Young dominate China's rich list

BEIJING, China (AP) -- A 37-year-old appliance merchant is China's richest person, topping other young entrepreneurs who have profited from the country's economic boom, according to a list released recently by the business magazine Forbes.

Wong Kwong-yu, founder of Gome Appliances, saw his wealth expand to $2.3 billion, driven by a jump in home buying by China's newly prosperous middle class, according to the 400-person Forbes China Rich List.

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

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

No. 2 on the list was property developer Xu Rongnao, with a fortune of $2.1 billion, followed by Larry Yung, chairman of conglomerate 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 maker 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, who used to compile Forbes' rankings.

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.

The release of the list comes as some of China's richest businesspeople are ensnared in scandals.

A Chinese business magazine, Caijing, reported this week that Wong was under investigation for illegal loans. Trading of Gome shares in Hong Kong was suspended Tuesday following the report but later resumed, and the company said it had received no notice of such an investigation. Wong's name also is spelled Huang Guangyu.

The magazine noted that No. 16 on last year's list, Shanghai developer Zhang Rongkun, was dropped this year after he was arrested in a corruption investigation and his company's share price plunged.

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

But their fortunes also were smaller, averaging $950 million for China's 400, versus $13.2 billion for the U.S. list, Forbes said. The minimum net worth required to make China's 400 rose this year to $100 million, up from $62 million in 2005.

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

GM sees continued China growth in 2007

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -- General Motors expects its sales in China to grow by more than 15 percent in 2007, outpacing the overall Chinese auto market.

"We think the market's going to continue to grow, by maybe 10 to 15 percent," GM China President Kevin Wale told an industry conference in Beijing. "We'll grow faster than the market," he added, declining to be more specific.

For this year, GM expects to sales to rise about 30 percent to 860,000 units, GM China Vice President Joseph Liu told reporters at a separate event in Shanghai. In 2005, GM, which makes the Buick, Chevrolet and Cadillac brands in China, sold 665,390 vehicles.

China is one of the few bright spots for GM, now the top-selling foreign brand in the world's fastest-growing country. GM lost $91 million in the third quarter following a $10.6 billion loss last year, as it lost crucial U.S. market share to Toyota and other Asian brands. Its global sales fell 2.5 percent in the first nine months of 2006.

Wale said one key to GM's success in China was its broad range of vehicles across many segments and brands - from entry-level minivehicles through the GM-SAIC-Wuling venture to luxury cars in the Cadillac line - though he conceded it was also expensive to maintain six separate brands.

GM is also planning to broaden its powertrain offerings, with a gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle due to be launched in 2008.

While China's total auto production capacity far exceeds demand - some estimates put the industry's overall capacity utilization at less than 60 percent - Wale said he was not concerned about overcapacity since GM's sales were still growing fast.

"There is a lot of market growth here," Wale said. "Our biggest problem in China is if we run out of capacity."

Of GM's total Chinese sales this year, 410,000 units were expected to come from Shanghai GM - a tie-up with SAIC Motor, China's biggest car maker, Liu said. The remaining 450,000 vehicles in sales would be at GM-SAIC-Wuling.

Wale said GM would continue to look for other opportunities to join hands with local auto makers to ensure sustained growth.