Show notes
China’s mysterious new billionaires are conquering the world
And refusing to talk to the press
Jul 19th 2026|Shanghai|7 min read
Early last year, when DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial-intelligence lab, was causing panic among its Western rivals, almost nothing was known about Liang Wenfeng, its founder. Mr Liang remains a mysterious figure, but at least one thing is clear. As DeepSeek closes a funding round valuing it at $71bn, its founder’s personal wealth has soared to roughly $38bn—making him far wealthier than Anthropic’s Dario Amodei or OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Mr Liang will not be spotted on the conference circuit. He has never appeared live on Chinese TV, and there are few photos of his unpolished, wiry figure. That puts him at home among the new generation of young Chinese billionaires. The country is cranking out more of them than anywhere else bar America. According to Hurun, which tracks the riches of the world’s wealthiest people, there are at least 29 self-made billionaires aged 40 or under in China. Adding Mr Liang, who will turn 41 at some point this year, brings the total to 30. That is nine more than last year.
China’s new tycoons differ from their predecessors in striking ways. They have abandoned property speculation and boozy dinners with officials for video games and meet-ups over Japanese anime. But they are also adept at taking imaginative ideas and scaling them into global businesses faster than any before them.
The history of China’s uber-rich is short. In the 1980s tycoons figured out how to wrest assets from the state. Zhang Ruimin, a member of a troupe of students who terrorised teachers and intellectuals during Mao’s era, got hold of a state-owned refrigerator business called Haier and turned it into what is now the world’s largest home-appliance maker. The opening of the property market in the 1990s minted another early group of billionaires including Xu Jiayin, founder of Evergrande, a now-collapsed property developer.
In the early 2000s industrialists such as Wang Chuanfu of BYD, originally a battery maker, launched a wave of manufacturing firms as China entered the World Trade Organisation. And then in the 2010s the consumer internet produced China’s first generation of tech moguls, including Jack Ma of Alibaba, an e-commerce giant, and Pony Ma of Tencent, maker of WeChat. The founders of ByteDance, creator of TikTok, and Shein, the online fast-fashion firm, who are both now in their early 40s, built their fortunes a few years later.
China’s new generation of tycoons are charting out a different path. More than two-thirds of the young billionaires on Hurun’s rich list made their money from consumer goods or media. Seven created video games; four built tea or coffee businesses. After Mr Liang, the wealthiest is Wang Ning, founder of Pop Mart, maker of the strange-looking Labubu dolls. Only three have struck it rich with AI, including Yang Zhilin, the baby-faced 34-year-old founder of Moonshot AI, which on July 17th released a new model that is said to rival the best from America. No property mogul makes the list—perhaps unsurprisingly, given how the sector has fared in recent years.
The businesses built by China’s new billionaires are also far more global than in the past. It once took a decade or more for Chinese entrepreneurs to figure out foreign expansion. No longer. Zhang Junjie, the 33-year-old founder of Chagee, a milk-tea shop, launched his firm in 2017 and opened his first overseas shop just two years later. The company is now listed in New York and operating in nine countries.
The new tycoons’ heavy reliance on foreign markets partly reflects the slump in consumer spending at home. Around 80% of sales at Dreame, a consumer-electronics brand founded by 39-year-old Yu Hao, come from overseas. Insta360, which sells small waterproof cameras, is almost as reliant on foreign demand. Pop Mart made more than $2bn in sales outside China last year, about 40% of its total. Chagee’s sales at home have slumped, but overseas they are growing healthily.
Attitudes to work are also different among this cohort. A controversial part of Chinese business culture for the past decade or so has been the so-called “996” routine, working from 9am to 9pm six days a week. The idea was championed by Alibaba’s Mr Ma and embraced by other local tech giants. At Pinduoduo, another e-commerce platform, young white-collar staff have died from overwork on their way home from the office.
China’s new entrepreneurs, by contrast, have adopted a more relaxed approach to management. Many are relatively flexible about working times. Liu Wei, the 39-year-old billionaire co-founder of miHoYo, a gaming firm, has eschewed presenteeism. He has overseen what the company calls its “happy work, steady growth” approach, which prioritises mental health (though one employee also recently died from complications related to overwork, suggesting that cultural norms are hard to shift). DeepSeek’s Mr Liang has reportedly said that the human brain can concentrate only for 6-8 hours a day, and that overwork leads to mistakes.
The willingness of workers to put in longer hours than anyone else in the world is what has built the Chinese economy over the past 30 years, huffs one private-equity investor, who recently visited an up-and-coming consumer brand and did not like what he saw. Some blame the relatively laid-back attitude of China’s young founders on cushy upbringings. Gone are the tales told by earlier tycoons of struggling for survival amid the country’s political and economic convulsions. Among China’s young billionaires, only Mr Liang and Mr Zhang of Chagee grew up poor. The three founders of miHoYo originally bonded over Japanese cartoons and formed their company as a celebration of gaming and comics. The founder of MiniMax, an AI lab, is so fond of a multi-player game called “Dota 2” that his staff refer to him as “IO”, a character from it.
To get rich is perilous
It is not all rosy for China’s young billionaires. The relationship between China’s government and its wealthiest people has deteriorated over the past few years. Older magnates once viewed themselves as part of a nation-building project. The property sector, which contributed up to a quarter of China’s GDP at its peak, was a collaborative effort between private entrepreneurs and local officials. Mr Ma was instrumental in building China’s digital economy. But the central government has now punished many prominent figures in these areas. Leverage has been sucked out of the property industry. Mr Ma’s business empire became the subject of a state crackdown in 2020 after he criticized regulators. Xi Jinping, China’s ruler, has sought to tamp down inequality under the slogan of “common prosperity”.
In 2021 Zhong Shanshan, the 71-year-old founder of Nongfu, a bottled-water company, reached a net worth of nearly $100bn. No one has since come close, including Mr. Zhong, who has seen his wealth plunge to around $39bn as the share price of his company has slumped. Mr. Ma is worth roughly a fifth as much as in 2021, and many other internet moguls have suffered similarly. Still, they have fared better than property magnates, a number of whom have been detained.
This environment has created a sense of disillusionment among China’s young billionaires. Many are eager to engage in industrial policy but are given little opportunity to do so, notes Steven Hai of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Their global ambitions also leave them exposed to souring relations between China and America. Xiao Hong, the 33-year-old founder of Manus, another AI firm, would have become a billionaire earlier this year if the Chinese government had not stopped him from selling his company to Meta, an American tech giant.
These innovators live with the sense that the businesses they have built could be derailed at any time by sudden policy changes in China or America, notes Rupert Hoogewerf of Hurun. By shunning publicity they seem to believe they can survive for longer, he says. Most young Chinese billionaires have never spoken to foreign media. (None would speak to The Economist.) Many avoid the Chinese press as well. The result is a generation of tycoons that is both China’s most global yet—and its most enigmatic. ■
中國神秘的新億萬富豪正在征服世界，卻拒絕接受媒體採訪
2026年7月19日｜上海｜閱讀時間：7分鐘
去年年初，當中國人工智慧實驗室 DeepSeek 讓西方競爭對手陷入恐慌時，外界幾乎對它的創辦人梁文鋒一無所知。
如今，梁文鋒依然是一個相當神秘的人物，但至少有一件事已經很清楚：隨著 DeepSeek 即將完成一輪募資，公司估值達到 710億美元，其創辦人的個人財富也暴增至大約 380億美元。這讓他的身家遠遠超過 Anthropic 的 達里奧・阿莫迪（Dario Amodei），以及 OpenAI 的 山姆・奧特曼（Sam Altman）。
梁文鋒不會出現在各種商業會議或產業論壇的巡迴活動上。
他從未在中國電視節目上公開現場露面，而網路上流傳的照片也寥寥可數，能看到的通常是他那副不修邊幅、身材瘦削的模樣。
這讓他與中國新一代的年輕億萬富豪十分相似。
中國正在大量培養這一代年輕富豪，數量僅次於美國。
根據追蹤全球富豪財富的胡潤研究院（Hurun），中國至少有 29名40歲以下的白手起家億萬富豪。
如果把今年某個時候即將滿41歲的梁文鋒也算進去，總數就來到 30人，比去年多了9人。
中國的新一代企業大亨，和他們的前輩有著非常明顯的不同。
他們拋棄了房地產投機，也不再熱衷於和官員吃豪華宴席；取而代之的，是打電玩、聚在一起聊日本動漫。
但另一方面，他們也非常擅長把充滿想像力的點子，迅速擴大成為全球性的企業，而且速度可能超越過去任何一代中國企業家。
中國超級富豪的歷史其實很短
中國超級富豪的歷史其實相當短暫。
到了1980年代，一些企業家開始摸索如何從國家手中取得資產。
張瑞敏就是其中之一。
在毛澤東時代，他曾是那群恐嚇教師與知識分子的學生組織成員之一。後來，他取得了一家名為 海爾（Haier）的國營冰箱企業，並將它發展成如今全球最大的家電製造商。
1990年代，房地產市場開放，又造就了另一批早期億萬富豪，其中包括許家印，也就是如今已經倒閉的房地產開發商恆大集團創辦人。
進入2000年代初期，隨著中國加入世界貿易組織，一批製造業企業家掀起了新一波企業創業潮。
其中包括 比亞迪（BYD）的王傳福。比亞迪最初是一家電池製造商。
接著，到了2010年代，消費型網際網路產業又孕育出中國第一代科技巨頭。
其中包括電子商務巨頭阿里巴巴的馬雲，以及打造微信的騰訊創辦人馬化騰。
幾年後，字節跳動（ByteDance）和Shein的創辦人也建立起自己的龐大財富。
字節跳動打造了 TikTok，而 Shein 則是一家主打線上快時尚的企業。
如今，這兩家公司的創辦人都已經40歲出頭。
新一代富豪正在走出不同的道路
中國新一代企業大亨正在開闢一條不同的道路。
根據胡潤富豪榜，年輕億萬富豪中，有超過三分之二靠消費品或媒體產業致富。
其中有7人靠開發電子遊戲創造財富；4人則建立了茶飲或咖啡事業。
排在梁文鋒之後、身家第二高的是王寧，他是潮玩公司 泡泡瑪特（Pop Mart）的創辦人，而泡泡瑪特最知名的產品，就是外型奇特的 Labubu 娃娃。
只有3人靠人工智慧致富，其中包括34歲、長著一張娃娃臉的 楊植麟。
他是 AI 公司 Moonshot AI 的創辦人。7月17日，這家公司推出了一個新模型，據稱可以與美國最頂尖的 AI 模型抗衡。
至於房地產大亨，則一個都沒有進入這份榜單。
考慮到中國房地產業近年的表現，這或許並不令人意外。
他們從一開始就把目光放向全球
中國新一代億萬富豪所建立的企業，也比過去更加全球化。
過去，中國企業家往往需要花上10年甚至更久，才能摸索出進軍海外市場的方法。
現在已經不同了。
張俊傑今年33歲，是奶茶品牌 霸王茶姬（Chagee）的創辦人。
他在2017年創立公司，僅僅兩年後，就開設了第一家海外門市。
如今，這家公司已在紐約上市，並且已經進入9個國家。
新一代企業大亨高度依賴海外市場，部分原因其實也反映了中國國內消費支出的低迷。
以消費電子品牌 追覓（Dreame）為例。
這家公司由39歲的俞浩創立，大約 80%的銷售額來自海外市場。
銷售小型防水相機的 Insta360，對海外需求的依賴程度也幾乎一樣高。
泡泡瑪特去年在中國以外市場創造了超過 20億美元的銷售額，約占公司總營收的40%。
霸王茶姬在中國國內的銷售額已經下滑，但海外市場卻仍然保持健康成長。
他們對工作的態度也不一樣
這一代年輕富豪對工作的態度，也與前人有所不同。
過去十年左右，中國商業文化中一個極具爭議的現象，就是所謂的 「996」工作制度。
也就是每天早上9點工作到晚上9點，一週工作6天。
這種工作模式曾受到阿里巴巴馬雲的推崇，也被其他中國科技巨頭所採用。
在另一家電子商務平台拼多多，甚至曾有年輕白領因過度工作，在下班回家的路上死亡。
相比之下，中國的新一代企業家採取了更加輕鬆的管理方式。
許多人對工作時間相對彈性。
39歲的億萬富豪劉偉是遊戲公司 米哈遊（miHoYo）的共同創辦人之一。
他並不鼓勵員工只是為了「被看見」而長時間待在辦公室。
他推動公司所稱的 「快樂工作，穩定成長」理念，把心理健康放在重要位置。
不過，最近仍有一名員工因與過勞有關的併發症死亡，這也顯示，要改變根深蒂固的文化規範並不容易。
據報導，DeepSeek 的梁文鋒曾表示，人類的大腦一天只能維持大約 6到8小時的高度專注，而過度工作只會導致更多錯誤。
「正是比世界上任何人都更願意加班，才打造了中國經濟」
一名最近造訪某個新興消費品牌的私募股權投資人對此頗有微詞。
他表示，過去30年來，正是中國人願意比世界上任何其他地方的人投入更長工時，才建立起了中國經濟。
但他最近參訪一家正在崛起的消費品牌時，卻不喜歡自己看到的情況。
有些人則把中國年輕創辦人相對悠閒的工作態度，歸因於他們從小過著較為優渥的生活。
早期企業大亨經常講述的那種故事——在中國劇烈的政治與經濟動盪中努力求生——如今已經逐漸消失。
在中國年輕億萬富豪當中，只有梁文鋒以及霸王茶姬的張俊傑出身貧困。
米哈遊的3位創辦人，最初就是因為喜歡日本動漫而結識，後來更以遊戲與漫畫為共同熱情創辦了公司。
AI 實驗室 MiniMax 的創辦人則非常喜歡多人線上遊戲 《Dota 2》。
他的員工甚至以遊戲中的一個角色 「IO」來稱呼他。
致富並非沒有風險
中國年輕億萬富豪的故事，並非一切都如此美好。
過去幾年，中國政府與最富有階層之間的關係已經惡化。
早期的企業大亨曾經把自己視為國家建設計畫的一部分。
房地產業在高峰時期曾占中國 GDP 的四分之一，這個產業曾是民營企業家與地方官員共同合作的結果。
馬雲也曾在建立中國數位經濟的過程中扮演重要角色。
但如今，中國中央政府已經對這些領域中的許多知名人物採取懲罰性措施。
房地產業的槓桿資金已被大幅抽離。
2020年，馬雲批評金融監管機構之後，他所建立的商業帝國便成為政府整頓的對象。
中國領導人習近平則以「共同富裕」為口號，試圖降低社會貧富差距。
2021年，71歲的農夫山泉創辦人鍾睒睒，身家一度接近 1000億美元。
此後，再也沒有人接近這個數字，包括鍾睒睒本人。
隨著農夫山泉股價下跌，他的財富已縮水至大約 390億美元。
馬雲如今的身家，大約只有2021年時的五分之一。
許多其他網路產業巨頭也遭遇類似的財富縮水。
不過，他們的處境仍比房地產大亨好一些，因為後者當中已有不少人遭到拘留。
年輕富豪開始感到失望
這樣的環境，也讓中國年輕億萬富豪產生了一種失落感。
西交利物浦大學（Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University）的 Steven Hai 指出，許多年輕富豪其實非常希望參與中國的產業政策，但政府給他們的機會卻相當有限。
另一方面，他們的全球化野心，也讓自己暴露在中美關係惡化的風險之中。
肖弘今年33歲，是另一家 AI 公司 Manus 的創辦人。
如果不是中國政府阻止他把公司出售給美國科技巨頭 Meta，他早在今年稍早就可能成為億萬富豪。
胡潤研究院的 胡潤（Rupert Hoogewerf）指出，這些創新者始終生活在一種不安之中：
他們辛苦建立起來的企業，隨時都有可能因為中國或美國突然改變政策，而被迫偏離原本的發展軌道。
他認為，這些企業家選擇避開媒體曝光，似乎是因為他們相信，這樣可以讓自己的企業存活得更久。
大多數中國年輕億萬富豪從未接受過外國媒體採訪。
《經濟學人》也沒有一個人願意接受採訪。
許多人甚至也刻意避開中國媒體。
最終形成了一個既是中國最全球化的一代企業大亨，同時也是最神秘莫測的一代。
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