Scale is not a substitute for radical invention, and the Chinese bureaucracy chronically discourages risk.

NEWYORKER: Green Giant

Goldwind, Coda, and the Thermal Power Research Institute are hybrids of Western design and Chinese production, and no nation has yet mastered both the invention and the low-cost manufacturing of clean technology.

NEWYORKER: Green Giant

Certainly a number inherited but others all or most of their own luck and wealth in everything from fashion to sporting goods to flooring to Chinese restaurants, proving once again that ingenuity is the mother of invention, and an essential ingredient to making our list.

FORBES: The Future Of American Wealth: The U.S.'s Newest Billionaires

These were used by the imperial powers in pre-war Shanghai to keep the ethnic Chinese down, and their use in Hong Kong is of course a British invention.

ECONOMIST: Hong Kong