Makers › Merchant / Entrepreneur
Rong Zongjing
Wuxi industrialist who with his brother Rong Desheng built the Maoxin and Fuxin flour mills and the Shenxin cotton mills into the largest such group of their day
On a river quay, loaded camels rest before a warehouse of stacked bales, with a balance scale and abacus on a table and green ceramic jars in front; porters carry bundles toward a large sailing ship on the right, and blank banners hang at the warehouse.
Also known as Ming Zongjin · Zi Zongjing
Rong Zongjing, given name Zongjin, came from Rongxiang in Wuxi and was apprenticed to a Shanghai money shop at fourteen, later running a native bank there with his father. In 1901 he, his brother Rong Desheng and partners raised capital for the Baoxing flour mill in Wuxi, later renamed Maoxin. In the early Republic he opened the Fuxin flour mills in Shanghai and in 1915 the first Shenxin cotton mill, and by the early 1930s the brothers controlled more than twenty flour and spinning mills. In 1934 Shenxin fell into a debt crisis that he only narrowly weathered. After Shanghai fell to Japan in 1937 he left for Hong Kong, where he died in February 1938; his nephew Rong Yiren later carried on the family business.
Life and times
Dates 1873 CE–1938 CE