Economy
AI push helps ByteDance founder reclaim China’s richest title
Zhang Yiming, founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, has reclaimed the top spot on a list of China’s richest people, driven by his company’s push into artificial intelligence.
The rankings released by The Hurun Research Institute on Tuesday reflected that the country’s high-tech sectors were rising, but others like consumer and real estate were under pressure.
The institute, which has published the list annually since 1999, found a record 1,529 people with more than 5 billion yuan (about $750 million), up 6.6% from last year.
The number of billionaires based on their net worth in U.S. dollars rose to 1,176, up 155 people – 176 more than the U.S. That was slightly below the 1,185 people in 2021.
Zhang topped the list with $100 billion, up 43%, “almost all of it on the back of AI,” and the amount was a record high for China’s richest person, Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report chair, said in a statement. Hoogewerf noted that ByteDance’s Doubao is China’s most used AI assistant.
ByteDance is also the parent company of popular short-video platforms Douyin and TikTok.
“AI is the biggest single wealth engine on this list: 160 Hurun rich listers – 1 in 10 – now make their money from AI,” he said.
Bottled water magnate Zhong Shanshan fell to second place with $61 billion, down 23%, while Robin Zeng, chair of CATL, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, came third, Hurun said.
Hurun cross-checked its information with entrepreneurs, regulators, industry experts and others to compile the list, while acknowledging limitations.
Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, a new face on the list, ranked seventh. AI chipmaker Cambricon chair Chen Tianshi was 10th.
“This year’s gains were polarised – entrepreneurs in AI, semiconductors and robotics surged ahead, whilst those in consumer, real estate and traditional manufacturing saw their wealth shrink – a two-speed economy,” Hoogewerf said.
China last week said its economy grew 4.5% in the July-September quarter from a year ago, fueled by robust exports, moving closer to meeting its official annual growth target for the year. For the whole year, Chinese leaders have set a growth target of 4.5% to 5%, down from last year’s 5% expansion.
While some industries were thriving thanks to government support for technologies such as AI and electric vehicles, owners of small businesses reported tough times as their customers cut back on spending.
China’s domestic demand has been weighed down by a yearslong downturn in its property market.
The Hurun list reflected that too.
Hoogewerf said Lei Jun, chair of Chinese smart consumer electronics maker Xiaomi, was this year’s “biggest faller,” with his wealth halved to $25.1 billion. Consumer fortunes also fell across the board, Hoogewerf said.
“Today, for the first time ever, not a single mainland property developer remains in the Top 100 – the only property names left at the top are the Hong Kong landlord families,” he said.
Türkiye has completed its alignment with the EU’s machinery safety legislation to fulfill the requirements of the customs union, with a declaration also signed, the Trade Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
“As a requirement of the customs union between us and the European Union, our legislation on machinery safety has been harmonized with EU legislation,” the ministry said.
The regulatory harmonization “paves the way for the Turkish machinery sector to benefit from the free movement of goods across European markets,” it added.
Ankara can now designate accredited notified bodies within Türkiye, enabling Turkish machinery exporters to conduct their conformity assessment and certification procedures at home instead of relying on foreign institutions, the ministry also said.
The local assessments will be recognized under the same conditions as those performed by EU manufacturers.
The deal marks a major milestone in simplifying technical and administrative processes that Turkish exporters deal with when accessing the European single market.
The financial costs and administrative burdens associated with these regulatory procedures will be significantly reduced.
The alignment will benefit more than $10 billion worth of Turkish machinery exports to the EU per year.
Machinery sales make up 10% of Türkiye’s total export volume to the EU, according to the ministry.
Electricity could supply 85% of Türkiye’s final energy consumption using technologies available today, according to a report published Tuesday by a leading industry think tank.
The analysis was published ahead of the U.N. climate conference COP31, which Türkiye hosts in the Mediterranean resort province of Antalya next month.
At the summit, Türkiye will seek to rally support for a global target for electricity to meet 35% of the world’s energy demand by 2035.
The target is said to offer an opportunity to extend the progress achieved in clean electricity generation over the past decade to buildings, transport and industry.
Electricity made up 22% of Türkiye’s final energy consumption in 2024, Ember said. That is close to the global average of 23% and the European Union average. It is above the Middle East average of 20% and Africa’s 12%, but behind Asia, where electrification has accelerated to an average of 28%.
“In Türkiye, around 85% of final energy demand could be met by electric technologies already in use today,” said Ember.
By sector, electricity accounted for about 32% of energy use in buildings and about 30% in industry in 2024, the report said. In transportation, the electrification rate is below 1%, although Türkiye became Europe’s fourth-largest market for electric cars in 2025 with 190,000 sales.
“The greatest electrification potential therefore lies in transport and buildings, where electric alternatives are technologically mature and energy consumption is high,” Ember said.
Existing technologies already make it possible in Türkiye to electrify 100% of energy use in buildings, 96% of transport and 58% of industrial energy consumption, according to the report.
Electric vehicles, heat pumps and electric industrial technologies can provide the same services using significantly less energy than fossil-fuel-based alternatives, it said, adding that electrification would directly strengthen energy security by reducing energy imports.
Need to accelerate electrification
Türkiye has made significant progress in clean electricity generation over the past decade, increasing the share of solar and wind power in electricity generation from 4.5% to 22%.
However, faster electrification is needed to extend these gains to energy consumption.
Türkiye’s electrification rate increased by 1.3 percentage points over the past 11 years, meaning progress must be 10 times faster over the next 11 years to reach the 35% target by 2035, the report said.
The main reason for the slow pace of electrification is that much of the sevenfold increase in electricity demand since 1990 has stemmed from new energy needs rather than the replacement of fossil fuels.
As a result, fossil fuels have maintained a 70% share of final energy consumption for the past 34 years.
If current trends continue, Türkiye’s electrification rate will reach only 24% by 2035, Ember said.
However, the country’s target of tripling its installed solar and wind capacity, along with its 120-gigawatt rooftop solar potential, provides a strong basis for achieving the electrification goal.
“Türkiye has made significant progress in renewable electricity generation in recent years and established a strong foundation for the clean electricity needed for electrification,” said Bahadır Sercan Gümüş, a senior energy analyst at Ember and author of the report.
“The 35% target is achievable, but this requires sector-specific measures to shift services currently provided by fossil fuels to electricity, alongside increasing clean electricity generation. For this success in generation to extend across the economy, electricity must replace fossil fuels in buildings, transport and industry,” Gümüş said.
Because of the efficiency advantages of electric technologies, each one-percentage-point increase in Türkiye’s national electrification rate is equivalent to adding 5.7 million electric cars or switching 2.5 million households from fossil-fuel heating to heat pumps, the report said.
Achieving the target will therefore require the transition to advance simultaneously across sectors and be translated into concrete sectoral road maps.
In buildings, switching residential heating to heat pumps stands out as one of the most significant measures, with the potential to increase the national electrification rate by 11 percentage points on its own.
The global rise in petrol and diesel prices triggered by the supply disruptions resulting from the U.S. war on Iran has cost consumers an additional $468 billion, according to a study published Monday.
U.S. consumers bore the largest share of the bill at $160 billion, said Finland-based nonprofit group Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which supports efforts to move off fossil fuels.
The U.S. thus accounted for roughly one-third of the worldwide increase in costs stemming from the energy shock due to the virtual shutdown and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The figures cover the period since U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran began in late February, when the conflict sent global fuel prices higher and increased costs for consumers.
China was the second-most affected country, with an additional $54 billion in costs, followed by Canada at $17 billion, the CREA study showed.
Americans pay nearly 8 times global average
Americans have paid an average of $471 more for higher fuel prices since the war started on Feb. 28, the study said. That amount is nearly eight times the global average, estimated at $60.
U.S. consumers are paying more due to reliance on less efficient private vehicles, longer-distance travel and a relatively slow transition to electric vehicles, CREA said. The impact has also varied significantly by vehicle type. A typical U.S. driver of a petrol-powered car has spent an estimated $440 more on fuel since March, while the increase in charging costs for electric vehicle owners was just $17.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump says higher fuel prices are a small cost for consumers to pay to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and that oil and fuel prices will fall when the war ends. The war has lasted longer than the administration predicted.
To calculate the costs, the study compared fuel prices in January and February to what they were during the rest of the year.
Consumers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium have also paid a lot more, according to the study, which looked at fuel prices and consumption in 169 countries from the beginning of March to mid-October.
Canada recorded the second-highest per capita increase, at $422, followed by Australia, at $386.
The findings highlighted how lower fuel consumption can limit exposure to oil price shocks. However, electric vehicle adoption in the U.S. has recently lost ground: EVs accounted for 7.3% of new car sales in the first eight months of 2026, down 3 percentage points from the same period a year earlier.
The comparable shares were 57% in China, 32% in the European Union and 98% in Norway, according to the analysis.
Countries that have reduced fuel consumption since 2023 have been able to limit the financial impact of higher prices.
Lower consumption helped China save an estimated $10.8 billion and Germany $3.7 billion, while savings in the United States reached $5.7 billion, CREA said.
The world’s richest 0.1%, comprising around 8 million people, produce more carbon pollution than nearly half of humanity, or 3.5 billion poorest people combined, a new analysis shared by Oxfam on Tuesday revealed.
The report found that a person in the richest 0.1% contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heat waves than someone in the poorest 50% of the global population, while the richest 0.1% collectively produce more than three times as much carbon pollution as the entire population of sub-Saharan Africa, or 1.3 billion people.
The report also found that the world’s richest 1% have been responsible for 20% of global warming since 1990, with per capita emissions 100 times higher than those of the poorest half of humanity.
Published ahead of the U.N. climate summit (COP31) in Türkiye, the report exposes how the world’s super-rich are driving climate breakdown through their outsized emissions.
It estimated that a single year of emissions from the richest 1% could cause 1.9 million excess heat-related deaths, with 78% of these deaths projected to occur in low- and lower-middle-income countries, which account for just 8% of global emissions.
The report further projected that emissions from the richest 1% would cause nearly $53 trillion in economic damage by 2050.
The report also highlighted private aviation as a stark example of carbon inequality, finding that private jets collectively emit more carbon pollution in two seconds than a person in the poorest half of the global population produces in a year.
“While the super-rich are responsible for a disproportionate share of carbon pollution, it is ordinary people who bear the brunt of the resulting floods, fires and famine,” the report noted.
The report also warned that climate change could displace up to 1 billion people, around 10% of the global population, by 2050, with most expected to be in the Global South.
“The climate crisis is often described as a shared human challenge. It is not. Those who have done the least to cause it are losing their homes, their harvests and, increasingly, their lives. Meanwhile, the super-rich can buy their way out of danger,” said Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar.
Behar noted that the super-rich also actively profit from the consequences of their pollution.
“This is not a tragedy of shared fate; it is a crime of extreme inequality,” Behar added.
The report also cautioned that climate disasters are increasingly being used to advance policies that deepen inequality, including privatization, land grabs, deregulation and tax breaks for the super-rich.
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers,” Behar said, adding: “They profit from the pollution. They profit from the disaster. And they profit again from the clean-up.”
Oxfam called on governments attending COP31 to make wealthy polluters pay through higher taxes, significantly increase public climate finance for the Global South and triple adaptation funding by 2035.
It also urged governments to reduce inequality through climate-resilient public infrastructure and services, and curb corporate profiteering from climate disasters.
South Korea’s economy expanded at more than triple the expected pace in the third quarter, fueled by strong semiconductor demand, central bank data showed Tuesday.
The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 1.0% in the July-September period compared to the previous three months, according to preliminary figures from the Bank of Korea (BOK).
The figure exceeded the central bank’s forecast of 0.3% growth made in August.
Growth was supported by a 2.3% rise in exports, “led by semiconductors, machinery and electrical equipment,” the BOK said.
Investment in facilities also jumped 4.1%, driven mainly by machinery used in semiconductor manufacturing.
From a year earlier, the country’s economy expanded 3.4%, slightly below the 3.7% recorded in the previous quarter.
The country’s real gross domestic income (GDI), a measure of purchasing power, surged 18.8% year-over-year, its fastest increase in nearly 49 years, helped by rising semiconductor prices.
South Korea’s economy recorded its fastest growth in over five years in the January-March period, expanding 1.7% from the previous three months owing to soaring semiconductor demand.
The semiconductor boom has also propelled the country’s current account surplus to record levels.
The country recorded a $116.6 billion current account surplus in the second quarter, surpassing the combined surpluses of manufacturing powerhouses Germany and Japan for the first time since comparable records began in 1996.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts South Korea’s annual current account surplus will reach $421.9 billion this year, the second-largest among 190 economies after China.
Semiconductor exports surged 218.7% year-over-year to $148 billion in the third quarter, according to government data.
The unemployment rate in Türkiye edged up 0.5 percentage points to 8.4% in September, official data showed on Tuesday.
The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over increased by 198,000 to 2.96 million in September compared to the previous month, the data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) showed.
The rate was estimated 6.9% for men and 11.3% for women, TurkStat said.
The number of persons in the labor force was 35.4 million, the institute said, up 149,000 month-over-month. Labor force participation rate was 52.7%, increasing by 0.1 percentage point.
The youth unemployment rate in the 15-24 age group rose 1.6 percentage points on monthly basis to 14.8% in the month.
This rate was estimated 10.4% for men and 23.3% for women.
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