China Herald: How women billionaires differ from men

Rupert Hoogewerf

Finance and real estate produce most of the rich women in China, according tot the new 2014 Hurun China's Women Rich List, with Yang Huiyan for the fourth time as number one. Women billionaires differ from the men in several ways, Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf told in WomenofChina.

Rupert Hoogewerf:

"In fact, the list of wealthy women is different from other lists; China's richest woman pay more attention to real estate and financial investment. We can see that 28 percent of China's richest women primarily made their money in the real estate industry, while in the overall list this total is about 20 percent. Fourteen percent of women in the list are in the finance industry, but in the big list the percentage is lower than 10 percent. Many male billionaires are in the manufacturing industry but there are fewer women in this industry, around half the number of men. Women pay more attention to the healthy food and nutrition industry, and clothing, and account for 11 percent."...

According to the list, more women than men are self-made millionaires, and fewer inherit their fortune (although Yang Huiyan might be an exception).

Rupert Hoogewerf:

"We can see a change in the location the location of these women. A lot of them are working in Shenzhen, while that used to be Beijing. Now Shenzhen is the city that reflects the most of Chinese female entrepreneurs. We can also look at this from the age perspective.

"Women on the list are 48 years old on average, 5 years younger than overall rich list and 6 years younger than the male list. 70 percent of them are self made, out of 50 individuals 35 started from scratch, which is great. Especially this year a self-made woman who was born in the 80s made it into the top 50.

The list shows that 33-year-old Yang Huiyan, with 44 billion yuan (U.S. $7 billion), is once again the richest woman in China, and that 73-year-old Chan Laiwa of China's real estate group Fu Wah topped the self made rich list with 40 billion yuan (U.S. $6.1 billion) and 57-year-old Zhang Yin comes in third with 29 billion yuan (U.S. $5.1 billion).

More in Women of China.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers request form.

Are you interested in more background of China´s wealthy? At the China Speakers Bureau, we have a list of experts on luxury goods here.