Real estate tycoon Wang Jianlin, 59, leads the pack, the Hurun Research Institute said, with a personal fortune estimated at 135 billion yuan (US$22 billion) - more than double that of last year. Wang, chairman and founder of Dalian Wanda Group, replaced beverage magnate Zong Qinghou, 68, of Wahaha Group to top the Hurun Rich List this year, [Hong Kong company registration]a ranking of the 1,000 wealthiest people on the Chinese mainland.

Although Zong slipped into second place, his personal wealth still grew 50 percent to 115 billion yuan, and it was the first time two people worth 12-figure sums in yuan had made the rich list.

The number of dollar billionaires hit a record high: a total of 315 individuals. That was 64 more than in 2012 when 469 of the top 1,000 saw their wealth shrink, with 37 losing over half their assets and just 291 seeing their wealth increase

In comparison, 559 of the richest became richer this year, with 144 experiencing a more than 50 percent growth in wealth due to a 60 percent rise of China's ChiNext exchange, an exchange for high growth start-ups, Hurun said.

That brought the average wealth of the top 1,000 up to a record high of 6.4 billion yuan, more than double since the global financial crisis of 2008, and lifted the cut-off point for the list by 12 percent to [Set Up Company Hong Kong]2 billion yuan.

One out of four people on the list, and five out of the top 10, work in real estate, an industry which overtook manufacturing as the biggest source of wealth this year. But the faster risers were still IT and entertainment, whose share of the billionaires' club increased 20 percent from a year earlier, outpacing real estate's 10 percent growth.

Pony Ma, 42, founder and chairman of Tencent, one of China's largest Internet service providers, rose from last year's seventh spot to third with 62 billion yuan after share prices soared on the back of the runaway success of its communication tool Weixin, or WeChat.

And Lei Jun, 44, of smartphone maker Xiaomi, experienced the biggest wealth explosion as the company's net worth soared seven-fold to 16 billion yuan following a revaluation, moving him up to 63rd place from last year's 735th.

Beijing is still the top choice of residence for the mainland's billionaires, with 140 on the list living in the capital, 17 more than last year, while Shenzhen and Shanghai rank second and third in popularity with 76 and 71 respectively.

Women make up 21 percent of the list, with 14 percent of them self-made billionaires.

Yang Huiyan, 32, [Hong Kong Company Formation]heiress to property developer Country Garden, ranks fourth along with her family and her 51 billion yuan makes her the richest woman on the Chinese mainland.

Chen Lihua, 72, of Fu Wah International, which also operates in the real estate sector, is this year's richest self-made woman, ranking 12th with a fortune of 37 billion yuan.