Zong Qinghou, the self-made billionaire who grew to become China’s richest man by wresting management of the nation’s prime beverage model from Danone, has died. He was 79.
The founder and chairman of Wahaha Group died of sickness at a hospital at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, in accordance with a assertion that doesn’t present additional particulars on the reason for dying or the placement of the medical facility. The corporate mentioned on Feb. 22 that Zong was hospitalized for therapy and was in secure situation.
Born earlier than the Communist Occasion took energy, Zong’s life paralleled China’s transformation from a poor and mostly-agrarian nation into the world’s manufacturing facility ground and its second-largest financial system. His wealth, which started with a $22,000 household mortgage, grew into billions of {dollars} as Chinese language folks grew to become ever extra voracious shoppers.
Zong, who by no means attended highschool, was compelled to dwell on a farming commune in 1964 throughout Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. He left in 1978, the yr that Deng Xiaoping — having consolidated energy as China’s paramount chief — started introducing personal enterprise and international funding to China, releasing up a technology of entrepreneurs like Zong to dabble in capitalism.
After working as a client items salesman for a number of years, Zong took over a small store at a grade college within the japanese metropolis of Hangzhou in 1987. There, he created Wahaha, the beverage model that might make him certainly one of China’s richest males.
Zong was propelled onto the worldwide stage when he fell out with French meals large Danone, as the 2 dissolved a decade-long partnership in a flurry of lawsuits and authorities intervention.
The saga began in 1996, when Zong shaped a number of joint ventures in China with the Paris-based proprietor of Evian water. The phrases of their settlement included the switch of the Wahaha model, which suggests laughing baby in Chinese language, to the ventures that have been 51% owned by Danone.
That partnership grew to a gross sales peak of 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in China, earlier than Zong accused Danone in 2007 of making an attempt to take over Wahaha at an unreasonably low value. Danone countered that Zong had violated their contract by organising Wahaha-brand corporations on the aspect. On the coronary heart of the combat was who owned the Wahaha model — Danone believed it did as per the phrases of the unique settlement, whereas Zong asserted that the Chinese language authorities had blocked the model switch software, that means he nonetheless managed it.
In the end, Danone capitulated, agreeing to promote its stake to Zong in late 2009 in a deal brokered by the Chinese language and French governments. With 80% management of Wahaha, Zong grew to become China’s richest man by 2012 with a private fortune of $20.1 billion.
Wahaha’s success didn’t final. Income began to fall as the corporate was sluggish to adapt to Chinese language shoppers’ altering tastes away from sodas to more healthy choices like juices and yogurt. Savvier rivals like Interior Mongolia Yili Industrial Group and China Mengniu Dairy Co. overtook Wahaha with celeb ambassadors and product placements in Hollywood motion pictures, whereas efforts to amass different corporations by Zong’s daughter and chosen successor, Zong Fuli “Kelly,” fell largely flat.
China’s booming Web business additionally quickly propelled digital financial system entrepreneurs like Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd.’s Jack Ma, Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Pony Ma and JD.com Inc.’s Richard Liu to fortunes that dwarfed Zong’s.
Because the mom-and-pop shops that stocked Wahaha’s drinks and snacks misplaced enterprise to on-line procuring, Zong grew to become a critic of the e-commerce business, accusing it of suffocating brick-and-mortar retailers and of destroying extra jobs than they created. He used his membership in China’s legislature, the Nationwide Individuals’s Congress, to advocate for extra authorities insurance policies that supported what he referred to as the “actual financial system” versus the “Web financial system.”
For all his wealth and stature, Zong lived frugally. He dressed merely, and wouldn’t purchase new footwear till the pair he was sporting had worn out. Longtime Wahaha spokesman Shan Qining favored to inform a narrative of gross sales folks at a yacht exhibition ignoring Zong, and being instructed solely afterward that that they had snubbed certainly one of China’s richest males.
What few hints there have been of his fortune included a style for Davidoff cigarettes and a $48,000 Vacheron Constantin watch he purchased to switch a Rolex — as a result of he had heard that Rolexes have been favored by the “newly wealthy.” He didn’t take into account himself certainly one of them, as his fortune was made “one yuan at time,” he mentioned in a 2012 Bloomberg interview.
“For a very long time, I couldn’t even afford meals and clothes,” Zong mentioned. “I climbed from the very backside of the society.”