---
title: "CCTV 'Dialogue' In-depth Interview with Zhong Shanshan: An Idealistic Madman"
description: "In a rare one-hour interview on CCTV's 'Dialogue' program aired on the evening of August 10, Nongfu Spring founder Zhong Shanshan discussed topics such as being the richest man, online violence, and his idealistic vision. He described himself as an 'idealist' and elaborated on his efforts in agriculture, water sources, and tea, emphasizing his commitment to helping farmers and promoting Chinese tea globally."
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published: "2024-08-11"
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---

# CCTV 'Dialogue' In-depth Interview with Zhong Shanshan: An Idealistic Madman

> In a rare one-hour interview on CCTV's 'Dialogue' program aired on the evening of August 10, Nongfu Spring founder Zhong Shanshan discussed topics such as being the richest man, online violence, and his idealistic vision. He described himself as an 'idealist' and elaborated on his efforts in agriculture, water sources, and tea, emphasizing his commitment to helping farmers and promoting Chinese tea globally.

"I hope I am an idealist." On the evening of **August 10**, CCTV's **"Dialogue"** program aired an in-depth interview with Nongfu Spring founder Zhong Shanshan, titled **"Zhong Shanshan: An Idealistic Madman"**.
During the program, when host Chen Weihong asked Zhong Shanshan, Chairman of Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd., what label he would give himself, Zhong gave the above answer.
On August 10, CCTV's "Dialogue" program broadcast an interview with Zhong Shanshan, Chairman of Nongfu Spring Co., Ltd., with an unprecedented one-hour duration. It is reported that this may be the first time the "Dialogue" program has interviewed an entrepreneur for a full hour.
In the conversation with renowned CCTV host Chen Weihong, Zhong addressed various labels and public concerns, including "richest man," "online violence," "traffic," "slow," "involution," and "successor."
At the end, when discussing what label he would give himself, Zhong concluded the interview with the answer **"idealist"**.

**Traffic is like water, good and evil lie in people**
**An idealist's view of the traffic world**
Since late February, Nongfu Spring has been subjected to online violence on internet platforms. The "evil" of traffic generated by internet platforms, along with rumors and malicious interpretations of Zhong Shanshan and Nongfu Spring, has become a huge traffic anchor.
As the "richest man in water," Zhong also applies the logic of water to traffic: "Like water, Li Bing and his son guided it according to the terrain at Dujiangyan. What was in their hearts? I want this water to do good."
Zhong cited the story of Li Bing and his son taming water at Dujiangyan: "If this traffic is used by some with private purposes, or to gain money, using technological means to exploit human weaknesses, deliberately creating traffic momentum, conducting large-scale, disorderly, network-like, water-dragon-like actions, it will be destructive to a certain extent."
Among these, water armies and platform algorithms have shown great destructive power.

Zhong Shanshan inspected the Changbaishan water source in August 2016

Zhong mentioned that **when such destructive traffic hinders the timely emergence of truth, society will suffer enormous pressure.** Therefore, the law needs to act quickly and not intervene only after damage has been done.
He used an analogy: If Li Bing and his son had waited until the Chengdu Plain was flooded before building Dujiangyan, it would have been too late.
**Traffic is like water, needing to be guided as in flood control.** Facing online violence against himself, Zhong also responded with an idealistic attitude.
"I have my own ideals in my heart, because in the end, the sky must be bright, but it's just that it gets bright a little late. As long as I can hold on until dawn, because many people can't hold on until dawn, they jump off buildings, but I can."

**"Farmers are willing to share hardships with you; price is a mirror that reveals good and evil"**
**Idealist Zhong Shanshan's agricultural construction**
Zhong Shanshan, who comes from a farming background, has long maintained great enthusiasm for agricultural and farmer issues.
When discussing the difference between the richest men in China and the US, he believed that it is his farming background that allows him to fulfill his responsibility as the richest man in the agricultural field.
"Elon Musk's path is to create the boundaries of technology, but my experience is that of a farmer. My experience makes me think more about farmers. I say, within my scope of knowledge, I can do things."
**To date, Zhong Shanshan has led the Nongfu Spring team to grow navel oranges in southern Jiangxi for 17 years. Subsequently, Zhong turned his attention to Yili, Xinjiang, and began researching how to grow good apples.**
In 2007, Nongfu Spring entered the Gannan region to study how to grow good oranges. This was followed by a series of setbacks, including wrong factory site selection, wrong navel orange breeding, and wrong production line introduction.
"The richness of life is made by stepping into pits one by one." These valuable "pit-stepping" experiences also became the driving force for Zhong to continue developing the navel orange industry in Gannan.
After repeated setbacks, Nongfu Spring's agricultural team resolved to go deep into agriculture and learn from scratch. In the following days, technical personnel from Nongfu Spring's agricultural team moved to Ganzhou and worked with fruit farmers in the fields or in laboratories.
After seven or eight years of hard work in Gannan, besides in-depth research on navel orange cultivation, Nongfu Spring finally overcame the industry-wide challenge of industrial navel orange juicing in 2014, **launching the first 17.5° NFC (Not From Concentrate) orange juice, setting a new freshness standard for industrial orange juice.**
With over a decade of persistence, Nongfu Spring has taken deep root in Gannan, promoting the upgrading of the local navel orange industry.
But what makes Zhong most proud and impressed is witnessing the farmers' incomes improving day by day, with Nongfu Spring becoming their confidence.
"Farmers are willing to share hardships with you... In fact, farmers are a group that honors contracts." In Gannan and Xinjiang, Nongfu Spring has signed purchase contracts with local farmers for many years, buying navel oranges and apples at prices higher than the market average each year, transforming farmers from relying on the weather to relying on contracts.
**According to statistics, in the Gannan region, more than 10,000 farmers have been led by Nongfu Spring towards common prosperity.**
In Zhong's view, price is a mirror to measure whether farmers are treated well. If farmers cannot make money, everything else is empty talk.
Around 2013, navel orange trees in Gannan orchards were infected with Huanglongbing (citrus greening).
Huanglongbing is known as "citrus cancer." The decline of infected trees becomes apparent slowly over several years, and the disease can spread to neighboring trees. Even Florida, with its advanced agriculture, was hit by Huanglongbing, causing a sharp decline in citrus production.
To help fruit farmers compensate for losses caused by Huanglongbing and boost confidence, Nongfu Spring raised the purchase price for fruit from farmers. In 2016, **Nongfu Spring's Xinfeng factory** was completed and put into operation, stabilizing confidence in the local industry.
At the press conference held, Zhong delivered a keynote speech on **"If farmers are rich, China is rich"**, conveying his confidence in standing with farmers through the establishment of a factory.
It is reported that in Yili, Xinjiang, Zhong's ideal of developing agriculture also encountered setbacks in the early stages. Unlike the Gannan region, which had a foundation for navel orange cultivation, Yili in Xinjiang was like a blank sheet of paper.
The first batch of fruit farmers who cooperated with Nongfu Spring recalled that Nongfu Spring encountered great resistance in promoting changes in local production concepts.
Apples were rarely grown locally, and farmers could not grasp the economic benefits of switching to apple cultivation. Moreover, apple trees often take five years to bear fruit on a large scale, and many fruit farmers began cutting down apple trees before the third year.
Fortunately, Nongfu Spring and some fruit farmers persisted together, allowing them to see tangible benefits, and the apple planting area gradually expanded.
A Xinjiang fruit farmer at the program site, Yue Haijun, said that with Nongfu Spring's drive, his orchard earned nearly 200,000 yuan last year.
An idealistic madman may sometimes mean pursuing ideals at all costs. To this day, Nongfu Spring's agricultural segment is still loss-making.
But "a company relies on the whole." For Zhong, agricultural construction represents a strategic loss and is a necessary path to achieve "farmers rich, China strong."
"Elon Musk's path is to create the boundaries of technology, but my experience is that of a farmer. My experience makes me think more about farmers. I say, within my scope of knowledge, I can do things."
It is understood that Nongfu Spring's agricultural segment is still loss-making, **but Zhong calls it a "strategic loss" and will continue to help more farmers.**

**"Slow is for longevity"**
**For the ideal of water sources, slow down in the mountains**
In Nongfu Spring's main drinking water business, Zhong also showed an extraordinary side of being an "idealistic madman."
In the construction of the Emeishan water source, the Emeishan production base completed in 2013 can trace its earliest timeline back more than a decade.
As early as before 2008, Nongfu Spring was already searching for water sources in the Sichuan region. It was not until 2008, after Zhong spent eight days and seven nights in earthquake rescue efforts during the Wenchuan earthquake, that he decided to establish a water source near the earthquake belt to support the disaster area.
After confirming the water source, Nongfu Spring faced even more difficult construction of factories and water pipelines.
Taking the Emeishan water source as an example, according to public information, the pipelines at the Emeishan water source are laid along steep mountain slopes of up to 45 degrees, where large modern engineering equipment cannot enter. Construction materials are carried by people on their backs or transported by mule teams, and transportation costs even exceed the cost of materials. The soil moisture content of up to 60% in Emeishan and biogas buried 6 meters underground also became obstacles to construction.
From 2008 until 2013, the Nongfu Spring Emeishan production base was finally completed.
**Almost every water source of Nongfu Spring has experienced such construction stories.** Zhong also recalled the construction process of Nongfu Spring's Changbaishan Jingyu factory.
The Jingyu factory was repeatedly delayed due to frozen soil issues. The search for the Changbaishan water source and the construction of the Jingyu factory took a total of ten years.

In February 2023, Zhong Shanshan inspected the Sichuan water source

**Zhong personally inspects every water source.** Among them, entering the Emeishan water source is particularly difficult, requiring climbing a slope of nearly 70 degrees.
In 2023, when Nongfu Spring's Guangxi Daming Mountain water source was put into operation, the county magistrate of Shanglin County, where Daming Mountain is located, recounted an anecdote: there was a small dispute over whether Zhong needed to enter the water source.
In his view, entering the water source required passing through an extremely narrow cliff path, and Zhong should not risk entering. But in the end, Zhong insisted on personally inspecting the water source.
To date, Nongfu Spring has successively built **12 major water sources** in China, with **43 water intake pipelines totaling over 300 kilometers in length.**
The price paid for this ideal was an extremely high debt ratio in the first 15 years of Nongfu Spring's development. The profit level in the first 15 years was even lower than that of June, July, and August 2023.

**Tea is very Chinese**
**Tea also needs idealists**
In recent years, Nongfu Spring's Oriental Leaf has become well-known to consumers. But what many consumers do not know is that Zhong has also persisted for many years for the ideal of Chinese tea.
"Our tea has been around since 2012, 2013, for over ten years now. It didn't make money for the first six years, but by 2021, the growth curve (went up)."
**Zhong believes that tea is a very Chinese product with a Chinese soul, and hopes to bring tea back to the world through our efforts.**
In 2011, Nongfu Spring's Oriental Leaf was officially launched, pioneering the "five zeros": "zero sugar, zero fat, zero calories, zero flavoring, zero preservatives." Technologically, Nongfu Spring introduced the first log6 aseptic production line in China at that time.
But because the product concept was too ahead of its time, Oriental Leaf accumulated losses for the first seven years after launch, and only in the eighth year did it finally achieve a slight cumulative surplus. It was not until the recent boom in the sugar-free tea market that Oriental Leaf finally "saw the clouds part and the moon shine."
And Zhong's ideals seem to go beyond that.
After understanding the current state of the upstream tea industry, Zhong realized that the farmer issues in the tea industry, like navel oranges and apples, require farmers to receive tangible benefits.
"Tea is actually a very, very Chinese product with a Chinese soul. I want to use industrial methods to organize farmers' collectivization, popularize tea among thousands of households, and once again spread it from the land of China as a very elegant civilization to the world."
The Chinese tea that is rooted in China and goes global, along with the firm determination of "farmers rich, China strong," also corresponds to Zhong's answer to the question of Nongfu Spring's successor.
"Nongfu Spring is now a Chinese enterprise. Yesterday it was a Chinese enterprise, today it is a Chinese enterprise, and tomorrow it will still be an excellent, strong Chinese enterprise." This is the solid foundation for all the ideals he is pursuing and realizing.
Zhong's understanding of the labels "idealist" and "idealistic madman" stems from the statue of Don Quixote on his desk.
He explained in the program that Don Quixote, called an "idealistic madman" by Spanish writer Cervantes, is someone he respects and admires. Therefore, he specially placed a statue of Don Quixote on his desk to encourage himself.
"An idealistic madman does not consider, completely does not consider self. This idealistic madman has a realm, a very high realm."
Although Zhong believes he cannot yet reach this realm, at the end of the program, his answer to the host's question "What label do you most want to tear off?" also demonstrates a 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."


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