‘Bottled Water King’ Zhong Shanshan reclaims China’s richest man title

Zhong, 71, who runs the country’s largest bottled water producer, Nongfu Spring, led the Hurun China Rich List for the fourth time in the last five years, according to the Shanghai-based research unit, which nicknamed him "Bottled Water King." He previously ranked second in 2024.

Zhong Shanshan, Chairman of Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd., delivers a speech at a press conference in Beijing, China, May 6, 2013. Photo by Oriental Image via Reuters

The annual list, now in its 27th edition, identifies and measures the wealth of China’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, each with a fortune of at least 5 billion yuan (US$700 million). The latest rankings are based on valuations as of Sept. 1, 2025.

Zhong’s fortune, 80% of which stems from Nongfu Spring, set a record for individual wealth in China.

"Zhong is a representative of China's massive domestic market size supported by the country's 1.4 billion population," China Daily quoted Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun’s chairman and chief researcher, as saying.

Zhang Yiming, 42, who was the richest last year, slipped to second place with an estimated wealth of $65.9 billion. The founder of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance saw his wealth grow by 34% year-on-year, trailing Zhong’s 56% surge.

Pony Ma, 51, the CEO and chairman of Tencent Holdings, came in third with $65.2 billion while Chinese battery giant CATL’s 57-year-old founder, Robin Zeng, followed with $46.3 billion.

Rounding out the top five was Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, 56, whose wealth jumped by $27.5 billion, or 151%, from a year ago, the sharpest rise among this year’s billionaires.

Hong Kong’s richest billionaire Li Ka Shing, 97, and his eldest son, Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, 61, hold a combined fortune of $33 billion, ranking ninth on the Chinese list.

According to Hurun, 1,434 individuals made it to this year’s list, a 31% increase from a year ago and just short of the 2021 record of slightly over 1,460. The number of dollar billionaires climbed 36% from last year to reach 1,021.

The surge in wealth was partly fueled by a bullish Chinese stock market, with the Shenzhen Component Index rising 54%, the Shanghai Composite Index 36% and the Hang Seng Index 42%.

"The findings on the rich list contrast with a gloomy economic outlook," Ding Haifeng, a consultant at Shanghai-based financial advisory firm Integrity, told the South China Morning Post.

"This underscores the resilience of the Chinese economy, with high-growth firms like EV and robotics manufacturers emerging as new engines of growth."

Hoogewerf noted that the list’s composition also reflects the emergence of new quality productive forces driving China’s high-quality economic growth.

Roughly two-thirds of this year’s entrepreneurs did not appear a decade ago, with many of the newcomers coming from industries such as industrial products, healthcare and new consumer goods.

Meanwhile, property developers, once a dominant group on the list in 2017 and 2018, have largely fallen out of the top 100.