Helen Lancaster

The rise of China’s billionaires tells the story of a nation that has transformed from a place of poverty in the 1980s into the world’s second-largest economy. Once known as the world’s cheap labor factory, China has now become a factory for billionaires—producing almost one a day. No other country without a democracy creates wealth at such speed. But that rise may soon come to a halt: China’s top entrepreneurs find themselves caught in a cold war with a suspicious United States—and President Xi is cracking down hard. Tycoons are being silenced and re-educated to align with the superpower’s new strategic goals.

The ZDFinfo series "Tycoons – The Power of Billionaires" looks at the richest people in the world who wield great influence in their countries: America's super-rich, the Russian oligarchs, and the Chinese entrepreneurs, who each head their country's largest corporations.