Now it's time for our special series - Movers and Shakers, as we meet some of those who have made remarkable contributions to the Chinese economy and society, during the country's reform and opening up. Today, we introduce you to Rupert Hoogewerf, whose company is best known for its wealth ranking - the Hurun China Rich List.

In China, the name Rupert Hoogewerf might draw a few blank stares. But, if Rupert's Chinese name is mentioned: Hu-run, then things become immediately clear. The namesake of the company he founded, Hurun Report and the name "Hurun", is now synonymous with "wealth" in China. Most famous for its "Hurun China Rich List", this ranking is arguably the most definitive list of the wealthiest Chinese individuals and families.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "I started out doing the China Rich List as a way of answering a simple question. What's going on in China? I put together a list of the most successful entrepreneurs and the stories of these people to a real extent actually tell the story of modern China. And instead of having to study the Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, we brought to life these inspirational entrepreneurs. Some came from nothing and they grew it into a big business. It's very easy to understand success in terms of personal wealth even though I believe it's pretty meaningless to think that if someone has 100 million dollars or 500 million, it doesn't make any difference to their lifestyle anymore. In the first year I had one dollar billionaire that was the Vice President of China at that time called Rong Yiren and today we've got something like 800 dollar billionaires, who are Chinese, which is more than America."

For Hurun, his list of China's wealthiest goes beyond just a ranking. It chronicles and reflects China's economic transformation since the inaugural list in 1999.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "You can really see the story of China, the absolute number of entrepreneurs have grown. It's grown exponentially from one over 20 years ago to 800 today. But more importantly you can actually see how the economy of China has evolved. You can see where they're making their money from. In the early days, it was from real estate. That was the bulk of the rich list in the beginning. Today you still got a lot from real estate, but today it's manufacturing number one followed by real estate, followed by investments, and then IT. The top 4 make up 60% of the rich list today, 20 years it was real estate and it's trade and that was about it. We've seen quite a number of IT guys who are successful because the China market is scalable. There are some very savvy investors out there and there are some very bright people who have come up with some innovations that have allowed them to scale up. I feel like I'm a teacher to grown-ups, who have an ambition to create a business or want to have an insight into what's going on in the Chinese economy. And I'm basically telling the story of what's going on in China through the stories of these people and because we're dealing with people there's a whole myriad of fun things going on, because people make mistakes and we can read about their mistakes. You can read about it."

Innovation and scalability are both hallmarks of the Chinese economy today. But, for the country's start-ups – speed is also key, especially in achieving unicorn status.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "One of the phenomena at the moment is that is really worth pointing out is the young start startups that are booming into unicorns. There are now more unicorns in China than in America. We got 182 at the latest count. Which basically means that this year, 2018, every three days we found a new one. That's just absolutely mind-blowing. And what I love about some of the unicorns and the founders behind it, is that they've come up with some sort of innovation, they get an investor on board and BOOM. They can scale it. One of my favorite stories at the moment is a girl who set up a coffee chain called Luckin'Coffee and it's only been going for 250 days and it already went unicorn. And she decided to take on Starbucks with a slightly cheaper coffee but delivered to one's home. She's only 42 years old, came from a private company, managed to get private investor onboard, she's gone off to a billion dollars in 250 days, unheard of this type of speed. So these are some of the stories I find absolutely fascinating in China and I think that for somebody to witness effectively these last 20 years to witness the growth, the fastest rise anywhere, in any country, at any time in the history of the world in private wealth, that's what we're witnessing and you see China come from zero to where we are today which is never been seen before. And to be able to witness that raw entrepreneurship firsthand is absolutely amazing."

And evolving with that spirit of entrepreneurship, Hurun developed new lists for a rapidly changing China. In the process, he uncovered new insights and met new demands along the way.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "Whenever I'm putting together a new list I'm always thinking about who we're targeting, what's the news item this year. In 2006 we had a woman at the top of the rich list and we decided to do a women's list. And we asked the question who's the most successful women in China and we decided well, let's ask the question, who's the most successful women in the world? And we found that the most successful women in the world, in business, 60 or 70 come from China. So absolutely, China is the best place in the world to be a female entrepreneur. Of the top 100 richest self-made women in the world, 70 come from China, of the top 5, four are from China and that was quite successful. Recently this year I did a blockchain rich list, everyone is talking about Bitcoins and Ethereum and various other cryptos. These two lists in our rich list series have been quite successful, then we got people coming up to me and said we got children and we want to send them to the best schools. Which are the best schools? We then came up with a ranking of answering that question, which is the best international school in China, which schools will give me the best chance to send my kids to Harvard or Cambridge? Every Chinese parent I talk to either want to send their kids to Harvard or Cambridge and that's about it really. So I came up with a way of ranking these schools and we put that ranking out as well. It's all driven by who are we targeting with the list and then do we have value-add that we can come up with and that it's a list that can be done year in and year out. You don't just want to do a list and forget it."

Hurun's business is in expansion mode today. His busy schedule sees him having a quick lunch with prominent sailor and ocean conservationist Romain Troublé at a noodle shop below his office. Then it's off to a team meeting to hash out the details of an upcoming event, giving a presentation to a class of high school students on what his business is all about and wrapping up at one of China's top universities, Fudan University, for a recruitment event. But it wasn't all smooth sailing for Hurun. For any entrepreneur, starting off is always challenging.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "But as an entrepreneur, today I'm celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Hurun Report. But in the early days, it was very difficult. I don't think I earned any money for almost 8 years. I wasn't doing a business because I wanted to earn lots of money where I had a plan, a 5-year plan then I was going to cash out. It wasn't like that. My business is much more organic. I thought this has got to have legs. I know something that this is something valuable. But I found it very difficult to monetize and it honestly took about 6 to 8 years before we started to make money. The early days of building a business is very tough, especially in my case, I got married in the third year of setting up my business, so just at the low point of any cash at all. I had to survive off my wife's salary. My wife is a doctor. Her salary effectively carried us through for two to three years in the early days because I had no outside investment. Nobody would lend me money, nobody invested in me because I had nothing."

Although it took several years before his company turned a profit, Hurun does not believe starting a business in China is different compared to other parts of the world.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "People have often said to me it must've been really difficult to set up, especially as a non-Chinese in China. And yet I don't feel like I've had any cultural obstacles. I clearly don't speak Chinese as well as local people, but I think being an entrepreneur anywhere in the world, you need to set up a team, find your business model and start making money to start paying your salaries so on and so forth. These are the common factors of being an entrepreneur in the UK or China, it doesn't make any difference. I think where I've missed on in being non-Chinese is that I haven't got any background at all. I have no family friends, no school friends who were able to help me along the way. I didn't start out with any money either. I started out with enough with a flight out of here and about $10,000 as well. That was my savings of 7 years at being at Arthur Andersen."

As for Chinese entrepreneurs, giving back to society has been key for those who made it.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "I am very proud of my philanthropy list. Because when I was doing talks overseas, almost the first question they would ask is: so they made a lot of money, what do they give? The philanthropy list I started 15 years ago and have continued ever since then. It ranks the top 100 most generous Chinese. Basically, they give to education. Education is the number one destination of giving for Chinese. The difference is that you can feel that you can make a real change with a small amount of money. As long as I change one person, I give them a chance to go to a good school, then I'm making a change. Whereas if I'm going to try and tackle the environment, say 15 years ago, it's actually very difficult for me to know how to tackle the environment because effectively that's the government that needs to do it and I as an individual find it very hard to make a big impact. If I clean up this river, there are still guys pouring loads and loads of toxic waste in the river from the factories up there and that needs to be a government induced thing. And I think that's why people give little to healthcare because again healthcare is considered very much to be in the government domain. But, education, I can make a difference."

Education as the largest philanthropic category comes natural due to China's rich history of honoring scholastic excellence. But at the dawn of the country's reform and opening-up, successful entrepreneurs also did their part to tackle poverty.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "In the early days, people use to give back to their hometowns and I think that was really a way of tackling poverty back in their hometowns. And it's where I come from. If I can help this village have a local school, build a school, build a hospital or even donate money to help build roads again, that's a real sense of achievement. A sense of my success. And I think that's where people wanted to donate in the old days. But we don't see quite as much of that now because I think the hometowns have really been developed more and more and perhaps the government has done more work to these places."

With China's reform and opening-up marking its 40th year and the Hurun Report celebrating its 20th year, Hurun added another new finding to the China Rich List.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "What is interesting this year in our China rich list is we added in non-Chinese mainlanders for the first time. I managed to find about 20. If you compare China to India for example, there are no non-Indian guys on the India rich list. So it's basically only locals who can make the list. Whereas in China we've managed to find 20 non-Chinese mainlanders. I think that's pretty impressive. And of those there are about 8 of them who are non-Chinese completely. The most successful is a guy living in Beijing, he's from Denmark and he actually sells women fashion. He's set up a business that's made him a billionaire in his own right. Pretty cool."

As for the future of the Hurun Report, it's all about growing in lock-step with an increasingly open China, a launch-pad for the company's global aspirations.

RUPERT HOOGEWERF CHAIRMAN & CHIEF RESEARCHER HURUN REPORT "I think for the Hurun Report I want to build us into a recognized global leader for rankings of all types. That's at the heart and DNA of all that I do. Then I hope that as China grows, we can grow too. As China grows not just in China but on the global stage, I expect the Hurun Report to grow on the global stage as well. We are for example next year going to be doing the world's largest Chinese new year dinner's series. So I'm starting in Shanghai, going to North America, Europe, and Australia. We're going to be doing almost 10 cities and doing a Chinese New Year dinner in each city, bringing together a lot of the Chinese in each city but also those who are working closely with China in each of those cities and presenting awards and having a good time as well. But it's building a platform of China as they are going overseas and going global."

A love of languages led Rupert Hoogewerf, or Hurun to study Chinese and a curious mindset helped him spark a business far away from his native England. China's reform and opening-up is not just a journey for the Chinese but a path shaped by all who walked alongside the country's continuous transformation.