Wonder Women: China’s Self-Made Female Billionaires

“Women hold up half the sky” is one of Mao Zedong’s most famous proverbs, but Chinese women also hold up half the world’s self-made female billionaires listed by Forbes.

China’s businesswomen must be doing something right. A recent Forbes rich list revealed that half of the world’s 14 self-made female billionaires are China-born entrepreneurs.

The women include Wu Yajun, the world’s richest self-made woman who made her US$3.9 billion fortune as chief executive of real estate developer Longfor Properties, as well as Tibetan medicine entrepreneur Lei Jufang and Yan Cheung, a paper recycling tycoon and returnee on the annual Forbes rankings.

Others in the billionaires' club include tobacco flavourings entrepreneur Chu Lam Yiu, property moguls Zhang Xin and Chan Laiwa, as well as Xiuli Hawken of Renhe Commercial Holdings, which runs shopping centers in former underground military shelters. 

All of these women became rich on their own, working in a male-dominated business world, without inheriting their wealth. Though they only count for a handful of women in China, their success shows how the nation’s changes since 1949 have helped propel the increasing prowess of Chinese female entrepreneurs.

“This [Forbes list] tells the world how hardworking and entrepreneurial Chinese businesswomen are,” says Olivia Jingshu Ji, founder and vice president of China Entrepreneurs, a professional organisation aiming to promote entrepreneurship in the country.

“Travelling around business circles worldwide, I definitely meet more and more Chinese female business leaders. We call them the ‘3F Female’ – fine, fun and fearless.”

Recent developments in the country’s social and economic environment have been critical to its rise of self-made women. According to official statistics, nearly 80 per cent of Chinese female entrepreneurs registered their businesses after 1995.

Ji adds that China’s rapid changes have meant there are less well-established regulations and policies to follow compared to the rest of the world – meaning more flexibility and less red tape for start-up companies.

“Travelling around business circles worldwide, I definitely meet more and more Chinese female business leaders. We call them the ‘3F Female’ – fine, fun and fearless.”

“Most of the Chinese female entrepreneurs on the billionaires list were self-made over the past 15 years. It is in a time when China is fast growing and keeps changing,” Ji says. “Besides hard work and determination, which is a must for each successful entrepreneur, I would say the wise flexibility in business and smart communication are very strong characteristics with successful Chinese female entrepreneurs.”

Linda Xinrong Kausch, a Shenzhen-based writer currently working on a book titled The China Dream: The Unique Success Stories of 12 Western Business Women in China,agrees that China’s economic environment has been ripe for this spurt of entrepreneurial spirit.

“Even if you had ambition 60 years ago, you couldn’t do anything. Now, you can be a billionaire in five or 10 years, in such a short time … There’s big room for smart and diligent women to make a fortune,” Kausch says.

For example, prior to 1949, women’s ambitions generally centered around marrying someone who had a promising career – if you married well, then everything was well, Kausch says. But this, like many things in China, has changed.

“Chinese women now, generally speaking, are more ambitious than Western women,” Kausch says. “[In China] people will look at you and think you are an irresponsible woman if you’re educated and staying at home to take care of the family. There is some pressure from the environment. In our country, being a house wife is not valued, not like in Europe.”