The top ten businesspeople on China's richest-person list.

A 37-year-old appliance merchant topped a list of China's richest businesspeople released Thursday by the business magazine Forbes, leading a group of young entrepreneurs in China. Wong Kwong-yu, founder¹ of Gome Appliances, saw his wealth expand to $2.3 billion, according to Forbes.

One quarter of those on this year's list are under age 40, reflecting the fact that most of China's fortunes have been made in the past decade as retail², Internet and real estate companies sprang up to serve a booming consumer market.

"China's richest are a lot younger than America's richest," said Russell Flannery, Forbes' Shanghai bureau chief, at a news conference.

No. 2 on the list was property developer Xu Rongmao, with a fortune of $2.1 billion, followed by Larry Yung, chairman of conglomerate³ Citic Pacific, with $2 billion. Yung, also known as Rong Zhijian, was No. 1 last year.

The richest woman was No. 5 Zhang Yin, who built a paper-recycling business into Nine Dragons Paper Co., China's biggest maker⁴ of paperboard for packaging, at $1.5 billion.

Zhang was No. 1 on a competing list of China's richest released Oct. 11 by journalist Rupert Hoogewerf.

Flannery said Forbes calculated Zhang's wealth separately from the stakes that her husband and brother own in Nine Dragons. If their holdings were added together, the family would be No. 1 on the Forbes list.

Forbes noted⁵ that the average age of businesspeople on its China list was 46.5, compared with 65.7 for the comparable US list.

China's top 40 richest include six women, compared with seven in the US top 40, but the Chinese include self-made millionaires such as Zhang, while the American women inherited their wealth, Forbes said.