About Hurun Report

Hurun Report

Hurun Report, also styled Hurun Inc, is a Shanghai-based research, media and investments business best known for the Hurun Rich List, its annual ranking of the wealthiest individuals in China. Founded in 1999 by British-Luxembourgish chartered accountant Rupert Hoogewerf, whose Chinese name is Hu Run, the business grew from a single list compiled with the help of two Shanghai university students into what it describes as the world's largest rich-list provider, ranking more than 5,000 individuals annually. Its main operations are in China, India and the United Kingdom, and its lists have become a widely watched annual record of private wealth creation in China and, increasingly, around the world.

Origins and the first China Rich List

Hurun Report was established as a research unit in 1999 by Rupert Hoogewerf. At the time Hoogewerf was a Shanghai-based accountant who had noticed, while speaking with young Chinese university graduates about their role models, that they spoke readily about making money but struggled to name the Chinese business leaders who inspired them. Curious to identify who was leading the rapid growth of China's private sector, he teamed up with two students from Shanghai's Donghua University to compile the first China Rich List.

That first list, published in 1999, ranked just 50 Chinese individuals with wealth above about US$6 million. It was topped by Rong Yiren, the former vice-president of China often described as a 'red capitalist'. The exercise was the first serious attempt of its kind to identify China's wealthiest individuals from the public sources then available, and the results were published in Forbes magazine, where the first four years of the list appeared. What began as a curiosity-driven research project quickly became an eagerly awaited annual event for China's private sector.

Rupert Hoogewerf: founder and chief researcher

Rupert Hoogewerf, born in Luxembourg in 1970, serves as chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report. He graduated from Durham University's St Cuthbert's Society in 1993 with a degree in Chinese and Japanese, and is fluent in Mandarin. A qualified chartered accountant, he worked for seven years at Arthur Andersen in London and Shanghai before launching Hurun Report shortly after arriving in China.

Hoogewerf has been widely regarded as an influential observer of wealth in China. He was named Neweekly magazine's Person of the Year in 2002 for his contribution to the understanding of wealth in China, and in 2004 Global Entrepreneur magazine named him one of the 100 Top Influencers in China's Globalisation. In September 2009 the Shanghai government presented him with the Magnolia Award, the city's highest honour for foreigners, for his contribution to the development of the Shanghai economy. In 2018 he received a Durham University Professor of Practice appointment, reflecting the academic recognition of his long-running work documenting entrepreneurship and wealth.

Growth of the Hurun Rich List

The scale of the Hurun China Rich List has expanded dramatically alongside China's private economy. The 1999 list contained 50 names above a threshold of a few million dollars; by 2012 the annual list, released every October, included 1,000 names with a minimum threshold of about US$300 million. The China list now features nearly 2,000 individuals worth more than US$300 million, according to the company. The changing composition of the list has itself become a source of economic insight: Hoogewerf has noted that two decades ago half of those on the list came from real estate, a share that fell to about 20 percent a decade ago, 15 percent five years ago and around 10 percent in the 2022 list, which was topped for a second consecutive year by Zhong Shanshan, founder of bottled water company Nongfu Spring, with a fortune of 455 billion yuan.

Because the list is compiled year after year using a consistent research approach, its rises and falls are read as a barometer of China's private sector. The 2022 edition, for example, recorded the largest fall in the number of listed individuals in 24 years, which Hoogewerf attributed to the effects of Covid-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and a slowing global economy. Media coverage of each release, in China and internationally, regularly draws on the list to discuss the fortunes of particular industries and entrepreneurs.

The wider list family

Although the China Rich List remains the flagship product, Hurun Report now publishes a broad family of rankings. These include the Hurun Global Rich List, launched in 2012 as a ranking of the world's US dollar billionaires, the Hurun Global Unicorn Index tracking privately held start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion, the Hurun China 500, and specialist lists such as the Hurun Art List. The Hurun Start-up series also tracks early-stage companies. Together these lists rank more than 5,000 individuals annually, and the company describes itself as the world's largest rich-list provider.

The Global Rich List extended Hurun's methodology beyond China. Its inaugural 2012 edition ranked individuals with personal fortunes of US$10 billion or more, with wealth calculations taken as a snapshot at a stated valuation date. Hoogewerf said at the launch that it would not be long before entrepreneurs from countries such as China and India became more dominant in global wealth, which was why a China-focused list maker had decided to publish a global ranking.

Hurun India and international operations

Hurun launched Hurun India in 2012 under the leadership of Anas Rahman Junaid, a graduate of the University of Oxford, whom Hoogewerf had met in Oxford. The Indian operation applies the same list-making approach to India's wealth creators and has produced its own rich list and related rankings for more than a decade. With operations centred on Shanghai, Mumbai and London, Hurun describes itself as a research and media platform promoting entrepreneurship through its lists and events. Hurun UK presents the business as having grown into a leading research platform with about 200 employees, generating billions of views globally on the Hurun brand each year.

Research institute, publishing and events

Beyond the lists themselves, Hurun Report operates the Hurun Research Institute, which produces the research behind the rankings, and has run a publishing and events business aimed at China's entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals. In its earlier years the group published luxury magazines, including the flagship Hurun Report magazine, and ran an active business events division targeting China's wealth creators. China Entrepreneur magazine in 2005 named the Hurun Report China Rich List one of the ten most important business events of the past twenty years, underlining how quickly the list had become embedded in Chinese business culture.

How the lists are compiled

From the beginning, Hurun's lists have been compiled from publicly available sources. The first list was assembled by painstakingly sifting through what public information existed on China's private business owners at a time when disclosure was limited. As China's listed companies, disclosure rules and business media developed, the available source material expanded, but the core task remained the same: identifying entrepreneurs, estimating the value of their holdings and ranking them consistently year to year. The lists use stated thresholds and snapshot valuation dates, and the published rankings are accompanied by commentary on industry and regional trends drawn from the underlying data.

Influence and reception

The Hurun Rich List occupies a distinctive place in coverage of the Chinese economy. For many readers in China and abroad, it is the most recognisable annual accounting of who has prospered in China's private sector, and its release is routinely covered by major Chinese and international news outlets. The lists are also used as a reference point in discussion of entrepreneurship, philanthropy and the changing structure of Chinese industry, because the sector, age and regional breakdowns published alongside the headline ranking document how the sources of new wealth shift over time.

At the same time, the list's history mirrors the development of China's private sector itself: from 50 individuals worth more than US$6 million in 1999, when private wealth on that scale was still a novelty, to nearly 2,000 individuals worth more than US$300 million a generation later. That long, consistent record is the foundation of Hurun Report's reputation and of its claim, in its own words, that nobody knows China's rich better.

Hurun Report today

Today Hurun Report describes itself as a research, media and investments business, headquartered in Shanghai with its main operations in China, India and the UK. Its flagship Hurun Rich List has been running for more than 25 years in China, alongside more than a decade of global and Indian lists. Under Hoogewerf, who remains chairman and chief researcher, the business continues to publish its annual rankings of wealth and start-ups and to promote entrepreneurship through its lists, research and events.