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According to the Hurun Rich List ranking, bottled water mogul Zhong Shanshan officially became the richest man in China . The entrepreneur behind mineral water Nongfu Spring and independent pharmaceutical company Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise , surpassed Alibaba's Jack Ma in fortune a few months ago, and is now far behind him.

This Wednesday, the annual list of billionaires made by the Hurun Research Institute , a research and investment firm based in Shanghai, was released. According to the institute, Shanshan has a net worth of 60.5 billion dollars , 7% (3.9 billion dollars) more than last year.

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The 67-year-old businessman was placed in third place in 2020, behind Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba , and Pony Ma, founder of Tentcent , who ranked first and second, respectively.

In just one year, China's bottled water billionaire made a huge leap. Specialists have pointed out that the growth in Shanshan's fortune can be attributed to three factors:

1. The massive demand for Covid-19 test kits that benefited your pharmaceutical company.
2. Last year, the shares of Nongfu Spring and Wantai Biological Pharmacy began to be sold on the stock markets.
3. The Chinese government's plan to redistribute wealth and regulate the fortunes of the country's billionaires.

Where did Jack Ma and the other Chinese billionaires go?

Alibaba founder Jack Ma , who held the title of ' China's richest man ' until last year, has now dropped to fifth place. His fortune dropped 36% to 'just' $ 39.6 billion .

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In second place was Zhang Yiming , creator of TikTok and founder of ByteDance , the parent company of the social network. The 38-year-old businessman has an estimated net worth of $ 52.8 billion , after tripling his fortune in the past year.

Zeng Yuqun , better known as 'the king of batteries' for his company CATL , came in at third place. Elon Musk's partner also surpassed Ma last June, tripling his wealth in one year to amassing $ 49.7 billion .

Pony Ma , founder of video game giant Tentcent and owner of WeChat , dropped two spots to fourth place. The restrictions imposed by the government to limit the time that minors use video games , caused a 19% decrease in their fortune to 49,000 million dollars .

The one who suffered the biggest drop in the ranking was businessman Xu Jiayin , founder of the real estate giant Evergrande Group.Although he topped the list in 2017 and was fifth last year, he now plummeted to 70th place , with a reduction of almost 70 % of your wealth to $ 11.3 billion .

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