The legacy of Zong Qinghou, once China’s richest man and founder of the iconic Wahaha beverage empire, has been plunged into turmoil as his daughter and presumed heir faces a legal battle with three previously unknown half-siblings — each laying claim to a sizeable portion of his fortune. As The Times UK reports, the unfolding dispute has exposed not only deep familial tensions, but also the succession crisis gripping China’s first generation of post-Mao tycoons.
Zong, who passed away last year at 79, rose from humble beginnings to become a billionaire industrialist. Sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, he later returned to Hangzhou where he worked as a school janitor before founding Wahaha in the 1980s. From a milk-selling cooperative tied to local authorities, Zong built one of China’s most successful soft drink companies — in part through a lucrative, though ultimately acrimonious, joint venture with French multinational Danone.
At the height of his influence in 2010, Zong was recognized as China’s wealthiest man. Yet he remained an ardent reader of Maoist philosophy, a paradox in a career defined by the creation of capitalist wealth in a nominally communist system.
His only publicly acknowledged child, Kelly Zong (Zong Fuli) — American-educated and long groomed to take over Wahaha — had already assumed leadership responsibilities within the company. But following Zong’s death, three previously unknown children — Jacky, Jessie, and Jerry Zong — emerged with legal claims that have stunned observers and disrupted the company’s expected line of succession.
According to reports by Caixin and cited by Times UK, the three have filed lawsuits both in Hangzhou, where Wahaha is headquartered, and Hong Kong, where they are attempting to freeze a bank account allegedly linked to the family and holding $1.8 billion. Each of the half-siblings claims their father promised them $700 million, producing documents in court to support their assertions.
Two of the claimants reportedly share a mother who was once a Wahaha employee — and both now hold executive roles within the company. Their mother, who has equity stakes in Wahaha subsidiaries, has also publicly opposed Kelly Zong’s business decisions, adding fuel to the family feud.
The case has captivated China’s financial world, in part because of Zong’s high profile and in part because it reflects broader structural tensions in Chinese business. As The Times UK notes, Wahaha’s ownership is unusually complex: the local government of a Hangzhou sub-district holds the largest share, while 25% is held in trust by company employees. Yet decision-making power has long been concentrated within the Zong family — a dynamic now destabilized by internal discord.
The revelations are also stirring debate about China’s one-child policy, which officially spanned from 1979 to 2015 and theoretically applied to Zong as well. His previously secret fatherhood of multiple children underscores the discretion — and double standards — that often accompanied elite lives during the reform era.
Furthermore, this inheritance battle shines a light on the succession dilemmas facing China’s self-made magnates. Many, like Zong, founded their empires in the chaotic “wild west” atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, when state controls were loosening but legal norms were still emerging. With these entrepreneurs now aging or passing away, the companies they built — often enmeshed in family, state, and employee ownership — face uncertain transitions.
As Times UK puts it, the Wahaha succession battle offers a “snapshot of the challenges faced by China’s first generation of post-reform entrepreneurs.” It’s a moment of reckoning for a country whose economic transformation was driven by men like Zong — and now faces the question of who inherits both the wealth and the contradictions they leave behind.
