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On the evening of August 10, 2024, the "Dialogue" program on CCTV's Finance Channel broadcast a rare one-hour program.

As a long-running talk show on CCTV, Dialogue has always enjoyed a good reputation in the industry. Through full dialogue and communication between the host, guests and the audience, the show directly approaches the real thoughts and experiences of hot news figures, and has also produced many famous scenes.

This time, "Dialogue" invited Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nongfu Spring, to talk with this mysterious and low-key entrepreneur, allowing people to get to know the unknown side of this richest man for the first time.

1

“Traffic is like water, good and evil are in people”

Since the beginning of this year, both Nongfu Spring and Zhong Shanshan have been caught up in online storms.

For example, on the Internet, some people accused Nongfu Spring's "Oriental Leaves" tea beverage brand of having buildings on their packaging as "Japanese" buildings; some people even spread rumors that "Oriental Leaves" was "culturally plundering" China on behalf of the Japanese.

In response to this, in June this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China took action to rectify a number of accounts that smeared and attacked Nongfu Spring, and restored Nongfu Spring's innocence.

In this process, rumors and malicious interpretations of Zhong Shanshan and Nongfu Spring became huge traffic anchors.

In response to this situation, in the latest issue of the "Dialogue" column, Zhong Shanshan talked about his views on traffic:

"Like water, Li Bing and his son took advantage of the situation at Dujiangyan. What was in the hearts of Li Bing and his son? I want to make this water do good."

Borrowing the story of Li Bing and his son controlling the flood at Dujiangyan, Zhong Shanshan believes that traffic itself has no attributes, and the key lies in the people who use the traffic. "If this traffic allows some people with private purposes, or in order to make money, to use technology to exploit the weaknesses of human nature, 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."

In Zhong Shanshan's view, in the face of this kind of "malicious" traffic, the law must take action quickly and in a timely manner to reduce the harm.

I have to say that Zhong Shanshan's metaphor is quite apt. The logic is easy to understand, just like the recent hot AI.Technology is neither good nor evil. In essence, it is humans who decide whether artificial intelligence is good or bad.

2

“I have been a farmer for seventeen years”

When talking about Zhong Shanshan, people's most intuitive impression may be that he is the boss of Nongfu Spring, a man who became the richest man in China by selling water.

The "2024 New Fortune 500 Wealth Creation List" shows that Zhong Shanshan has topped the list for the fourth time with a shareholding value of 456.27 billion yuan.

On the Internet, some people compare him with Elon Musk, the richest man in the United States: the richest man in the United States makes rockets, while the richest man in China sells water, so he is more "watery".

Zhong Shanshan did not shy away from this and said, "I think this statement is very pertinent." He gave his own understanding:

"I've read the biography of Elon Musk, the richest man in the United States. I think he is a genius entrepreneur. At the same time, there is a huge difference between the two of us. I wonder what I was doing when I was 25. I went to elementary school for four years and worked as a farmer for 17 years. That's all my experience."

When he was a teenager and young adult, he worked in the fields, and also worked as a mason, bricklayer, carpenter, etc. Later, he worked as a reporter for Zhejiang Daily, and his reporting area was also "agriculture, rural areas and farmers".

He said, "I am a water seller, I am more "water", because if I am not "water", then this "water" will not be water." In his opinion, due to different experiences, it is difficult to compare the social evaluations of the two people, but as the richest man, the social responsibility can be compared, because wealth itself has social responsibility.

At the "Dialogue" event, Zhong Shanshan also talked to the host about his understanding of social returns:

"It's the same return, but there are many different ways to give it. The path taken by Elon Musk is to create the boundaries of technology, but my experience is that of a farmer, and my experience makes me think more about farmers."

3

“Farmers are a group of people who abide by contracts”

When talking about farmers, Zhong Shanshan has a lot of feelings.

One is growing navel oranges in southern Jiangxi. On the show, Zhong Shanshan recalled that in 2007, there was a bumper harvest of oranges in Anyuan, Ganzhou, and the price was 50 cents per pound. A county magistrate invited him and asked him if he could set up a juice factory.

After Zhong Shanshan's on-site inspection, he found that the oranges here were indeed very good. But in the following years, Nongfu Spring experienced a series of setbacks, including the wrong factory site selection, wrong navel orange breeding, and wrong production line introduction.

Later, all the technical staff of Nongfu Spring moved to Ganzhou, and worked with fruit farmers in the fields or laboratories. Finally, in 2014, they solved the limonin problem of Newhall navel oranges through technical means, and refreshed the freshness standard of industrial orange juice.

After more than a decade of hard work, Nongfu Spring has taken root in southern Jiangxi, promoting the upgrading of the local navel orange industry and increasing the income of local farmers. Zhong Shanshan said with emotion:

"Farmers are willing to share hardships with you. But after sharing hardships, can we also share prosperity? That is, after your industry develops, if you encounter a good year, you start to lower the price, and if you encounter a bad year, you start to raise the price. The farmers will be unhappy. Therefore, your industrial policy must have price guarantees and contracts. In fact, farmers are a group of people who abide by contracts."

For this reason, protection was the first problem that Nongfu Spring solved in Ganzhou. Not only did it cover the losses of fruit farmers due to diseases, but every year Nongfu Spring would sign contracts with cooperative farmers, promising to purchase fruits at a price higher than the market average to ensure sales.

In fact, it is not only in southern Jiangxi. I learned that Zhong Shanshan also encountered many setbacks in Yili, Xinjiang. But with reliability and persistence, Nongfu Spring's apple planting successfully opened up the situation in the local area. Yue Haijun, a Xinjiang fruit farmer at the show, said that driven by Nongfu Spring, the orchard he managed earned nearly 200,000 last year.

Since ancient times, farmers have not only depended on the weather for their livelihood, but also did not have the "pricing autonomy" after the harvest. However, the practice of Zhong Shanshan and Nongfu Spring has shown us that things have changed.

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.

4

Conclusion

After watching the entire issue of "Dialogue", we can see that as an entrepreneur, Zhong Shanshan has deep feelings for farmers and has his own understanding of social responsibility.

Zhong Shanshan said that farmers are a group that needs to be cared for, and we owe them too much. How can we do agriculture well? Zhong Shanshan's answer is: respect agriculture. Learn the laws of agriculture from scratch, improve agricultural technology, and only with good agricultural products can we have good commodities.

In my opinion, Zhong Shanshan is committed to being born a farmer, cultivating agriculture, and giving back to farmers. Respecting the industry and allowing high-quality products to benefit scientific and technological personnel and farmers is the original intention of agriculture and the sentiment of a "farmer" entrepreneur.