Good Fortunes: Meet the 8 Richest Foreigners in China

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Out of the top eight richest foreigners in China, three reside right here in Beijing according the newly released Hurun China Rich List 2019.

A total of 1,727 individuals have been hoarding enough fortune to make the annual list of the biggest money bags in the country, with predictable names like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Pony Ma of Tencent topping the charts. Beijing still has more residents on the list than any other city, with 286 or 16 percent of the list, although it has seven fewer than last year. Meanwhile, Shanghai gained seven rich-listers this year but it is still more than 100 people short of first place.

Eight on the list originally hail from outside of China, and five of them are of non-Chinese origin. Just how did they manage to make their millions in the Middle Kingdom?

#1 Tedy Djuhar - Indonesia (USD 3.4B)

Teddy is the son of Sutanto Djuhar, also known as Lin Wenjing, a native of Fuqing, Fujian. Sutanto moved to Indonesia when he was young and began trading at age 17. He eventually co-founded Salim Group, which not only went on to become Indonesia’s largest company but also the world's largest instant noodle manufacturer, in turn making him a billionaire.

Teddy was born in Indonesia, along with Sutanto’s four other children. Today, he lives in Fuzhou acting as director of First Pacific following his father's retirement.

 #2 Elijah Widjaja - Indonesia (USD 2.7B)

Another Fujian immigrant to Indonesia, Elijah Widjaja's family moved south in the 1930s, where his father Eka Tjipta Widjaja went from selling biscuits to building a multi-billion dollar fortune. Unfortunately, most of those spoils were lost during the Asian financial crisis but by turning their attention to China, the family was able to recover nicely.

Although Eka Tjipta’s grandson, Oei Wijdada, gets most of the attention from the press concerning the family’s lucrative construction operations in China, it’s Oei’s uncle Elijah who made the Hurun list. Elijah serves as CEO of Shanghai’s 50-story Bund Center in Huangpu. While he stays away from the press, he does have a penchant for mingling with fellow celebrities (he's pictured right with Quincy Jones, Halle Berry, Jeanne Lawrence above).

#3 Kieu Hoang - Vietnam (USD 2B)

Hoang is not only the first wholly non-Chinese on our list, but also its first totally self-made billionaire. Born poor in Vietnam, his family immigrated to the US after the end of the Vietnam War, allowing him to start a career as the director of blood plasma testing and manufacturing at Abbor Reference Laboratories.

Hoang started his own medical supply company in 1980, which would lead to a collaboration with a Shanghai company in 1987 and lead to the founding of his own Shanghai-based organization, RAAS Blood Supply, in 1988. He still maintains his American ties and owns a winery in California, having found a link between red wine and healthy blood.

#4 Dan Friis - Denmark (USD 1.15B)

Friis (also pictured at top), along with his partners Anders Holch Povlsen and Allan Warburg, founded Bestseller Fashion Group China in 1996. The group owns well-known brands such as Jack & Jones and Vero Moda and has 7,000 stores in over 500 Chinese cities. Friis and Warburg oversee the China operations from Beijing.

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#5 John Oyler - US (USD 1B)

John Oyler made his millions in the 2000s with his telecom research company Telephia, which he sold for USD 449 million in 2007. Two years later, he sold his China-based biopharma company for another USD 80 million. Not satisfied with providing services to big pharmacy companies, he decided to found a company that would develop its own drugs, thus creating one of China’s first genetics-focused biotech companies. He decided to name the company after this very city, where it is headquartered: it’s called BeiGene.

#6 Koh Tuck Lye - Singapore (USD 1B)

This year’s Hurun list was saturated with individuals that have taken advantage of the city's burgeoning tech industry. Venture capitalist, founder of Shunwei Capital, and Beijing resident Koh Tuck Lye is a prime example, making his billions by betting on the likes of Xiaomi, Patsnap, and iSpace, as well as other Internet of things and deep technology projects. He also sits on the Xiaomi board of directors.

#7 Filip Sedic - Bosnia/Sweden (USD 400M)

Bosnian-born Swede Filip Sedic has a successful career in digital marketing before starting his own beauty company, FOREO, making him the second fashionista on this list. The company is based in Sweden, but since last 2018, Sedic serves as CEO from his residence in Shanghai.

#8 Grant Horsfield - South Africa (USD 310M)

Grant Horsfield came to China with his wife Delphine Yip-Horsfield (herself a successful architect) in 2005. In Shanghai in 2015, the couple founded Naked Hub, a co-working business that aims to help start-ups get off the ground. The company later laid roots in Beijing and has since expanded beyond the borders of China with office locations in Australia and Vietnam. Last year, WeWork announced a deal to buy Naked Hub for an undisclosed amount estimated to be around USD 400 million.

Notice anything off about the list? Conspicuously, not a single woman made the top eight, and the proportion of women in the overall list dropped slightly to 27.2 percent from 28.7 percent last year. Seventy percent of the female entrants are described as self-made, with Yang Huiyan, 38, scion of property developer Country Garden, ranking as the richest woman with USD 25 billion.

Browse the full list of China's richest by clicking "Read more" below.

Images: Klexpat, First Pacific, Brand Talk, Forbes, FiercePharma, Newicon, Twitter, FOREO, Factor Daily

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