Tibet gets its first billionaire

The remote Himalayan region of Tibet has produced its first billionaire, the state media reported on Tuesday.

Qoinpe Cering (49) was born in a poor family in a small village near Xigaze city in the Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China.

He made a fortune by setting up a company specialising in building houses in the unique Tibetan style, Xinhua news agency reported from Tibet's capital Lhasa.

Before 1951, slave owners made up only five per cent of the total population of Tibet but controlled 95 per cent of its wealth. But today there is no dearth of millionaires in rural Tibet.

However, Tibet is still a poor region as a whole compared with many other parts of China. The annual disposable income of farmers and herdsmen in Tibet averaged $183 in 2002, against $748 for farmers in Shanghai, China's largest city.