Hollywood in the Chinese city of Qingdao in January 2014. The development is the largest film studio complex in the world.

While Steve Jobs was famous for his on-stage unveilings of Apple’s new products, Alibaba founder Jack Ma has taken things to a new level. The flamboyant entrepreneur kicked off his firm’s anniversary event in September by dancing to Michael Jackson’s Dangerous in front of 40,000 employees while wearing a replica of the King of Pop’s famous black and gold outfit.

Things weren’t always so glamorous for Ma, who was once an English teacher. As chairman of Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses, he became China’s wealthiest man, a position he maintained for several years. He dropped down two places on the rich list this year despite increasing his fortune by more than a third to $38.6bn. That still puts him some way behind fellow e-commerce pioneer, Jeff Bezos, of Amazon who has also seen his wealth rise rapidly this year to $94bn.

Alibaba was the brains behind Singles’ Day, a shopping event which has become a global phenomenon, eclipsing Black Friday by registering several times more sales. The televised gala event accompanying the day has included appearances from David Beckham and Kobe Bryant among a host of other stars.

Successes like Singles’ Day helped Alibaba break stock market records when it floated in New York in 2014 in the world’s biggest public stock offering.

Ma is the chairman of giant conglomerate Tencent which runs China’s WeChat, a kind of WhatsApp, Apple Pay, Facebook, Google, Skype and Tinder all rolled into one. There’s a good reason why it is known in China as the “App for everything”.

Its many functions also give it a huge amount of power and the platform has also reportedly been used to censor communications. Despite being largely unknown in Europe, WeChat has close to a billion users and Tencent also owns a stake in Snapchat.

Time magazine named Ma as one of the world’s most influential people in 2007 and 2014 while Forbes put him on their list of the most powerful people in 2015.

Ma goes by the unusual nickname Pony, derived from the English translation of his family name, which means “horse”.

He trained as an engineer and, unlike fellow Chinese technology entrepreneur Jack Ma of Alibaba, he generally steers clear of the public spotlight.

Property magnate Hui Ka Yan has seen his personal fortune swell by a phenomenal $32bn in the last twelve months. The 400 per cent increase has rocketed him right to the top of China’s rich list, mostly thanks to the extraordinary rise in the stock price of his company, China Evergrande.

Hui, who is also known as Xu Jiayin, has risen from humble beginnings working as a technician in a steel factory for 10 years after graduating from university in 1982, Forbes said.

Since he founded Evergrande in 1996 it has expanded at breakneck speed by supplying the seemingly insatiable demand for apartments from China’s rapidly expanding middle class.

Hui’s fortune is intimately tied to the Chinese property market which many see as a bubble that has been pumped up by unsustainable borrowing and could cause a huge amount of turmoil if it bursts.

Through his company, Hui also bought a majority stake in his local football team and renamed it Guangzhou Evergrande. Last year the club broke the Asian transfer record by paying £31m for Atletico Madrid’s Jackson Martinez.