Some of China’s leading tech entrepreneurs have made the latest Fortune “40 under 40” list of “the most influential young people in business”. The list, which will help your parents question some of your life choices, is topped by Instagram head honcho Kevin Systrom and Facebook founder/possible China flag underwear owner Mark Zuckerberg, with Lyft cofounders Logan Green and John Zimmer taking second.
But then in third place there’s Wang Xing, founder of Meituan:
And in joint seventh place are Xu Li, founder of the “world’s most valuable AI start-up” and Hong Kong’s first unicorn SenseTime, and Zhang Yiming, the man behind ByteDance — the parent company for Jinri Toutiao and Douyin (Tik Tok).
Further on there’s also Hong Kong-born Rosewood Hotel Group CEO Sonia Cheng at number 27, who has overseen the chain’s expansion in recent years including to properties in Beijing and Silicon Valley.
Only two spots on 2017’s list were given to entrepreneurs from Mainland China, with Didi Chuxing’s Cheng Wei and Jean Liu in third and Mobike cofounders Hu Weiwei and Xia Yipeng occupying 20th.
The news was less positive for some Chinese CEOs when it came to Fortune‘s other famous list, the Fortune 500, released on Thursday. HNA, Wanda, Anbang Insurance, and CEFC China Energy were all excluded despite their revenues making them technically eligible. Fortune put their omission down to the firms being “under legal or regulatory investigations because of illicit operations” and “having operational difficulties”.
120 Chinese firms did make the list however, making China the country with the highest number of companies featured after the USA. State-backed businesses such as State Grid, Sinopec, and the big banks dominated the upper reaches of the list as far as Chinese companies were concerned. You can check out the full list of Chinese companies in the top 500, along with their rankings from last year, on Fortune‘s Chinese edition here.
You might also like:
