By Jess McHugh -
After a Chinese stock market crash Monday sent markets around the world into a tailspin, the richest man in China said that the nation needed to slow down its economic growth to a more sustainable level. Wang Jianlin, CEO of the Dalian Wanda Group, made the statement just days after he saw his personal fortune shrink by billions of dollars in the aftermath of what was soon dubbed China's Black Monday by local media outlets.
"China needs to drop the fantasy of keeping a high growth rate of 7 or 8 percent and just accept 6, 7 or even 5 percent," Wang said, Reuters reported. He said that the government needed to make economic growth targets more reasonable in order to avoid similar market fluctuation in the future. Official estimates reported that China's growth is set to expand by 7 percent this year.
Wang's comments on the future of China's economy were expressed during a press conference just hours after his company bought Triathlon Corp, which organizes triathalon competitions, for $650 million. The billionaire said his company would be largely unscathed by the economic crisis and insisted that the Dalian Wanda Group would achieve or exceed its projections for 2015.
Wang himself was one of the biggest losers of the stock market dip that was caused in part by global sell-offs and the devaluation of the yuan. He ranked at the top of Bloomberg's list of the billionaires who lost the most money in Monday's market meltdown. Wang, whose current net worth is $31.2 billion, lost $3.6 billion in the market tumble, which translates to a 10 percent loss. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and currently richest man in the world according to Bloomberg, lost $3.2 billion. His loss was also smaller than Wang's proportionally, given Gates' $79.2 billion fortune.