"The nouveau riche disappeared in the Xin Chou Year."
In 1993, a British college student graduated from Durham University.
It was a period when street cultures such as hip-hop were popular. Many young people who advocated individuality wore loose jeans and skated rapidly on the streets. The most popular movies on the screen were "Pulp Fiction" and "Dazed and Confused", which were full of personality and made people restless.
However, this graduate from Durham University was born into an elite family, and the elite class in Europe and the United States is born from power and capital. Therefore, he followed his father's advice and entered Andersen, one of the Big Five accounting firms.
Compared with the uncertainties and accidents of the grassroots, the lives of the elite are always set in a certain direction. If there are no surprises on this path, he will rely on the golden sign of a financial professional to become a standard middle-class person in a developed country. Over time, he will hide the excessive curiosity of young people and play with those digital games every day.
However, there will also be a series of coincidences in fate. In 1990, three years before graduation, he studied as an exchange student at Renmin University of China in Beijing for one year, which allowed him to glimpse a corner of another world.
01
Renmin University of China, one of the most famous institutions of higher learning in China, is located in Huangzhuang, Haidian District, Beijing. It is only one stop away from Zhongguancun. From here, it is easy to feel the stirrings of Chinese young people in the early days of the world's Internet development as they face an increasingly open world.
This experience left him with a direct and profound experience, and the gears of fate began to turn from here.
At the end of 1995, Andersen established a branch in Shanghai. Within more than a year, its business expanded rapidly and needed more staff. He was proficient in Chinese and successfully got the opportunity. Soon, he set foot on this magical land again.
He found that after a gap of 7 years, China had undergone earth-shattering changes. Coke, color TVs, and Hong Kong and Taiwan music had overturned the old life. The most popular TV series on TV had changed from the urban "little people" life drama "Desire" to the Hong Kong film "The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils". Traditional industries and commerce were developing rapidly, while new stars such as Sohu and NetEase were also emerging.
College students, young people, and middle-class people in big cities easily accepted new things and went crazy for them.
As an employee of a well-known accounting firm, he could easily come into contact with a large number of enterprises at the forefront of the economic tide and feel the strong vibrations of the Chinese economy in their constantly changing financial data.
A question that would affect his life appeared in his heart:
Who will become China's Bill Gates?
At first, he used his position to conduct a secret investigation. When he finished his work in China in 1999 and returned to the UK, he presented a list of the richest people, with 19 of the richest people in China on the list.
This list from the mysterious eastern country of China直观地标注了 the wealth owned by each rich person. This sentence should be: This list from the mysterious eastern country of China clearly indicates the wealth owned by each rich person. The asset value of the "richest person" was模糊地标上了 "1 billion", equivalent to 120 million US dollars, which is 285,714.3 times the per capita disposable income of the country. This sentence should be: The asset value of the "richest person" was vaguely marked as "1 billion", equivalent to 120 million US dollars, which is 285,714.3 times the per capita disposable income of the country.
In an eastern country with a system different from that of the West, the first batch of super-rich people appeared. This phenomenon of tearing up the old order quickly aroused the curiosity of British journalists.
They regarded it as a mirror to understand China and extended it to the fundamental question: Where is China going after opening its doors?
The public reports also made people remember his name at once: "Rupert Hoogewerf."
02
At first, Rupert Hoogewerf wanted to find "China's Bill Gates", but he soon discovered that the largest proportion in the "Rich List" were real estate bosses.
In 2004 and 2005, the proportion of the rich from the real estate industry on the list was: 45%, 28% respectively.
In extreme years, 6 of the top 10 richest people on the list were mainly engaged in real estate, and 2 others also took real estate as one of their main businesses.
Rupert Hoogewerf shifted his focus from looking for the "Bill Gates" in the Chinese Internet industry to observing the changes in various industries of the Chinese economy, especially the real estate industry.
For this reason, in 2006, Rupert Hoogewerf specially customized a sub-list for the real estate industry: "Rupert Hoogewerf Real Estate Rich List".
Rupert Hoogewerf's friends said that in order to contact the bosses of real estate companies, he took the small real estate advertisements received on the street, called the salespeople's phones one by one, and found their superiors one by one until he contacted the boss himself.
The richest person on the first "Rupert Hoogewerf Real Estate Rich List" was Xu Rongmao of Shimao Group.
To be publicly ranked for wealth requires the consent of the rich person himself, but most bosses of real estate companies will deliberately avoid this issue.
In order to persuade Xu Rongmao to agree to be on the list, Rupert Hoogewerf made an appointment with Xu at a McDonald's restaurant in Shanghai and conducted several hours of "psychological construction" on him until the other party agreed.
Later, he also found Zhu Mengyi's family of Hopson Development, who ranked second in the first real estate rich list, and Chen Zhuolin, the founder of Agile, who ranked third on the list. Rupert Hoogewerf said:
The stories of these real estate tycoons are the stories of China's real estate industry.
Perhaps it is a coincidence. Since Rupert Hoogewerf presented the first real estate rich list, China's real estate has entered a vigorous era of great development, including going public, making bets, experiencing financial crises, the 4 trillion yuan stimulus plan, purchase restrictions, price limits, shantytown renovation, three red lines, and financial crises...
The names on the list are also constantly changing, and the amount of wealth has doubled.
In 2006, the first name on the list was Zhu Mengyi of Hopson Development, with a wealth of 16.5 billion yuan, and Xu Rongmao of Shimao was 500 million yuan less than him.
In 2007, Country Garden went public, the richest person changed, and Yang Huiyan, who came to the forefront of the Yang family, suddenly had a personal asset of as high as 130 billion yuan. She also became:
The first real estate person in China to top the "Rich List" and the first person in China with assets exceeding 100 billion yuan.
At that time, the personal wealth of Li Yanhong, the richest person in the Internet industry, was only: 18 billion yuan.
The personal wealth of Ma Huateng, who was called "Ma Shixian" at that time, was: 12 billion yuan, less than one-tenth of Yang Huiyan's.
Three years later, in 2010, the real estate industry saw the emergence of the first company with sales exceeding 100 billion yuan, but it was Wang Jianlin, who later became the代名词 of the "real estate richest person", who stood out in terms of asset value.
With the successful operation of the Wanda model, Wang Jianlin's personal wealth increased to 35 billion yuan, entering the top ten of the "Rich List".
After that, the wealth growth rate of the real estate industry became even more crazy. Just three years later, Wang Jianlin first ascended to the "richest person" throne, with a personal wealth of 135 billion yuan, 3.86 times that of three years ago.
The real estate wealth myth began from then on. Real estate and the Internet have become the two main forces in the top ten of the "Rich List", alternating and interweaving to form the Chinese story of that decade.
Wang Jianlin (in 2013, 2015, and 2016), Xu Jiayin (in 2017) have successively become the "richest person" and "occupied" 4 years of the golden decade.
Numbers have become part of the competition. In order to quickly increase sales and personal wealth, models such as high leverage, high turnover, and co-investment have been used to the extreme. Every capital associated with real estate has been involved, washed, and accelerated, falling into a frenzy.
03
In 2019, Rupert Hoogewerf suddenly ended the "Rupert Hoogewerf Real Estate Rich List", which had a history of 14 years, and replaced it with the "Rupert Hoogewerf Global Real Estate Rich List".
Just like a joke, this has become another coincidence:
In 2019, the Chinese real estate industry reached its de facto peak. Since then, the rankings of the rich from the real estate industry have begun to decline on the "Rich List".
In 2019, Xu Jiayin, the richest person in the real estate industry, ranked third; in 2020, Xu Jiayin was still the richest person in the real estate industry, but his ranking dropped to fifth.
On October 27, 2021, the "2021 Rupert Hoogewerf Rich List" was announced. The richest person in the real estate industry was replaced by Yang Huiyan of Country Garden, ranking 11th.
"For the first time, no entrepreneur from the real estate industry entered the top 10." Rupert Hoogewerf sensed that the real estate industry is moving in another direction.
In the past five years, the rich from the real estate industry have been withdrawing from the "Rich List" year by year, and the proportion of the number of people on the list in the real estate industry has dropped significantly. It was 15% five years ago, and this year it is only 9%.
This year, the well-known real estate tycoons who "disappeared" from the top 100 of the "Rich List" include (but are not limited to):
Wang Jianlin (from top to bottom for 2023 - 2019):
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
Xu Jiayin (from top to bottom for 2021 - 2017):
2021
2020
2019
2018
