Richest Chinese Billionaire’s Flagship Posts Double-Digit Profit Rise In Tough Economy

You don’t get to be China’s richest man without a lot of business acumen, and Zhong Shanshan managed to put on a good display of that during a tough stretch for China’s economy in the first half of the year.

Zhong, worth $69.7 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires today, is the chairman and founder of Nongfu Spring. The Hangzhou-headquartered beverage supplier said on Wednesday after the close of trade at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange net profit in the first half of the year rose by nearly 15% from a year earlier to 4.6 billion yuan, or $676 million.

Revenue increased by 9.4% 16.6 billion yuan. Nongfu Spring’s core bottled water and tea products both gained. (See details here.)

Nongfu Spring’s Hong Kong-traded shares have gained 17% in the past year, compared with a thunderous 25% drop in Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index.

China’s GDP rose by 0.4% in the second quarter as the country’s “zero-Covid” policies hurt economic growth. Overall, China’s economy gained 2.5% in the first half from a year earlier.

Zhong, 67, dropped out of elementary school during China’s chaotic Cultural Revolution. He later had jobs as a construction worker, a newspaper reporter and a beverage sales agent before starting his own business. Zhong, the world’s 15th richest man, also controls Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy, which went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in April 2020.

Zhong’s son Zhong Shu Zi, 34, holds an undergraduate degree in English from University of California, Irvine with a major in English. He received a master’s degree in international business from Zhejiang University in March 2021, and is a non-executive director at Nongfu Spring.

China is home to the world’s largest number of billionaires after the United States. Zhang Yiming, the main founder of TikTok owner ByteDance is No. 2 with an estimated fortune worth $49.5 billion, and Internet Ma Huateng, chairman of Internet heavyweight Tencent, is No. 3 with $33.9 billion.

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