Asia's richest woman, Yang Huiyan loses more than half of her $23.7billion fortune as China's real estate sector crashes

Asia's richest lady has lost the greater part of her fortune after China's real estate sector was shaken by a money crunch.

Yang Huiyan, 41, a majority shareholder and vice-chairwoman  of Chinese property giant Country Garden, saw her net worth plunge by more than 52% from $23.7billion to $11.3billion in the previous year, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Yang's fortune took one more significant hit on Wednesday, July 27, when Country Garden's Hong Kong-recorded shares fell 15% after the organization reported it would sell new offers to raise capital.

The property area is assessed to represent 18 to 30 percent of the nation's GDP and is a critical driver of development in the world's second-biggest economy.

As per report, the crash began when Chinese officials cracked down on exorbitant debt in the property sector in 2020, leaving key part, for example, Evergrande and Sunac battling to make payments and forcing them to haggle with creditors as they wavered on the edge of liquidation.

Yang inherited shares of the billion-dollar organization from her dad Yang Guoqiang. He set up a property development organization Country Garden in Guangdong, south China, in 1992.

Guoqiang developed it into one of the biggest property development organizations in China.

He transferred his shares to her in 2005 and she turned into Asia's wealthiest lady two years aged just 26 after the developer's first public offering in Hong Kong gifted her with around $16billion.

By 2020 she was worth more than $20billion yet she is scarcely clutching onto her title of Asia's richest lady after China's property crash cut her wealth in two.

Chemical fibres tycoon Fan Hongwei has become a close runner-up with a net worth of $11.2billion as of Thursday.