The Hurun Research Institute on Thursday released its rich list for this year, naming 1,000 Chinese with personal fortunes of more than 2 billion yuan.

Liang Wengen, chairman of construction machinery maker Sany Heavy Industry, took the top spot as China's richest man with assets worth an estimated 70 billion yuan (US$10.94 billion).

Zong Qinghou, chairman of Wahaha Group and last year's wealthiest man, dropped to second place with a fortune of 68 billion yuan.

In the property sector, Hengda Group chairman Xu Jiayin dethroned Wanda Group chairman Wang Jianlin to become this year's richest real estate magnate. Wang came in second place, while Longfor Properties president Wu Yajun took third.

In the IT industry, Baidu CEO Robin Li remained the country's wealthiest tech tycoon, followed by Tencent's Ma Huateng and NetEase's Ding Lei. Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing, Renren.com CEO Chen Yizhou, Shanghai Great Wisdom chairman Zhang Changhong and 360buy.com's Liu Qiangdong made the IT rich list for the first time.

The 1,000 Chinese entrepreneurs on this year's Hurun rich list had an average net worth of 5.9 billion yuan (US$923.6 million), 20 percent higher than last year's average and 51 percent more than in 2009.

Rupert Hoogewerf, the Luxemburg-born accountant known as "Hu Run" whose company publishes the list, said "Of all the Chinese rich people on the list, two thirds are executives of listed companies and one third are from non-listed ones such as Wahaha Group, Huawei Technologies and Wanda Group."

This year marks the 13th year Hoogerwerf's firm has released the China Rich List. "Before 2001, nobody in China had assets exceeding 10 billion yuan, but this year there are 129 of them," Hoogewerf said.

"Every time I'm in Europe and people hear I'm from China, they ask me to help me sell their products to the Chinese market," he added.

China's business press carried the story above on Friday.