April 29, 2021 Zhang Yiming (right) CEO of ByteDance. Twitter/globaltimesnews Zhang Yiming, the 38-year-old founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, has topped a list of Chinese business leaders younger than 40 for the third consecutive year. Zhang took the top spot in the 2021 list of the 40 most successful business leaders in China under 40 years old, followed by Su Hua, chief executive of rival video app Kuaishou, and Cheng Wei, the founder of ride-hailing giant Didi. The list is published annually by the Chinese version of Fortune magazine. Zhang built his company to a value of almost US$400 billion in the private market in the nine years since its founding in 2012. ByteDance now hosts a range of popular apps alongside viral video app TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, as well as news aggregator Jinri Toutiao.