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Zhang Xin runs China's largest real estate developer with her husband
Worth $3.6 billion, she is the world's seventh richest self-made woman
She grew up in poverty during China's Cultural Revolution
Zhang Xin grew up in poverty and at the age of 14 began a laboring job in a factory. Today, she is richer than Donald Trump, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey.
Zhang, a Chinese real estate developer, is the seventh richest self-made woman in the world, worth $3.6 billion, according to Forbes. She’s worth $800 million more than Oprah Winfrey, the world’s best known self-made female billionaire.
Not only does Zhang’s rags-to-riches story mirror that of China itself, but it is Zhang who has shaped much of the country’s modern urban landscape, with the logo of her company SOHO China on the side of buildings wherever you turn in Beijing.
SOHO China has 18 developments in Beijing, many of them landmark buildings, and has recently expanded to Shanghai, where it has bought or built 11 properties.
Two of her Beijing projects – one completed last year and another under construction – are designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid.
Zhang, 47, was born in Beijing just before Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, when educated people like her parents were sent to the fields for “re-education.” She returned to Beijing with her mother, but they endured poverty and hardship.
“I was born and grew up when the city was very quiet: no cars, no shops, no lights, no machines. People were just on bicycles,” she said.
