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Letters and Blogs
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-09 08:09
The richest that doesn't set foot in real estate Wang Chuanfu, president of BYD, a car manufacturer and the largest rechargeable battery producer in China, becomes the mainland's richest man this year from last year's 103rd position, according to the Hurun Report. With 35 billion yuan ($5.14 billion) of wealth, Wang dramatically headed the Hurun List, which sends new signals about transitions of China's economic growth pattern. Wang not only renewed the list of the mainland's richest people, but also brought a breath of fresh air to the Chinese economy, where most of the wealth had gone into real estate developers' pocket. Once upon a time, it was widely believed that the realty business was both the key to China's economic growth and the hotbed for nouveaux riches. Developers were competing with each other in hoarding land, and thus injected excessive capital only to push the business from a dangerous situation to the brink of disaster. Most entrepreneurs on the Hurun Report kept running their business with low technology, rigid capital operation and corruption. Now, due to the economic crisis as well as macroeconomic policy, the real estate developers have lost part of their wealth. But Wang manages to present a new "wealth creating" model featuring high technique and new energy. Furthermore, Wang's success also indicates that China's manufacturing industry is developing by leaps and bounds. The slump of real estate values since 2007 has driven capital out of realty business. Yet fundamentally speaking, Wang's story tells us that China's economy is shifting its attention from real estate to manufacturing. Accordingly, the world's third largest economy is readjusting its growth pattern with new emphasis on innovative technology and scientific capital management. Yan Huiwen http://liujh218.blog.sohu.com/133343681.html (China Daily 10/09/2009 page8) |
