On February 25th, it was announced that today, Wahaha Group's founder and chairman Zong Qinghou passed away at 10:30 a.m. on February 25, 2024, at the age of 79 due to illness.
Previously, Zong Qinghou had topped the Forbes list of "China's Richest" three times in 2010, 2012, and 2013. However, due to his habit of wearing all black and donning inexpensive cloth shoes, he was dubbed the "Boss of Cloth Shoes."
According to media reports, Zong Qinghou's annual living expenses generally did not exceed 50,000 CNY. In an interview with Dong Qing, he even mentioned that now it might not even reach 50,000 because he used to smoke, but since he quit smoking, his expenses have decreased even more.
However, Zong Qinghou himself was indifferent to this: "Anyway, no matter how cheap the things I wear are, others will think they are expensive, it's all about perception."
When it comes to employees, Zong Qinghou is extremely generous. Last August, a post in the circle of friends of a Wahaha employee attracted a lot of attention. The accompanying picture showed that due to the growth of Wahaha in the first half of the year, Chairman Zong Qinghou decided to give extra rewards to all employees of the group, totaling tens of millions.
This is not the first time Wahaha has attracted attention for providing benefits to employees. Over the past two years, Zong Qinghou has given employees year-end bonuses totaling over 600 million CNY multiple times, and he has also repeatedly called for companies to raise employee salaries in public.
Moreover, Wahaha has built over a thousand sets of employee apartments in places such as Jiaxing Haining, Chengdu, Tianjin, and Chongqing. Over 1500 sets of apartments have been allocated as benefits for married key employees, 640 sets of low-rent housing have been provided, and over 50 million CNY in housing subsidies have been provided for employees to purchase homes.
