Pinduoduo’s founder Colin Huang tops China’s philanthropists, giving away US$1.85 billion of wealth after quitting his job
- Billionaire Huang tops Hurun’s list of Chinese philanthropists
- Midea Group’s founder He Xiangjian was China’s second-most generous donor last year, while Xu Jianyin was in third place
Colin Huang, who surpassed Jack Ma and Pony Ma last year as China’s second-richest businessman, was also the nation’s most generous when it came to giving away his wealth, topping the Hurun China Philanthropy List 2021.
The list recorded 39 benefactors who each gave away more than 100 million yuan (US$15.6 million) over the past year, the second most in 18 editions. Still, the donations given away by the 39 top philanthropists amounted to a mere 0.5 per cent of the combined wealth of the top 39 Chinese entrepreneurs, estimated at 6.5 trillion yuan, said Hurun’s chief researcher Rupert Hoogewerf.
“During these [past] 10 years, the total wealth of entrepreneurs on our Rich List has risen fivefold, while the number who donated more than 100 million yuan on the Philanthropy List has only doubled,” he said. “Compared with the speed of wealth creation, there is still a lot of room for charitable donations” to increase, Hoogewerf said.
“Pinduoduo only took five years to reach a market capitalisation of 1.1 trillion yuan,” Hoogewerf said. “Huang took only three years to [amass] 100 billion yuan of wealth, and was also the fastest to become China’s top philanthropist.”
Huang, also known as Huang Zheng, ranked 19th on Hurun’s wealth list, with an estimated net worth of US$69 billion. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index placed him in second place last year, behind Zhong Shanshan, the chairman of the water bottler Nongfu Spring.