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Until last week, the world had known tech titan Jack Ma as the richest person in China.
That changed on Wednesday (September 23) when a former journalist and mushroom grower from Zhejiang surpassed the founder of e-commerce platform Alibaba to become the top billionaire, albeit briefly, in the country of 1.4 billion people.
Zhong Shanshan, who owns 84.4 percent of Nongfu Spring, a popular bottled water and beverage manufacturer in China, was boosted to the top three in China after the company’s initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong on September 8th.
Shares in Nongfu Spring, which sells tea, coffee, fruit juice and even fresh produce, closed 54 percent above the issue price on debut, after soaring nearly 85 percent at the open, China Daily reported. .
Zhong is also the largest shareholder in vaccine maker Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy, which has been listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange since the beginning of this year.
The double push catapulted the 66-year-old’s net worth to $ 58.7 billion ($ 80.9 billion) on Wednesday, 2 billion more than Ma’s that day, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. .
“Normally, I would have expected the number one in China to come from (the technology),” Rupert Hoogewerf, president of wealth research firm Hurun Report, was quoted as saying by CNN Business.
“Zhong Shanshan is one of the few people in China who built not only one US $ 10 billion business, but two US $ 10 billion businesses,” he said.
But Zhong didn’t stay on top for long. A review of the Bloomberg index by The Straits Times on Saturday showed that Ma, China’s richest man for the past six years, has regained first place with a net worth of $ 56.5 billion, followed by Zhong with $ 53 billion. of dollars. .
Little is known about Zhong, a largely private person who doesn’t do many interviews and rarely makes public appearances, earning him the nickname “lone wolf.”
Born in 1954 in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, Mr. Zhong grew up during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement that lasted from 1966 to 1976. He dropped out of primary school and became a casual worker , moving from one city to another. to work, according to media reports.
After the end of the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Zhong enrolled in a university and joined a Zhejiang newspaper as a business reporter before venturing into business.
In 1993, he founded Yang Sheng Tang to develop health care products, including “turtle pills” to treat erectile dysfunction in the 1990s. In 1996, the company established Nongfu Spring as a subsidiary that sells bottled drinking water. .
In an exclusive interview with China Daily in 2016, Zhong said that Nongfu Spring’s biggest breakthrough came in 1999 when it announced that the company would stop selling purified water to focus on mineral water, as the former offered no health benefits. .
Sales skyrocketed instantly but sparked lawsuits from 69 outraged purified water companies led by Hangzhou Wahaha Group, which accused Nongfu Spring of unfair competition. Nongfu Spring lost the court battle.
But the saga barely left its mark on Zhong, who according to China Daily is married with three children.
“Who would have thought that Zhong, a man who sells bottled water, in the era of information technology and the post-Covid economy, could become the richest man in China beating Jack Ma and Pony Ma (from Tencent )? ” Said Mr. Hoogewerf.
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Who is who
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1. Jack Ma, Alibaba: $ 56.5 billion
2. Zhong Shanshan, Yang Sheng Tang: $ 53 billion
3. Pony Ma, Tencent: $ 50.7 billion
4. William Ding, NetEase: $ 28.4 billion
5. He Xiangjian, Midea: $ 27.5 billion -
Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index as of 3.30 pm, September 26, 2020
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