Evergrande Group Chairman Xu Jiayin (No 1, left) and Alibaba Chief Executive Jack Ma (No 3, right)

A group of 2,130 Chinese individuals now have a combined fortune equivalent to the economy of the UK, according to the Hurun Report’s 2017 Rich List. At least 74 individuals joined the group with fortunes of at least USD300 million in this year’s list, adding to the 2,056 who made last year’s list, and bringing their combined assets to USD2.6 trillion. Xu Jiayin, Chairman of real estate developer Evergrande Group, has emerged as China’s richest man with assets worth USD43 billion. Last year’s leader, Wang Jianlin, dropped to fifth after declines in the share price of his embattled Wanda Group saw his family’s net worth slump 28% to USD23 billion.

Pony Ma, Founder and Chief Executive of Tencent took the No 2 spot on the rich list with a net worth of USD37 billion, overtaking Alibaba Chief Executive Jack Ma at USD30 billion, who ranked third. Fourth on the list, and also China’s richest woman, Yang Huiyan, Vice Chairman and the largest shareholder of real estate developer Country Garden, saw her wealth triple to USD24 billion. Aside from real estate, technology names continued to dominate the wealth rankings with Baidu’s Robin Li, and NetEase’s Ding Lei both making the top 10.

“Overall, the Hurun Rich List has grown faster than any year since 2007, with the possible exception of 2015,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher. “China’s entrepreneurs have come a long way. Back in 1999, when I put out the first list, I managed to rank 50 people. Today we have almost that number just from Alibaba,” said Hoogewerf. Of the 2,130 individuals with assets above USD300 million, 43 came from Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial, the South China Morning Post reports.

Alibaba briefly surpassed its U.S. counterpart Amazon as the world’s biggest e-commerce company as it reached a market capitalization of USD472.1 billion, while Amazon’s market value dropped to USD471.9 billion. As one of the top performers on the New York Stock Exchange, Alibaba’s stock has gained over 100% since January, while Amazon rose nearly 30%. Alibaba’s cloud computing business is also on track to surpassing Amazon Web Service (AWS) to become the world’s top provider of cloud services.

Dai Wei, 26, founder and CEO of bike sharing service provider Ofo, appears on the list for the first time with personal wealth of CNY3.5 billion. He is the youngest self-made entrepreneur in the 19-year history of Hurun Rich List. Li Bin, 43, who invested CNY1.5 million in Mobike, Ofo’s chief rival, in 2015, saw his wealth rise by 235% in the past 12 months to CNY6.7 billion.

Hoogewerf predicts those linked to companies specializing in artificial intelligence, driverless cars and biotech will be the next wave of additions.