Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, tops Fortune China’s young business leaders index for third year running
- Zhang, 38, has built ByteDance up to a value of almost US$400 billion in the private market over nine years
- Su Hua, the 39-year-old co-founder of Kuaishou, known as Kwai overseas and a rival to Douyin in China, took second spot
Zhang Yiming, the 38-year-old founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, has topped a list of Chinese business leaders younger than 40 for the third consecutive year.
Zhang took the top spot in the 2021 list of the 40 most successful business leaders in China under 40 years old, followed by Su Hua, chief executive of rival video app Kuaishou, and Cheng Wei, the founder of ride-hailing giant Didi. The list is published annually by the Chinese version of Fortune magazine.
Zhang built his company to a value of almost US$400 billion in the private market in the nine years since its founding in 2012. ByteDance now hosts a range of popular apps alongside viral video app TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, as well as news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.
The Beijing-based company became entangled in ongoing US-China tech tensions last year when then US President Donald Trump issued an executive order in July banning any US transactions with the Chinese company and its TikTok app over national security concerns. ByteDance responded by filing a lawsuit against the decision, but the case is currently on hold under the Biden administration.
According to documents the company filed as part of its lawsuit, TikTok had 689 million monthly active users worldwide as of July last year and surpassed two billion global downloads last August.