"When you are poor, you'll have to think of ways to be better off," Zong Qinghou used to reply when the press inquired about how he had ascended from poverty to become a beverage industry tycoon, a prominent figure of the economic boom era, and China's richest man. The founder of the Wahaha Group (which means "laughing child" in Chinese) died on February 25, in Suqian, Jiangsu province. His rise remains emblematic of an era when everything seemed possible in China, while his battle against Danone continues to be a textbook example in the West of the challenges of doing business in the Chinese market.

Born in eastern China in 1945 amidst wartime turmoil, Zong came from a particularly impoverished background. His family, having failed to support Mao Zedong's Communist forces, faced even greater hardship after their rise to power in 1949. To support his family, he dropped out of high school and began working. In the mid-1960s, during Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, youth were sent to work in the countryside and the industry. Zong then went to work for a salt factory on Zhoushan Island.

He spent 15 years doing this, before returning to the provincial capital Hangzhou in 1979, when his mother, a retired schoolteacher, needed him. The country, then under Deng Xiaoping's leadership after years of Maoist tumult, stood on the brink of economic reforms that would change the course of history.

Without a diploma, Zong could only find work as a salesman for the new consumer products that China was discovering. He sold beverages produced by a local company, which also ran and operated a shop attached to a school. In 1987, with the help of two retired teachers, Zong took over this small business supplying drinks and ice cream to children. At the time, however, he noticed that parents were concerned about the nutritional value of the food given to children in a country that was still poor.

Zong was already in his forties when his business took off: in 1989, he developed a beverage boasting nutritional benefits and launched his brand. He obtained a loan to buy a state-owned canning factory. His 2,000 employees were initially skeptical about the arrival of this capitalist, but profits soon followed.

Soon, Wahaha expanded its distribution network, diversified its products – juices, sweet teas in bottles – and ventured into bottled water in 1995, a key market because tap water was not drinkable. In its ads, Chinese pop stars sang their love for the brand, "Wahaha, I only see you." However, the company lacked the financial backing to become the national agribusiness giant it aspired to be.

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