Who knew bottled water could be so lucrative? The world's richest food and drink tycoon, Zhong Shanshan is the founder and chairman of Nongfu Spring, China's largest packaged water supplier. Amazingly, Zhong has little formal education, having dropped out of elementary school during the Cultural Revolution. He went on to cut his teeth as a construction worker, journalist, and beverage salesman before starting Nongfu Spring in 1996.

China's richest person from 2021 to 2024, Zhong has since been overtaken by Zhang Yiming, the co-founder of TikTok parent ByteDance.

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The world's food and drink billionaires, ranked by wealth