"She is the wealthiest self-made woman in the world," said Rupert Hoogewerf who set up the list known as the Huran Report in 1999. According to Hoogewerf, Zhang is richer than the U.S. television host Oprah Winfrey and author of the Harry Potter series JK Rowling.

Zhang Yin was born to a soldier's family in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province as the eldest sister of seven. She went to Hong Kong in 1985 and started her career in waste paper trading with 30,000 yuan.

Zhang defied financial hardship, cheating business partners and intimidation from local mafia to build up her wealth in the subsequent five years before moving to the United States with her husband in February 1990 to pursue her dream of becoming an "empress of waste paper".

In 1996 she set up the Nine Dragons Paper Industries Co., Ltd. in Dongguan of Guangdong. Her product is now used by multinational companies, such as Coca Cola, Nike, Sony, Haier and TCL.

Zhang deems luck as the most important factor in her success, adding that her down-to-earth personality has helped her career.

Falling to second place is Huang Guangyu of China's household electronics giant GOME Electrical Appliances with a fortune of 20 billion yuan (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) after occupying the top spot for the last two years.

Huang started his career on a roadside stall in Beijing selling radios and gadgets. GOME now has 560 branches in over 160 cities on the Chinese mainland and 12 in Hong Kong and Macao.

Ranked in third place is Zhu Mengyi, 47-years-old and CEO of the Hopson Development Holding Limited, with 16.5 billion yuan (2.06 billion U.S. dollars). After graduating from a middle school, he built up his fortune from being a foreman in a township in Guangdong.

Of the 500 people on the list, 35 are female, seven percent of the total. The new list suggests that women are showing increasing talent in business, Hoogewerf said.

Six people in the top ten are involved in real estate and four are from southeast China's Guangdong Province.

People are getting rich quickly, noted Hoogewerf, who added that last year, the person ranked No. 400 had 500 million yuan (62.5 million U.S. dollars), while this year, the 400th person had800 million yuan (100 million U.S. dollars).

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