Breeding ground for billionaires

The China University Alumni Association has released a list of universities where the richest Chinese graduated.

Peking University topped the list with 35 billionaire alumni.

A total of 1,500 billionaires who had been on China’s four most credible rich lists in the past 10 years were selected. Nearly 30 per cent of them were university graduates, the Association said. ?

The billionaires had been on one of the following: the Hurun China Rich List, the Forbes China Rich List, the Southern Weekend Newspaper’s List of New Rich in China and the New Fortune Magazine’s List of China’s 500 Richest, it said.

?Zhejiang University in the eastern Zhejiang Province and Tsinghua University in Beijing ranked second and third, with 23 and 22 billionaire alumni respectively. ?

The Association also specified names of the billionaire alumni of the 140 universities listed.

?Those from Peking University include Li Ning, China’s "gymnastics prince" who lit this year’s Beijing Olympic torch and heads a sporting goods company named after him, Wang Zhidong, founder of news portal Sina.com, and many others. ?

Cai Yanhou, a professor from the Central South University who took part in the appraisal of the list, said, "Most billionaires majored in the leading disciplines of their alma maters."

?Cai also noted that comprehensive universities, such as Peking, have more billionaire alumni than specialized ones, such as Shanghai Foreign Studies University.