Twenty-five years ago, when Zong Qinghou was 42, he made his living selling soda and popsicles to schoolchildren.
He says he earned about $8 a month — less than a third of China's average wage at the time — and was so broke that he once slept in a tunnel under the streets of Beijing rather than spend on a hotel.
Today, Zong, 67, is still selling soft drinks — and lots of other things — as the wealthiest man in mainland China.
His net worth of $20.1 billion as of Oct. 5 ranks him No. 30 in the world, according to the Bloomberg Markets magazine. Supermarkets stock the juice, soda and bottled water his Hangzhou Wahaha Group produces, and doting Chinese parents buy his baby formula and children's clothes. In all of Asia, only Hong Kong property developers Li Ka-shing and Lee Shau-kee and Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani are richer.
Even in a country that has exploded in wealth and created a new economic ruling class, Zong's story stands out. His rags-to-riches tale is remarkable not just for its trajectory but for the way he has thrived amid China's seemingly impossible conflation of capitalism and communism.
Zong, who didn't attend high school, lived on a farm commune from 1964 to 1978 during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. He read the Communist revolutionary's books on leadership and learned about enduring through struggle. After Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China's drive toward a market economy, came to power, Zong took over a grocery store in 1987 with two retired teachers and a $22,000 loan from relatives.
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