What recession? China has second-highest number of billionaires as nation's super-rich buck financial crisis



China now has more known dollar billionaires than any other country except the United States, according to a report released today.



The country has 130 known dollar billionaires - up from 101 last year, the Shanghai-based Hurun Report found.



The number in the United States is 359 while Russia has 32 and India 24, according to Forbes magazine.



A Rolls Royce showroom in the city of Hangzhou. There are now seven such showrooms across China

And China's rich are getting richer, with the average wealth on the list $571 million - up almost one-third from last year, according to the report's author, Rupert Hoogewerf.



'With the greatest wealth destruction in the west of the last 70 years, we've seen China buck the trend and the wealth seems to be still growing,' Hoogewerf added.



'They've put the credit crunch behind them,' he said. 'The key driver has been urbanisation. You've got all these cities being built, and that requires property developers, iron and steel manufacturers. The latest thing is cars.'

Topping the list was Wang Chuanfu, chairman of electric car and battery maker BYD Co Ltd in which U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett holds a stake, with an estimated personal wealth of $5.1 billion. He was also the fastest riser from last year, up 102 places.



Second place went to Zhang Yin and family. She is the founder and director of the family company Nine Dragons Paper Holdings, a recycling firm that buys scrap paper from the United States, imports it into China, and turns it into cardboard for use in boxes to export Chinese goods.



In third place was Xu Rongmao and family, owner of Shimao Property Holdings Ltd.



Huang Guangyu, who founded GOME Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd and owns unlisted property businesses, sank to 17th place from the top position he held last year. He is currently being probed for alleged financial irregularities.



Gold rush: Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yin, who came in second place on the list, owns paper recycler Nine Dragons Paper and is worth an estimated $3 billion

Hoogewerf said the actual number of dollar billionaires could be higher than estimated.



'Either they are super-discreet, or perhaps they haven't come to the surface," he said.



'Having said that, the transparency of wealth ... is now very much in the open. There's many more listed companies.'

Hoogewerf said people who probably should have been listed, but about whose wealth not enough in known, included Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of the world's No. 4 PC maker Lenovo, and Chen Feng, founder of Hainan Airlines.



China's ruling Communist Party once condemned entrepreneurs and private business people as capitalist exploiters, but now welcomes them since late reformist leader Deng Xiaoping began landmark economic reforms in the 1970s.



One third of the people on the 1,000-name rich list are estimated to be Party members, according to the report.

Top ten Chinese billionaires





Name Est. worth Industry



1 Wang Chuanfu $5.1bn Mobile phone parts, Batteries



2 Zhang Yin $4.9bn Paper



3 Xu Rongmao $4.7bn Property



4 Yang Huiyan & family $4.6bn Property



5 Huang Wei & Li Ping $4.4bn Property, Finance



5 Liu Yongxing $4.4bn Chemical industry



5 Lu Zhiqiang $4.4bn Property, Finance



5 Zhu Mengyi & family $4.4bn Property



9 Wang Jianlin $4.3bn Property, Hotel,



10 Liu Zhongtian $4.1bn Aluminium, Plastics

