Who is China’s richest executive? She’s not an executive at Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu or any of the technology companies

Women made up 11 of China’s 50 wealthiest professional managers, according to the Hurun China Richest Professional Managers 2021 report

Cheng, 50, tops the list with a personal fortune estimated at 65 billion yuan, due to her 9 per cent stake in Foshan Haitian Flavouring, which quadrupled since its 2014 stock offer

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Pedestrians at the Lujiazui Financial District in Shanghai on Friday, March 20, 2020. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 5:57pm, 19 Jan 2021Updated: 11:04am, 1 Feb 2021

Cheng Xue, the vice-chairwoman of Foshan Haitian Flavouring, has displaced dozens of technology executives as China’s highest-paid corporate chieftain, according to the inaugural Hurun China Richest Professional Managers 2021 report.

The personal wealth of Cheng, 50, is estimated at 65 billion yuan (US$10 billion), due to her 9 per cent stake in Haitian according to Forbes, which quadrupled in value since its 2014 initial public offering in Shanghai. Cheng is also at the apex of a growing legion of female executives who made up 11 of the 50 wealthiest professional managers, according to the report that excluded majority shareholders and corporate founder-owners.

“Chinese female professional managers are very successful,” said Hurun’s chairman and chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf. “Of the top 50 Chinese professional managers, one-fifth is female, which is higher than the 15 per cent of self-made female entrepreneurs on the Hurun Report.”

Still, Cheng’s success may be the exception rather than the norm, belying the harsh reality for Chinese women, who still earned 22 per cent less than their male colleagues, according to a 2018 survey of 10,000 career women by Zhaopin.com, the Chinese equivalent of LinkedIn. Under China’s socialist labour laws, women - whom Mao Zedong famously proclaimed as being able to “hold up half the sky” - enjoy similar pay as men in entry- and low-level jobs, with the gap widening in higher positions, Zhaopin said.

Three women made it to the top 10 on Hurun’s 2021 list. Yang Lijuan, the chief operating officer of the hot pot chain Haidilao International Holding, was the second-richest woman with 12.5 billion yuan, in seventh place overall. Yang, 42, was also the youngest executive to make the list.