While most Chinese consumers still worry about their future, the top 10 percent wealthy had a surprisingly good 2025 and will be around spending during the Chinese New Year, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC.
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Hong Kong-based marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at China’s second-richest woman, according to the 2025 Hurun rich list. “Zhou’s story rebukes the notion that success is the product of privilege or pedigree. She is living proof that it is possible to rise from the depths of poverty to the highest echelons of wealth and influence,” writes Ashley Dudarenok at the Jing Daily.
Jing Daily:
In the pantheon of Chinese billionaires, there are tech titans, real estate moguls, and brand builders. And then there is Zhou Qunfei, a woman whose story is so raw, so improbable, it feels like a modern-day fairytale. The 55-year-old founder of Lens Technology is the second richest woman in China, with a staggering US$15 billion (110 billion RMB) fortune, according to the 2025 Hurun Rich List.
Her wealth surged 75% ($6.8 billion) from 2024 to 2025 following Lens Technology’s Hong Kong IPO in July 2025. But what makes her story truly remarkable is not merely her wealth but her ability to build a global empire from the ground up. Her journey demonstrates how foresight, relentless discipline, and hands-on leadership can turn a small workshop into an international industry powerhouse…
Zhou’s story rebukes the notion that success is the product of privilege or pedigree. She is living proof that it is possible to rise from the depths of poverty to the highest echelons of wealth and influence. Her empire was not built on a single brilliant idea or disruptive technology, but on the simple, unglamorous work of making things, perfecting a craft, and an unwavering refusal to give up.
She is the “touchscreen queen,” a true industry titan forged in the fires of adversity. She offers a powerful reminder that in the end, the most valuable asset a leader can possess is not a brilliant mind or a charismatic personality but an unbreakable spirit.
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Chinese companies look for global markets, and South East Asia is the number one stop, says Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher Rupert Hoogewerf in the China News Service. Next is Europe, but Southeast Asia is certainly leading, he says.
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Chinese chipmaker Montage Technology soared 64% on its Hong Kong IPO debut. Financial analyst Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and former head of North America for CIC, China’s sovereign wealth fund, explains how US efforts to curtail Chinese semiconductor and AI firms helped them in the current boost, he tells Bloomberg. “The strong lineup of global cornerstone buyers suggests that Chinese AI-related IPOs are attracting institutional investors back to the HKEX market again,” he says.
Bloomberg:
Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law and former head of North America for CIC, China’s sovereign wealth fund, said US sanctions limiting China’s access to advanced chips such as Nvidia’s were accelerating capital and policy support for China’s domestic semiconductor value chain, including “middleware” chip designers such as Montage.
“The strong lineup of global cornerstone buyers suggests that Chinese AI-related IPOs are attracting institutional investors back to the HKEX market again,” he said, referring to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
“Montage’s Hong Kong debut underscores how China’s AI chip ecosystem is moving ‘up the stack’ from basic components towards specialised chips that connect processors and memory inside data centres,” he added.
Montage’s listing also comes as Hong Kong logged its strongest start to a year since 2021, with IPOs and second listings raising about US$5.5 billion in January, the most since US$7.6 billion was raised in January 2021, LSEG data showed.
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For a few years, China’s international retailer Temu – together with Shein – seemed to have a winning retail concept. But those days are over, says Hong-Kong-based marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok in The Rest of the World. Temu is running into barriers all over the world.
The Rest of the World:
Temu’s unique business model — cheap goods delivered from China straight to buyers at factory-direct prices with free shipping — has brought the company under fire. The regulatory pushback marks a turning point for one of China’s most aggressive global exporters.
“Temu’s original ‘China-to-door’ model was a brilliant, but ultimately fragile, strategy built on regulatory arbitrage,” Ashley Dudarenok, founder of China research and digital transformation firm ChoZan, told Rest of World. “That era is coming to a close. The model is now undergoing a forced, rapid evolution into a localized cross-border hybrid. Its survival depends entirely on how quickly it can execute this complex transition while navigating a minefield of regulatory and financial pressures.”
More in the Rest of the World.
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Already in early 2025, China watcher Kaiser Kuo predicted Western leaders would change their view on how to deal with China and Xi Jinping. In a discussion on Novara Media, those Western leaders are queuing up to go to Beijing to restore relations they just a few years ago warned against. And where does Donald Trump fit into that change?
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Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, explains in the state-owned China Daily how the attitude of the UK towards China has changed for the better.
China Daily:
As the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer continued his China visit in Shanghai, Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman & Chief Research Officer of Hurun Report, told China Daily that he is excited to see British industry leaders travel with Starmer to visit China as they are able to witness China’s rapid developments on life science, consumer electronics and electric vehicles. On Friday, Hurun Research Institute released the Hurun Chinese Luxury Consumer Survey & Hurun Best of the Best Awards 2026 in Shanghai, marking its 22nd consecutive year of publication.
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Business analyst Shaun Rein, author of r, discusses a fundamental difference in the politics of China and the USA concerning the rich. China focuses on the 90% of the population who are not rich, while the US goes for the rich, he says at the Thinkers Forum.
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China’s society is changing fast, and youngsters are adjusting their attitudes on how to organize their lives. Marketing expert Ashley Dudarenok looks at those changes for Time. Individualism and self-love are some of the new features. “When traditional markers of success like marriage and homeownership become structurally inaccessible for many, young people are forced to redefine what a ‘good life’ means,” Dudarenok says.
Time:
The mentality is just one example of how young people in China are reacting and adapting to a fast-changing and often atomizing urban society. Ashley Dudarenok, who runs a China- and Hong Kong-based consumer research consultancy, tells TIME that these trends among China’s Gen Z are a “rational response” to a hyper-competitive job market, stagnant wages, and rising costs of living.
“When traditional markers of success like marriage and homeownership become structurally inaccessible for many, young people are forced to redefine what a ‘good life’ means,” Dudarenok says. “If they cannot afford a house, they can at least afford to treat themselves to a nice meal or a Pop Mart toy that brings them joy.”…
“Rapid urbanization and the rise of the digital economy have created a new social landscape,” says Dudarenok. The Chinese government has taken steps to regulate AI companions amid global concern over AI-fueled psychotic delusions and self-harm. The move, Dudarenok adds, is “recognition that these new forms of companionship and social interaction are becoming a permanent feature of Chinese society.”…
The individualism taking form among Chinese youth is different from the “rugged, self-reliant individualism often associated with the West,” Dudarenok says. “Chinese youth are not necessarily breaking from their families or culture,” but “they are carving out more space for personal expression and emotional needs within those structures.”
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Leading AI expert Alvin Wang Graylin, on the road to the World Economic Forum in Davos, discusses how China will be one of the AI dark horses to watch in 2026, as he tells at the Big Bang Tech Report. He points at Minimax, Moonshot, and Z.AI, and also on the hardware side, Huawei, he adds.
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On January 19, the Hurun Research Institute released the ‘2025 Hurun China Top 50 Artificial Intelligence Enterprises’ report, showing a firm rise for the country’s AI companies, including Cambricon Technologies, Moore Threads, and Muxi. Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman and Chief Research Officer of Hurun Report, points at the US export controls as the main reason for the change, according to Futubill.
Futubill:
Rupert Hoogewerf, Chairman and Chief Research Officer of Hurun Report, said: ‘The number of AI chip companies on the list has significantly increased this year, with 14 companies making the list, nine more than last year. The top three companies on the list are all related to AI chips. The core reason is the continuous tightening of U.S. export controls on high-end AI chips, which has forced domestic acceleration of computing power autonomy. In the past two months, we have witnessed the consecutive IPOs of Moore Threads, Muxi, Biren Technology, and Tianshu Zhixin. Eighteen new companies have been added to the list, accounting for more than one-third of the total. Ten of these companies are AI chip-related, represented by the four Shanghai GPU dragons.’
The newly listed companies fall into two categories: One category includes companies whose valuations have grown to meet the listing threshold, such as Step Stars, established in April 2023, which owns the Step series of general large model matrixes and recently raised hundreds of millions of dollars in its Series B financing round. The other category consists of companies that have transformed from ‘non-AI companies’ to ‘AI companies,’ such as Xinyuan Co., Ltd., ranked in the top ten of the list. In the first three quarters of 2025, GPU, NPU, and VPU, which belong to AI chips, accounted for 70% of the company’s core IP business revenue. In terms of chip design, revenues related to AI computing power accounted for about 73% of the company’s design business income in the first three quarters.
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.
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