Founder of the immensely popular e-commerce platform Temu, 44-year-old Colin Huang now stands as China’s richest man with a net worth of $48.6 billion.
Bloomberg Television recently announced that Colin Huang, founder of popular e-commerce platform Temu, is now China’s richest man. Zhong Shanshan, the king of a billion-dollar bottled water empire (Nongfu Spring), previously held the top spot since 2021 before 44-year-old Huang climbed the ranking.
E-commerce has grown over the past few years, dominating every facet of daily life through its convenience, as well as its comprehensive range of products and sellers. With just the tap of a finger, consumers can search for exactly what they want, and purchase these items for even less than what many brick and mortar stores offer. This is the promise and appeal of Temu, the latest e-commerce platform that has taken the world by storm. With its competitive algorithms that show customers exactly what might interest them, and equally competitive prices, millions of people across the globe have started using Temu.
Here’s what to know about the man who now stands at the very top of an already economically-robust country.
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A Shopping Superpower
Formerly an engineer at Google, Huang founded the conglomerate PDD Holdings, writes Indrabati Lahiri of Euronews. The company owns both Temu and Chinese retail app Pinduoduo, reports the South China Morning Post. However, his global empire began with Pinduoduo, which started in 2015 and became a staple platform in China due to its low, value-for-money prices and wide range of products. Temu followed in 2022, launching to cater to a more global market, and reaching this level of success with an avid customer base in Europe and North America.
“He kind of represents a new generation of billionaires in China […] He’s younger, he’s 44, but he really had that kind of global experience that a lot of older billionaires didn’t have,” explains Charlie Wells of Bloomberg News. Wells adds that Huang earned a degree from the University of Wisconsin before lending his tech talents to Google, overseeing the search engine’s beginnings in China.
Currently, Huang’s net worth is at $48.6 billion, according to Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires List, making him the 27th richest person in the world. Shanshan of Nongfu Spring follows him as the second richest man in China (with a networth of $47.2 billion), while founder of ByteDance (the company behind TikTok) Zhang Yiming is at third place with a $43.4 billion net worth.
The Issues Behind Low-Cost Products
One cannot look at Temu’s successes without mentioning its fair share of controversies or issues, as many publications have reported on over the years. These issues actually extend beyond the specific platform, and have long plagued similar companies that offer incredibly low-cost products in large amounts, under incredibly fast-paced conditions.
In 2024, South Korean regulators opened investigations into Temu, mainly regarding “false advertising and unfair practices,” the South China Morning Post adds.
There have also been cases of “undelivered packages, mysterious charges, incorrect orders, and unresponsive customer service,” as Andrew R. Chow writes for Time, further tainting PDD Holdings’ reputation. Like many algorithm-driven platforms, Temu also collects data from users in order to create personalized advertisements, something that people have put into question as data privacy continues to be an increasingly pervasive issue in the digital age.
To produce so many products in such little time, and for less, there is also the issue of forced labor. As Emily Feng of NPR explains in a report, U.S. lawmakers are accusing PDD Holdings of implementing an “extreme culture of overwork,” and one that has pushed the employees to the brink of death. Heavy fines for poor customer service have also led Temu vendors to protest, as they find themselves earning little to nothing as well.
Still, Temu’s growth and Huang’s spot at the top of China’s richest are indicators of a continuous, high demand that is likely the result of bigger problems, such as widespread consumerism and high inflation rates.
Banner photo from the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business website.
