into an export-oriented, trade-based economy with global reach. Over the next several decades, internationalization and capitalist market-oriented policies led to the emergence of a manufacturing sector, which in turn catapulted Thailand into a Tiger Cub economy. Virtually all manufacturing and import-export firms were Chinese controlled. Despite their small numbers, the Chinese controlled virtually every line of business, from small retail trade to large industries. A mere ten percent of the population, ethnic Chinese dominate over four-fifths of the country's rice, tin, rubber, and timber exports, and virtually the country's entire wholesale and retail trade. Virtually all new manufacturing establishments were Chinese controlled. Despite failed Thai affirmative action-based policies in the 1930s to economically empower the indigenous Thai majority, 70 percent of retail outlets and 80–90 percent of rice mills were controlled by ethnic Chinese. A survey of Thailand's roughly seventy most powerful business groups found that all but three were owned by Thai Chinese. Bangkok's Thai Chinese clan associations rose to prominence throughout the city as the clans are major property holders. The Chinese control more than 80 percent of public companies listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. All the residential and commercial land in central Siam was owned by Thai Chinese. Fifty ethnic Chinese families controlled the country's entire business sectors equivalent to 81–90 percent of the overall market capitalization of the Thai economy. Highly publicized profiles of wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs attracted great public interest and were used to illustrate the community's economic clout. More than 80 percent of the top 40 richest people in Thailand are Thai of full or partial Chinese descent. Thai Chinese entrepreneurs are influential in real estate, agriculture, banking, and finance, and the wholesale trading industries. In the 1990s, among the top ten Thai businesses in terms of sales, nine of them were Chinese-owned with only Siam Cement not being a Chinese-owned firm. Of the five billionaires in Thailand in the late-20th century, all were ethnic Chinese or of partial Chinese descent. On 17 March 2012, Chaleo Yoovidhya, of Chinese origin, died while listed on Forbes list of billionaires as 205th in the world and third in the nation, with an estimated net worth of US$5 billion. By the late-1950s, ethnic Chinese comprised 70 percent of Bangkok's business owners and senior business managers, and 90 percent of the shares in Thai corporations were said to be held by Thais of Chinese extraction. Ninety