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China’s richest man might not be a household name, but he’s wealthy enough that losing billions in a single day didn’t impact his position among the world’s wealthiest people.

Zhong Shanshan made his fortune in bottled water, but his early years were marked by struggle.

He dropped out of primary school during China’s Cultural Revolution, which aimed to purge capitalist notions from Chinese society, and a young Shanshan found work in construction.

He later worked as a journalist and a beverage sales agent before starting his own business.

Years later in 1996, he founded a bottled water company he called Nongfu Spring.

In 1999, Nongfu Spring stopped removing natural minerals from its water, a move which was celebrated by its customers due to distilled water being the norm at the time.

Nongfu Spring quickly became one of the largest in the world and today Shanshan is worth $55.2 billion.

He also controls Wantai Biological, which makes rapid diagnostic tests for infectious diseases including Covid-19. His wealth is so vast that he once lost multi-billions in a single day and still remained one of the richest men in the world.

According to Forbes, in August of last year Shanshan saw his wealth plunge by a whopping $4.4 billion in a single day after the company’s core drinking water business was reported to have contracted in the first half of 2024.

Forbes reported at the time that the plunge put Shanshan’s wealth just a whisker above the second richest man in China’s wealth. Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok owner ByteDance, has a fortune of $45.6 billion. However, now Shanshan is comfortably richer than Yiming.

Currently according to the Real Time billionaire’s list, Zhang Yiming comes in as the 30th richest man in the world and Zhong Shanshan is 26th.



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