CCTV's "Dialogue" in-depth interview with Zhong Shanshan: An idealistic madman
2024-08-11
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
"I hope I am an idealist." On the evening of August 10, CCTV's "Dialogue" program broadcast an in-depth interview with Nongfu Spring founder Zhong Shanshan under the title "Zhong Shanshan: Idealistic Madman". During the program, when the host Chen Weihong asked the guest of the interview, Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd. Chairman Zhong Shanshan, what label he would put on himself, Zhong Shanshan gave the above answer.
On August 10, CCTV's "Dialogue" program broadcast an interview with Zhong Shanshan, chairman of Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd., for an extra-long hour. It is reported that this may be the first time that the "Dialogue" program has interviewed an entrepreneur for an hour. In a conversation with CCTV's famous host Chen Weihong, Zhong Shanshan interpreted the labels and public concerns such as "richest man", "cyber violence", "traffic", "slow", "volume" and heir one by one in the program. Finally, when discussing what label he would put on himself, Zhong Shanshan ended this interview with the answer of "idealist".
Traffic is like water, good and evil are in people: the traffic world in the eyes of an idealist
Since the end of February, Nongfu Spring has continued to suffer from cyber violence on Internet platforms. Internet platforms have spawned the "evil" of traffic, and rumors and malicious interpretations of Zhong Shanshan and Nongfu Spring have become huge traffic anchors.
As the "richest man in water", Zhong Shanshan also attributes traffic to the logic of water: "Like water, Li Bing and his son took advantage of the situation in Dujiangyan. What was in the hearts of Li Bing and his son? I want this water to do good."
Zhong Shanshan quoted the story of Li Bing and his son who controlled the floods at Dujiangyan, saying, "If this traffic allows some people to have private purposes, or to make money, and use technology to exploit the weaknesses of human nature, and deliberately create traffic potential and conduct large-scale disordered network, it will be like a water dragon, and to a certain extent it will be destructive." Among them, the water army and platform algorithms have shown a strong destructive power.
In August 2016, Zhong Shanshan visited the Changbai Mountain water source area
Zhong Shanshan said that when this destructive flow prevents the truth from coming out in time, society will suffer tremendous pressure. So in this process, the law needs to act quickly and not intervene later after the damage has been done. He gave an example, saying that if Li Bing and his son waited until the Chengdu Plain was flooded before building the Dujiangyan, it would be too late.
Traffic is like water, and needs to be directed like water management. In the face of online violence against himself, Zhong Shanshan also gave an idealist's attitude and answered: "I have my own ideals in my heart, because the sun must be bright in the end, but it just gets bright a little late. As long as I can hold on until dawn, because many people can't hold on until dawn, he jumped off the building, but I can do it."
“Farmers are willing to share weal and woe with you. Prices are a magic mirror that reveals good and evil.” Idealist Zhong Shanshan’s agricultural development
Born into a peasant family, Zhong Shanshan has long maintained a great passion for agriculture and farmers' issues. When talking about the difference between the richest men in China and the United States on the show, he believed that it was his peasant background that enabled him to fulfill his responsibilities as the richest man in the field of agriculture: "The path taken by Elon Musk is to create the boundaries of technology, but my experience is that of a farmer. I think more about farmers and what I can do within the scope of my knowledge."
So far, Zhong Shanshan has led the Nongfu Spring team to grow navel oranges in southern Jiangxi for 17 years. After that, Zhong Shanshan turned his attention to Yili, Xinjiang, and entered Xinjiang to study how to grow apples well.
In 2007, Nongfu Spring entered the southern part of Jiangxi and began to study how to grow oranges. This was followed by a series of setbacks, including the wrong location for the Nongfu Spring factory, wrong navel orange breeding, and wrong introduction of production lines. "The richness of life is created by stepping into pits one by one." These valuable "pitfall" experiences have also become the driving force for Zhong Shanshan to continue to develop the navel orange industry in southern Jiangxi.
After experiencing setbacks, the Nongfu Spring agricultural team was determined to delve into agriculture and learn from scratch. In the days that followed, the technical staff of the Nongfu Spring agricultural team moved to Ganzhou and worked with fruit farmers in the fields or laboratories. In the seven or eight years of working in southern Jiangxi, in addition to in-depth research on navel orange cultivation, Nongfu Spring finally solved the problem of industrial juicing of navel oranges in 2014, which had plagued the industry, and launched the first 17.5° NFC (non-concentrated reduced juice) orange juice, which refreshed the freshness standard of industrial orange juice.
After more than ten years of persistence, Nongfu Spring has taken deep roots in southern Jiangxi and promoted the upgrading of the local navel orange industry. But what Zhong Shanshan is most proud of and impressed by is that he has witnessed with his own eyes that the income of these farmers has improved day by day, and Nongfu Spring has become their confidence. "Farmers are willing to share weal and woe with you... In fact, farmers are a group of people who abide by contracts." In southern Jiangxi and Xinjiang, Nongfu Spring has signed purchase contracts with local farmers for many years, purchasing navel oranges and apples at a price higher than the market average every year, turning farmers from relying on the weather to relying on contracts. According to statistics, in southern Jiangxi, more than 10,000 farmers have moved towards common prosperity under the leadership of Nongfu Spring.
In Zhong Shanshan's view, price is a mirror that measures whether it is good for farmers. If farmers cannot make money, everything else is empty talk.
Around 2013, orange trees in southern Jiangxi province were infected with Huanglongbing, a disease known as the "cancer of citrus". The disease will slowly show its effects on infected trees over several years, and the disease will spread to neighboring trees. Even Florida, an agriculturally developed state in the United States, was hit by Huanglongbing, which caused a sharp drop in citrus production.
In order to help fruit farmers make up for the losses caused by Huanglongbing and boost their confidence, Nongfu Spring raised the price of fruit from farmers. In 2016, the Nongfu Spring Xinfeng factory was completed and put into production, which further stabilized the confidence of the local industry. At the press conference, Zhong Shanshan delivered a keynote speech entitled "If farmers are rich, China will be rich", and through the establishment of a factory, he conveyed his confidence in standing with farmers.
It is reported that in Yili, Xinjiang, Zhong Shanshan's ideal of developing agriculture also encountered setbacks in the early stage. Unlike the southern part of Jiangxi, which has a navel orange planting base, Yili, Xinjiang is like a blank sheet of paper. The first batch of fruit farmers who cooperated with Nongfu Spring recalled that Nongfu Spring encountered great obstacles in promoting local changes in production concepts. Apples are rarely planted in the local area, and farmers cannot grasp the economic benefits they will bring to themselves after switching to apples. In addition, it often takes five years to grow apples on a large scale. Many fruit farmers did not persist until the third year and began to cut down apple trees. Fortunately, Nongfu Spring and some fruit farmers persisted together, allowing them to see tangible benefits, and the apple planting area gradually expanded. Yue Haijun, a Xinjiang fruit farmer at the scene of the show, said that driven by Nongfu Spring, the orchard he managed earned nearly 200,000 last year.
An idealistic madman may sometimes mean pursuing his ideal at all costs. Until now, Nongfu Spring is still in a loss-making state in the agricultural sector. But "for a company, it depends on the whole", and agricultural construction means a strategic loss for Zhong Shanshan, and it is also a necessary path to achieve "farmers are rich and China is strong": "The path taken by Elon Musk is to create the boundaries of technology, but my experience is that of a farmer. My experience is more about farmers, and I say what I can do within the scope of my knowledge."
It is understood that Nongfu Spring's agricultural sector has been losing money so far, but Zhong Shanshan called it a "strategic loss" and will continue to help more farmers.
"Slow down for longevity": Slow down in the mountains for the ideal of water source
In Nongfu Spring’s main drinking water business, Zhong Shanshan also showed his extraordinary “idealistic madman” side.
In the construction of the Emeishan water source, the Emeishan production base, which was built in 2013, can be traced back to more than ten years ago. As early as before 2008, Nongfu Spring had been looking for a water source in Sichuan. It was not until 2008, after eight days and seven nights of rescue work in the Wenchuan earthquake, that Zhong Shanshan decided to build a water source near the Sichuan earthquake zone to support the disaster area.
After establishing the water source, Nongfu Spring will face a more difficult phase of factory and water pipe construction. Taking the Emeishan water source as an example, according to public information, the pipeline of the Emeishan water source is laid along the river along the steep mountain with an angle of 45 degrees. Large modern engineering equipment cannot enter the site. Construction materials are all carried by people on their shoulders and by mule teams. The construction and transportation costs are even higher than the cost price of the materials. The soil moisture content of Emeishan is as high as 60%, and the methane buried 6 meters underground has also become a hindrance to construction. From 2008 to 2013, the Nongfu Spring Emeishan production base was officially completed.
Almost every water source of Nongfu Spring has experienced such a construction story. Zhong Shanshan also recalled the construction process of Nongfu Spring's Changbai Mountain Jingyu Factory. The Jingyu Factory's construction progress was repeatedly delayed due to frozen soil problems. The search for the Changbai Mountain water source and the construction of the Jingyu Factory took a total of ten years.
In February 2023, Zhong Shanshan visited the water source area in Sichuan
Zhong Shanshan has to visit every water source in person. It is particularly difficult to enter the water source of Mount Emei, which requires climbing a slope of nearly 70 degrees. In 2023, Nongfu Spring's Damingshan Water Source in Guangxi was put into production. The mayor of Shanglin County, where Damingshan is located, talked about an anecdote on the spot: the two sides had a small dispute over whether Zhong Shanshan needed to enter the water source. In his opinion, entering the water source requires passing through an extremely narrow cliff path, and he should not risk entering.
But in the end, Zhong Shanshan still insisted on going to the water source in person just to inspect the runoff during the dry season to ensure that the water extraction would not affect the local ecological environment: "Because we have requirements for runoff. Water has seasons, there is a flood season and a dry season. I have to look at the dry season. After I use the water in the dry season, how much runoff is left below?"
So far, Nongfu Spring has built 12 major water sources in China and 43 water pipelines with a total length of more than 300 kilometers. The price paid for this ideal is the extremely high debt ratio in the first 15 years of Nongfu Spring's development. The profit level in the first 15 years is not even as good as that in June, July and August 2023.
Tea is very Chinese, and tea also needs idealists
In recent years, Oriental Leaves, a brand under Nongfu Spring, has become well-known to consumers. But what many consumers don’t know is that Zhong Shanshan has also persisted for many years for the ideal of Chinese tea. “We have been producing tea for more than ten years since 2012 and 2013. We didn’t make money in the first six years, but in 2021, the growth curve has come up.”
Zhong Shanshan believes that tea is a very Chinese product with a Chinese soul, and he hopes that through our efforts, tea can return to the world.
In 2011, Nongfu Spring Oriental Leaves was officially launched, taking the lead in proposing five "0s", namely "0 sugar, 0 fat, 0 calories, 0 flavors, and 0 preservatives". In terms of technology, Nongfu Spring introduced the first log6 aseptic production line in China at that time. However, due to its advanced product concept, Oriental Leaves still suffered losses in the first seven years after its launch, and it was not until the eighth year that it finally accumulated a slight surplus. It was not until the booming sugar-free tea market in recent years that Oriental Leaves finally "saw the light at the end of the tunnel".
Zhong Shanshan's ideal seems to go beyond this. After learning about the current status of the upstream tea industry, Zhong Shanshan realized that the problem of farmers in the tea industry is still the same as the development of navel oranges and apples. Farmers must get real benefits: "Tea is actually very, very Chinese, a product with Chinese soul. I will use industrial means to organize farmers to work intensively, popularize tea in thousands of households, and once again become a very elegant civilization from the land of China and spread it to the world again."
Chinese tea, which is based in China and is heading towards the world, and the firm determination to "make farmers rich and China strong", also correspond exactly to Zhong Shanshan's answer to the question of Nongfu Spring's successor: "Nongfu Spring is now a Chinese enterprise, it was a Chinese enterprise yesterday, it is a Chinese enterprise today, and it will still be an excellent and powerful Chinese enterprise tomorrow." This is the solid foundation for all the ideals he is pursuing and realizing.
Zhong Shanshan's understanding of the labels of "idealist" and "idealistic madman" comes from the Don Quixote statue on his desk. He explained in the program that Don Quixote, who was called "idealistic madman" by Spanish writer Cervantes, is the object of his respect and admiration. Therefore, he specially placed the Don Quixote statue on his desk to encourage himself.
“An idealistic madman does not consider anything, he does not consider himself at all. This idealistic madman has a realm, and that is a very high realm.” Although Zhong Shanshan believes that he cannot reach this realm at present, at the end of the show, Zhong Shanshan’s answer to the host’s question “What label do you most want to tear off” also shows his determination to become an “idealistic madman”: since the label is attached, there must be an inherent reason, “just digest it slowly, don’t tear it off.”
The Paper
(This article is from The Paper. For more original information, please download the "The Paper" APP)
