Tao Huabi: Crispy chilli godmother

8:51Simon Jack:Well, Tao got in on this. She became a vegetable seller. She was buying in bulk from rural farmers, selling for a profit in the market back in the city. But the farmers near the city also raised their prices because they knew how much their vegetables were going for. So she sought out farmers further a feud, which involved leaving home at 3am, walking for about 25 kilometres in the dark, then returning with the vegetables before breakfast.

9:15Zing Tsjeng:What a way to make a living, blimey. Well, one day, Tao's husband fell sick. He was diagnosed with emphysema, a progressive incurable lung disease. All her savings went on his medical bills. And when that money ran out, she took out a loan and worked longer hours. In 1984, her husband died and Tao was left with two children and debt. She continued working on the vegetable stall, but she could only save a few yuan each day. And this was about how much basic food cost for a day. So she's not getting anywhere.

9:43Simon Jack:And remember, the interest on her debt is growing. It got to several thousand yen, which was equivalent to years of income for a typical worker. So she took on a second job carrying rocks to support her family. She eventually paid that loan off and vowed never to take another loan again, telling her sons, use whatever you have, whether much or little, always use your own money.

10:04Zing Tsjeng:Carrying rocks as your second job. I mean, it doesn't get much tougher than that. I know.

10:08Simon Jack:What are you going to do for your third job?

10:09Zing Tsjeng:Well, as the economy opened up, more and more people were trading vegetables in the market. Competitors were there. They were willing to undercut her. So her profits were dwindling. Instead, she started selling noodles and rice tofu.

10:22Simon Jack:So she was selling a type of noodle called liangfen, which is a kind of starchy, jelly-like noodle. It's chewy. It goes really well with things that are cold.

10:33Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, and presumably fills you up, you know, quite cheaply.

10:36Simon Jack:It really does because it's so starchy.

10:37Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, so she served this dish cold, as you say, made it easier to prepare. No cooking and no fuel bills, I suppose. Portions were big, they were cheap, and most crucially, she served it with her special crispy chilli sauce.

10:50Simon Jack:Oh, I can already imagine what this tastes like, and I think it must have tasted fantastic. In 1989, with the help of her sons, Tao opened a permanent restaurant, which was more like a roadside store that they built with bricks, rocks and asbestos tiles. She called it shihui, roughly translating as good value for money. And the cheap food was incredibly popular with local students. And she became affectionately known as old godmother in the neighborhood. She would give extra large portions or not even charge to poorer students.

11:19Zing Tsjeng:But she started to notice something important. And it was that the chili sauce was the thing that kept customers coming back. One day she hadn't made any. Customers didn't actually want to eat her noodles without it. So it was a rather damning verdict on the noodles. but customers also asked if they could take some of the sauce home. Up to now, she hadn't charged for the sauce, but now she had an idea. She started making jars of it. Other local restaurants started buying it and serving her chilli sauce. And then, in the early 90s, a highway was built in the area, so Tao saw a big boost in business.

11:50Zing Tsjeng:And she was pretty clever about this. She gave her sauce out for free to these truckers using the highway to take home. And this worked as sort of word-of-mouth advertising. People outside the city were now travelling to buy her sauce, So her sauce is on the move.

12:03Simon Jack:Running the restaurant was incredibly hard. Waking up in the middle of the night to buy ingredients. She served customers until 10pm and then after closing she cooked for the next day. So in 1994 Tao stopped selling noodles completely and she changed her restaurant to a store selling chilli sauce and other condiments. But she couldn't actually produce enough chilli sauce to keep up with the demand. Now I feel like we have to pause here and make a note of the fact that this just sounds like a fairy tale.

12:30Zing Tsjeng:She was carrying vegetables for 25 kilometers. She then started carrying rocks. She was going to bed, working all hours, giving it away to poor people, then selling the jars. It does sound like a kind of, I mean, there's rags to riches and then there's this.

12:44Simon Jack:Exactly. And, you know, I think there must be some element of self, I guess, self-advertising, right? Because it's literally her face on the jar. And these are the kind of stories that make people want to pick up a jar and buy it.

12:57Zing Tsjeng:And it's not as if she even looks that happy on the jar. She looks quite stern. You don't want to mess with her.

13:03Simon Jack:Maybe that's the face of someone who's had to carry rocks for a second job.

13:05Zing Tsjeng:That is a rock-carrying face, that's for sure. Anyway, in 1996, with encouragement from her customers and local officials, she rented two houses and turned them into a factory, hiring around 40 workers. There was no production line. It was all manual. And when the glass jar manufacturer didn't want to fill such small orders, Tao was fierce. She argued, which child is born big? They all grow up slowly. If you don't give me the bottle today, I won't leave. I like that. I remember talking to a big Chinese business person and it was all about modern technology. But in many ways, he spoke as if it was in kind of parables and proverbs that everything he'd said about his business came in.

13:44Zing Tsjeng:And it feels like which child is born big kind of fits that model.

13:47Simon Jack:Which jar of chili sauce is born big? Yeah. It was a difficult job to work in the factory, as you would expect because the workers' eyes would kind of tear up as they crushed the Sichuan peppercorns and chopped the chilli peppers. Anybody who's ever had to do any of those things will know how much it hurts. Apparently, Tao would show them how to do it saying, I'll chop the chilli peppers like apples and they won't sting my eyes at all. What's wrong with you young people suffering a little? Tao's own fingernails were apparently calcified after years of stirring the spicy sauce and her own tongue was blistered from personally quality checking the sauce.

14:20Simon Jack:I would not want to be on that factory assembly line on a day the source was not up to scratch.

14:25Zing Tsjeng:So there's a little health warning there. Don't taste millions and millions of jars of this stuff or something bad might happen to your tongue. Now, with the increased production, she was able to supply local restaurants and stores and sort out new customers in company canteens herself. She then moved to a bigger factory and expanded her team to 200 workers. And when hiring, she shared the company's ethos. Be a good person first before doing great things. Her eldest son decided to get in on the act, left his job to help his mother. He became the first general manager to help her with the paperwork.

14:56Simon Jack:In 1997, Guiyang Nanming Lao Gan Ma Flavor Food Co Ltd was officially established. According to one source, that year the company had 14 million yen in output value, and on straight exchange, that's around$480 ,000. But that doesn't really get across the domestic purchasing power. So to put it into perspective, at the time, the average wage for Chinese urban residents was 5 ,000 yuan and 2 ,000 for rural workers. So the company's output value was the same as thousands of people's income. So within China, Tao is probably very rich at this point, even if she's not officially a dollar millionaire.

15:33Zing Tsjeng:Right. And also remember, 1997 was actually a pretty risky time to start a business. The Asian financial crisis was sweeping through the continent. And this was something that happened when essentially it started in Thailand when the value of the baht collapsed. And that led to sort of contagion to lots of other currencies there. And it was feared that there's this fast growing part of the world economy was suddenly going to go into reverse and create a sort of global financial crisis. Now, in the end, it didn't. But it was very, very dicey. I remember I was working in finance myself. It was a big deal, the 97 Asian crisis.

16:07Zing Tsjeng:And it was during this time the Chinese Communist Party was restructuring the economy under what was known as grasping the large, letting go of the small. A lot of state-owned companies were being privatized and there was government support for entrepreneurship, which is kind of interesting because people think about China as a communist country. But it's a very strange hybrid of communism and market economic, capital market economics.

16:31Simon Jack:Right. And Tao was one of the people who benefited from this policy. She rapidly expanded the business. She sold to restaurants, supermarkets, school canteens. And there was also a lot more movement of people within China during this period. So workers from places like Guizhou and Sichuan took their tastes for spice and also jars of Tao's chilli sauce to the rest of the country. And soon there were agents selling this brand in Beijing and Wuhan, covering most markets in China.

16:58Zing Tsjeng:A lot of people were moving to cities at that time as well from rural areas. So you probably had a much denser population to sell to.

17:06Simon Jack:And people also feeling nostalgic and homesick for the taste of home, bringing these jars over, introducing them to their new friends. You know, it's kind of word-by-mouth advertising. And by 2000, revenue had increased more than tenfold with 156 million yuan output value, which at the time roughly would have been around$19 million. Now, we still have to deduct costs and tax. But even after all of that, it's probably safe to say that around the turn of the millennium in her early 50s, Tao Huabi is a US dollar millionaire.

17:38Zing Tsjeng:What a journey.

17:50Zing Tsjeng:OK, now let's take Tao from a million onto a billion. and to do that we all know about scaling up businesses but she seemed to do it without sacrificing quality which is something that can happen. She operated Lao Gan Ma under an ethos of no tax evasion, no loans, no debt, no public listing and she consistently maintained the cash on delivery model which means that, you know, I want to get paid, I'll pay my suppliers when I get my stuff and you have to pay me when I deliver rather than having credit terms or I'll pay you in 90 days which is much more common.

18:21Simon Jack:Well, by refusing to go public she was able to maintain her family's control of the business despite getting pressure from the government and investors. And she also maintains tight control of the company in other ways, because for a while she struggled to trademark Lao Gan Ma, meaning old godmother, because multiple applications were rejected because it wasn't a unique enough name. Meanwhile, there were counterfeit Lao Gan Ma products popping up all over the country, threatening the reputation of Tao. And in 2001, the High Court in Beijing ruled that another prominent company had to stop using the name Lao Ganmao on its flavoured soybean products and similar packaging.

18:57Simon Jack:She was compensated 400 ,000 yuan for economic losses, and there was a request for an apology in a nationally circulated newspaper. Now, counterfeit and infringement issues have continued over the years, but time and time again, she has cracked down hard on these copycats.

19:13Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, counterfeiting is one of those things that was characterised the emergence of lots of Chinese companies. In the early 2000s, she began to expand the business internationally, exporting her chilli sauce to North America, to Australia, Europe, South Africa, and the rest of Southeast Asia. And overseas, the product could cost up to 10 times more than in China. And she's quoted as having said, I like this, I'm Chinese, I don't make money off Chinese people. I want to sell Laogunma to foreign countries and make money off foreigners. Good for you. And for many Chinese students studying abroad, Lao Gan Ma was actually a bit of a reminder of home, a cure for homesickness.

19:46Much like those rural workers moving into urban cities and populations in China.

19:51Zing Tsjeng:Much like a sort of jar of Branson pickle for a Brit living abroad.

19:55Simon Jack:Exactly. Although I don't think Branson... Does Branson pickle sell for 10 times more abroad? Maybe.

19:59Zing Tsjeng:I think it probably does. I don't know. I did live abroad for a while. Whenever my family came out, I'd get them to bring a jar of something or other.

20:05Simon Jack:The international scale of the business meant that it could no longer operate with that manual production model that Tao took pride in. And presumably there's only so many jars of chilli sauce you can dip your finger in to taste. So she invested to automate the production line from ingredients proportioning to labelling.

20:21Zing Tsjeng:Now, as we mentioned in the beginning of this, Taro was illiterate. She used to use circles to represent her signature until she was taught how to write her name. She needed the financial statements read to her, which she would memorise. Fortunately, this was still very much a family business. So her son was on hand to help. and of course she had very sharp mental arithmetic from her days selling vegetables. Pretty amazing that you're running a business which is, you know, raking in billions while the founder actually cannot read. All right. Yeah, all right, yeah. She was living a pretty humble life on her factory compound with her staff.

20:57Zing Tsjeng:She slept in a bedroom next to an undecorated office and after trips arranged by her son or secretary, she'd be in a rush to head back to the factory. So she's not got too many airs and graces.

21:07Simon Jack:And she also rarely gave media interviews. But in 2006, in an article, she spoke about her four wishes, that the burden on her employees would be less. The company would continue to attract great talent for fewer copyright infringements and for more good companies. And it seemed like she really did care about her employees. They were given meals and accommodation. It's reported that their salaries and benefits were among the highest in Guiyang. She talked about her relationship with her workers, saying, I believe that if I treat them with my heart, they will also repay me with their love. I don't want people with big names who are not honest.

21:40Simon Jack:I'd rather find someone who's willing to learn and work hard. And apparently she even knew the names of about half of her 2 ,000 employees. Now, I do feel like we still have to raise a little bit of scepticism here. I don't know.

21:51Zing Tsjeng:I think that it's something about her character and what we know about it. I'm trying to think how many of my colleagues, I can remember your name. Anyway, I'm going to say that I believe that.

22:04Simon Jack:Well, I think we should also remind our listeners that under the Chinese Communist Party and as we go on to see Tao became quite a lodestar in it, history can be mythologized or, you know, there's always the value of a good story, I think.

22:18Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, for sure. But she wasn't above spending her money, obviously frugal ways in some, but she did travel in a limited edition Rolls Royce with the lucky number plate GY A8888. So an eight's a lucky number in China, right?

22:34Simon Jack:It is. Yeah. The number eight is associated with wealth in China.

22:38Zing Tsjeng:It sounds like it. Actually, the words actually sound similar? Exactly. Okay, like a homonym then. Yes, it's a homonym. Okay, there we go.

22:44Simon Jack:So you'll often get, you know, people with license plates, people want to live in flats with the number eight, you know, it's a real thing.

22:53Zing Tsjeng:She also had a Bentley worth the equivalent of a few hundred thousand bottles of her chili sauce. And not all her employees were loyal. One leaked her recipe, which is estimated cost the company millions of yuan. And the company that acted immediately, stamped right on it. The forum employee was arrested and detained by police on suspicion of infringement of trade secrets.

23:14Simon Jack:By this point, Tao was an influential figure. She got into politics in the 2000s. She served as a deputy to the National People's Congress, attending annual sessions in Beijing as a representative from her county, Guizhou. It's reported that she gained some significant power within the National People's Congress and used her influence to spotlight food fraud and counterfeiting. Now, for context, the Congress is China's top legislative body in formal terms, although in practice it's generally not independent and largely endorses decisions made by the Communist Party leadership.

23:45Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Now, normally, as regular listeners will know, we use Forbes' Rich List. But China actually has its own version of it, which is called the Hurun Rich List. And in 2006, she was listed there for the first time at number 324, worth US$125 million, earning her the title of richest person in Guizhou. And by the end of the 2000s, the Laogunma factory was producing approximately 1.3 million jars of the chilli sauce daily. and she built this giant global brand organically, mainly through word of mouth, astonishingly, no advertising, no marketing, no PR. I mean, it's hard to do that, but it's part of the secret sauce, if you like, of her success.

24:26Simon Jack:And I also think part of it is because the taste of it was initially so distinctive. When it first appeared in Western countries and was introduced to people who hadn't even tried anything like Sichuan peppercorns, like Sichuan, like chilies before, it doesn't taste like any other chili sauce that you can think of. It's certainly a million miles away from sweet chili sauce.

24:46Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, it is. And also I think that the thing that struck me when I've seen it in our fridge at home is I look at what is this? And actually there's no real English characters on it. So you think, oh, it must have been got from some specialist Chinese shop. It must be the real deal. It must be extra authentic. It must be extra authentic. I really like that. It's cool, isn't it? You know, there's a bit of that going on.

25:05Simon Jack:And it really did, I think, kickstart a whole global market for chilli sauce of this type.

25:11Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, of course, her face on the label, which, as I say, I didn't believe was a real human being. But now I know different. It's reported that in 2014, age 67, Tao stepped back from daily operations. She let her two sons take the lead. And that year, the Hurun Rich List declared she had become a US dollar billionaire.

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27:43Simon Jack:Let's take Tao and the story of Lao Gan Ma, Beyond a Billion. In 2017, it was revealed she'd given her sons the entire business. Li Miao-sing held a 51 % stake and Li Guishan had the remaining 49 % stake. And that meant Tao dropped off that billionaire list to be replaced by her sons.

28:00Zing Tsjeng:But it was reported that by 2019, revenue had fallen. So Tao comes back, she returns to management. Although it's worth noting the company characterised this as speculation and wouldn't comment on it.

28:11Simon Jack:The word of mouth advertising has continued for Lao Gan Ma. But in our current times, that looks like going viral on social media. In 2019 at the New York Fashion Week, fashion brand opening ceremony presented a hoodie that looked exactly like the jars, including Tao's face. From what I can tell, this wasn't exactly an official collaboration. Wrestling star John Senna took to his socials to declare his love for the brand in Mandarin. He says he puts it on broccoli. And meanwhile, the singer Sam Smith posted a video putting it on their eggs. I mean, you can't buy that kind of advertising.

28:43Zing Tsjeng:Which makes me think it must have been organised. I mean, someone's doing that, right? I mean, they don't all simultaneously decide, oh, I'm going to get a sweatshirt with a jar of chilli sauce on it.

28:52Simon Jack:That may be true. But I also feel like there's an element of people like this want to be seen to be engaging with the coolest kind of most niche kind of product out there. And it doesn't get more niche than a product completely branded in a language you don't read or understand.

29:07Zing Tsjeng:It's all about authenticity. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Anyway, you know, I suppose the question is, why did it go viral? You know, I mean, I suppose the question, if we knew why anything goes viral, then we'd all be doing it. Right. Because it's the secret to success.

29:22Simon Jack:I do think part of it has to do with COVID. Because if you remember, people were stuck at home, bored out of their minds, cooking a lot more than they might have done. And maybe more people than usual engaged with new and exciting sources, including Lao Gan Ma.

29:37Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Anyway, the social media buzz on sites like TikTok, Instagram and others meant the company's overseas revenue started shooting up. It rose 30 % in 2023. Today, Lao Gan Ma produces 3 million bottles every day and uses 45 ,000 tonnes of chilli peppers a year. And there's plenty of room to go because by 2028, the global chilli sauce market is estimated to grow to six and a half billion dollars.

30:02Simon Jack:Maybe it's time for us to get into chilli sauce.

30:05Zing Tsjeng:We should do a good bad billionaire branded chilli sauce and surreptitiously do some product placement, which we're so kindly doing for Logan Ma, not that she needs the money. It's true, she really doesn't need the money. Well, that is an absolutely extraordinary story. As I say, rags to riches almost doesn't capture it. But now we're going to score her on our billionaire categories, which are wealth, controversy, power and legacy. This is a bit of fun where we go through these categories and score our billionaires between zero and ten. So let us start with wealth. And in a way, she's kind of creeping in here under the radar, right?

30:42Simon Jack:Yeah, I mean, she's technically no longer a billionaire. And when she was, she was only worth a billion dollars. But don't forget, she was very wealthy for the context of her time.

30:52Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, and grew up in dirt poverty, as we've discussed. But we also like to see how she spends it. and quite frugal most of the time.

30:59Simon Jack:A few exceptions, though. I mean, she's got that fancy car, but I also love this story. She apparently refused to live in the villa that her sons bought her because it was too far away from the company.

31:09Zing Tsjeng:Maybe they wanted to put her a little bit further away from them just so she wasn't doing all the backseat driving.

31:15Simon Jack:Mum, you'll love this place. It's miles away. It's only an hour and a half away from the factory.

31:19Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. OK, so we're going to have to give her, even though she is really a one on the billionaire scale, given the poverty she came from and the journey she's been on. I'm actually going to score her six, actually.

31:33Simon Jack:I think it's a fantastic rags to riches story. And that also does play into our score. I think I'm going to give her a seven out of ten.

31:40Zing Tsjeng:OK, so six for me, seven for you. Controversy, we don't have a lot of sources. We should, you know, sources? Sources. With an R, O-U-R. And we should, you know, clarify that. It's hard to know whether we're getting the entire full picture. but from what we do know I mean you know be a good person first then do great things only use your own money I want my own workers she's providing for her workers

32:06Simon Jack:you know pretty uncontroversial stuff I would say yeah I mean I feel like we never give anyone a zero so I feel like we should just give her a one just in case there's a body and a vat of chili oil somewhere we need to hedge our bets perfectly preserved I'm going to

32:24Zing Tsjeng:give her a zero?

32:25Simon Jack:Okay, well, I'll give her a one just in case there is. Okay, I'll take the chance

32:29Zing Tsjeng:that there's not a body in the bottom of the chilli vat. Power, tricky one in China, this one, isn't it?

32:36Simon Jack:She was directly involved in politics. She was a representative at the National People's Congress and important to note that she's been amazing for her home county because it funds apparently 50 ,000 acres of pepper fields in Guizhou. God, imagine the smell coming off those in the sun And it employs nearly 5 ,000 people. So really transformative for that very poor rural county.

32:57Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. In 2016, Bloomberg credited her with helping the historically poor Guizhou achieve 10.5 % economic growth, which was actually ahead of the national rate of nearly 7 % that year. So she's obviously done great things. I mean, an icon, a powerful person within her province, for sure. Overall, I don't know, do you think she could call up Xi Jinping?

33:21Simon Jack:oh that's an interesting question i betty take that call she is responsible for one of the most iconic and instantly recognizable chinese products in the world i would say yeah so she's a massive

33:32Zing Tsjeng:chinese success story right so i would okay let's give i'm gonna give her a five i'll give her a six out of ten okay on power and then legacy um you know the jar label it's her face on it it's become a cultural symbol for Chinese food, Chinese exports generally around the world. And, you know, quite linked to national identity as well.

33:54Simon Jack:Yeah, I think, interestingly, condiments for some reason have become really synonymous of national pride and a country's identity. So, you know, you've got ketchup in the USA. You've got wasabi with Japan. You've got Heinz HP sauce, Branson's pickle with the UK, Dijon mustard. Vegemite in Australia. Exactly. Exactly. So Lao Gan Ma is definitely up there with China.

34:17Zing Tsjeng:OK. I don't know what to say on Legacy. I mean, how long will they be selling those jars? I think for decades to come, I would imagine. So I'm going to give her a seven.

34:29Simon Jack:Yeah, I think I'll give her a seven as well. If there was no Lao Gan Ma chili sauce, I don't think we'd have half the chili sauces we have in supermarkets today.

34:36Zing Tsjeng:OK. All right. Well, so seven each on Legacy. And I mean, you know, as I say, what a belter of a story. You know, almost beggar's belief. It feels like, as I say, a fairy tale or a parable or something, doesn't it?

34:50Simon Jack:I know. And it really fits. I mean, I love the fact that the woman on the chilli sauce is actually a real person.

34:57Zing Tsjeng:That's the big learning. So anyway, the question we always ask at the end is, is she good, bad or just a billionaire? What do you think? You can email goodbadbillionaire at bbc.com or drop us a text or WhatsApp to 001 917 686 1176. That's 001 917 686 1176 and tell us what you think.

35:20Simon Jack:And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message on a future episode.

35:24Zing Tsjeng:We've got some listener feedback here. This is Julius from Kampala in Uganda. He sent us a WhatsApp. Hey, Good Bad Billionaire, what a fantastic podcast. You guys are doing an incredible job. I especially enjoy Zing's voice. Oh, thanks. It blends so well with Jack's. And Jack, you strike me as a genuinely easygoing bloke in real life. I don't know why, but I just get that feeling. You're dead right. I can confirm.

35:47Simon Jack:He goes on to say, what makes your podcast standout is how natural it feels. It's like listening to two good friends sitting in a restaurant. I wish we were sitting in a restaurant recording. Casually discussing something they deeply understand and genuinely enjoy. That authenticity is rare. Wow, thank you. I've listened to almost all your episodes, the most recent being Lucy Guo. That was a good story. And I've learned a great deal from these stories. They've really shaped how I think about wealth and human nature.

36:10Zing Tsjeng:And he says, in my view, whether a billionaire is good or bad often comes down to who they were before the money. Those driven by purpose and the desire to reduce suffering tend to give back, while others remain focused on accumulating more, often overlooking the hardship around them, like millions struggling to feed their families, sick children and homelessness across the globe. It's a reflection of human nature, really. In some, greed takes the lead. In others, generosity and altruism are deeply ingrained.

36:36Simon Jack:Sometimes I wonder what I would do with that level of wealth, he says. I'd like to think I'd follow in the footsteps of people like Chuck Feeney or perhaps Bill Gates, both philanthropists, because at the end of the day, no one takes a bank account with them beyond this life. Truer words have never been spoken. Thank you for what you do. I genuinely love the podcast. Thank you, Julius, for that feedback.

36:59Simon Jack:So who do we have on next week's episode?

37:03Zing Tsjeng:OK, vegetarians beware. This is a meat-packed episode. It's the story of two Brazilian brothers, Wesley and Joesley Batista, each of them worth$5.7 billion.

37:15Simon Jack:And they own JBS, the biggest meat producer in the world.

37:20Zing Tsjeng:There's scandal, there's jail time, there's political corruption allegations.

37:24Simon Jack:and there's a lot of beef being slaughtered. That's the story of the Batista brothers on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire.

37:31Zing Tsjeng:Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Elena Boateng. The researcher is Hannah Ramazani. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production. For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manel.