Zong Jichang must be the happiest person right now—not because he can return to the company, and not because his elder sister Zong Fuli’s appeal was rejected, but because not only did his uncles and grandparents in the Zong family support him, but also that the senior elders, his relatives from the Zong family’s ancestral hometown, and all close kin have unanimously sided with him—no one speaks up for Zong Fuli.

The Zong family is a typical traditional Zhejiang family, so this stance isn’t surprising. After all, the longstanding tradition in China has always been to pass family business through men and not through women. No matter how you frame it, Zong Jichang and Zong Jisheng are still sons; the family business goes to sons, and it keeps the Zong surname. But if it were passed to a daughter, the surname would have to be someone else’s.
Now many people online are saying that, according to tradition and morality, only the legitimate daughter and the crown princess—Zong Fuli—has inheritance rights, while the other three children of Zong Qinghou are illegitimate and have no inheritance rights. In reality, they’ve flipped China’s traditional norms on their head. Just look at how imperial succession worked in ancient times. Succession has always been passed down through men rather than women: if the empress had a legitimate son, the throne would go to the legitimate son. If the empress had no children, it would go to the illegitimate sons of the consorts. If the consorts also had no children, then even the son of a maidservant in the palace could qualify. And if the emperor truly had no sons, they would rather select a nephew from a collateral branch to inherit the throne than—under any circumstances—hand it to a legitimate princess born to the empress!
What’s more, whether Zong Jichang, Zong Jieli, and Zong Jisheng are actually illegitimate children is still hard to say. There are rumors that Du Jianying also registered marriage with the old Zong; if they were indeed registered, then they would count as legitimate children born within marriage.
By the time this matter has blown up to the present, the senior members of the Zong family likely also have their own views. After all, at the beginning, Zong Fuli had already掌握ed the vast majority of the family business—hundreds of billions were in her hands. The other three children only asked to inherit the rights of a trust fund; each month they would live off the interest from that trust, and everyone could get along peacefully. Yet she chose not to, flipped the situation, and dragged the matter to court—leaving the positive image of a national business leader that Zong Qinghou spent his whole life building in tatters. It’s truly heartbreaking. $BNB
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