Sail across the sea

Chapter 473 After all, I've never seen it before.
"You're Chairman Gao?"

"If you're referring to Chairman Gao when you ask about Gao Fan, then that's me."

"You said you are Gao Fan."

"Yes, I am Gao Fan, the chairman of Canghai Chemical Company, whom you are looking for."

"What's the name of your company, Cangma?"

"..."

Gao Fan's meeting with Luo Shenrong, the director of a department in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, began with a series of conversations to confirm their identities.

Luo Shenrong sought information about rare earth exports and eventually came across the name Gao Fan. According to insiders, Gao Fan participated in the development and management of heavy rare earths in southern China, jointly organized by the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Chemical Industry. His company, Canghai Chemical, invested in and partnered with Maolin Zeyan Institute to establish Zeshan Rare Earth Refinery, which has become a major exporter of high-purity heavy rare earths in China.

In addition, at the end of last year, Gao Fan represented the semiconductor materials export company at the Atlanta International Electronics Show. At that exhibition, the Chinese delegation's two products, high-purity rare earth and photoresist, achieved remarkable sales results.

Another piece of information Luo Shenrong received was that Gao Fan was very young.

Yes, according to insiders: very, very young.

Is he only in his 30s?

This is Luo Shenrong's understanding of the expression "very, very young".

A company capable of raising 1 million yuan to establish a rare earth refinery must be of a certain size, possibly a direct subsidiary of the Ministry of Chemical Industry or the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources. The chairman of such a ministry-affiliated enterprise would likely be at least at the ministerial or even vice-ministerial level.

Nowadays, there is an emphasis on making the cadre team younger. It is entirely possible for a 40-year-old to serve as the chairman of a company at the level of a department director, and that would qualify as "very young".

If it's "very, very young", then it should be around 35 years old, right?

But the person in front of me doesn't look 30 at all.

"Is your company, Canghai Chemical, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Chemical Industry or some other ministry?"

After somewhat doubtfully inviting Gao Fan to sit down on the office sofa, Luo Shenrong couldn't help but ask the question that had been troubling him.

“We are a privately-owned joint-stock company, formerly the labor service company of Canghai Fertilizer Plant,” Gao Fan replied.

“Labor Service Company…” Luo Shenrong grinned. “Then your Canghai Fertilizer Plant… wait a minute, I remember now, there’s a joint venture in Maolin Province that produces Vitamin C, I think it’s called Cang something-mao, is it related to you?”

"Canghua Vitamin Factory is now a branch of our subsidiary," Gao Fan said proudly.

"I remember now." Luo Shenrong seemed a little dazed. "I recall that the information submitted by the Maolin Provincial Foreign Trade Department mentioned that the person in charge of this company was a college dropout who returned to his hometown to start a business. That must be you, right?"

Two years ago, the export of Vitamin C by Canghua Vitamin Factory was quite a big deal. In order to prevent Canghua from selling more cheap Vitamin C on the international market, the German Laureate Group signed an agreement with China, promising to provide China with licenses to manufacture several generic versions of new drugs, saving China a significant amount of foreign exchange expenditure on imported medicines.

As the department in charge of foreign trade, the Foreign Trade Department would naturally pay attention to such matters. Luo Shenrong was not in charge of this work, but he had heard about it from his colleagues and also learned that there was a company in Maolin called Cang something, which had a college graduate as its manager.

"I'm that college graduate who returned to my hometown to start a business. But I didn't drop out. Not long ago, I was recommended for admission to our department's graduate program." Gao Fan corrected Luo Shenrong's wording, feeling quite helpless.

How did such a perfectly good thing become such a distorted story? "Oh, I see. It seems Chairman Gao is quite an excellent student. I wonder which school you attend? It must be a prestigious university, right?" Luo Shenrong asked.

But in his heart, he had the opposite idea.

He went home and started a company, and he still managed to get a guaranteed spot in graduate school. How bad must this school be?

“Peking University, I think it’s alright.” Gao Fan used the Versailles style of a certain gentleman from later generations.

"..."

We couldn't continue our conversation.

Luo Shenrong spent a few seconds restoring his health before getting to the point, saying:

"Chairman Gao, the main reason I invited you to the Ministry of Foreign Trade today is to hear your thoughts on the protests by Japanese rare earth manufacturers against my country's imposition of a special resource tax on rare earths. You should be familiar with the details of this matter, right?"

“Director Luo, why don’t you just call me by my name, or you can call me Xiao Gao,” Gao Fan suggested. “I’m really not used to being called Chairman.”

"Uh, okay, then I'll take the liberty of calling you Xiao Gao, it'll sound more friendly, right?" Luo Shenrong readily accepted.

In his heart, he also felt that Gao Fan, the chairman, was somewhat incompetent. A labor service company of a fertilizer plant, at best, was only at the deputy section chief level.

"I saw the joint statement from Japanese rare earth companies last week. I came to Beijing this time to report this matter to the Ministry of Chemical Industry. It was the comrades from the Ministry of Chemical Industry who told me that you wanted to talk to me."

"Yes. The main issue is that rare earth exports involve some specialized fields, and as the business department, we are not particularly familiar with these fields, so we wanted to ask you about the situation."

"Director Luo, please ask."

"A joint statement from several Japanese rare earth companies, including Yttrium Corporation, said that they will invest 1000 billion yen to launch research on rare earth alternative technologies and conduct global technology bidding. Can you tell if this is true or false?"

"Half truth, half lie."

"how to say?"

"The research on rare earth substitution technology is definitely real. It's not just Yttrium Corporation that's doing it; the Zelin Research Institute in Maolin is also doing it. By the way, before I came to Beijing, I was talking about this with my colleagues at the Zelin Research Institute, and they were even planning to put it up for tender."

"..."

"Research on rare earth substitution technologies is not a recent development; it has been conducted for many years and has yielded some results. However, it is impossible to completely replace rare earth elements with other elements in industrial production for at least the next 50 years. I dare not predict what will happen after 50 years, after all, I haven't seen it happen, have I?"

Gao Fan chuckled twice as he finished speaking.

Luo Shenrong naturally didn't understand the joke, and that wasn't his focus. He continued Gao Fan's line of thought, asking, "Completely replacing rare earth elements shouldn't be too easy. But if they could replace half, or 30%, wouldn't that mean our demand for rare earth elements would decrease significantly?"

Gao Fan said, "First of all, the goal of replacing 30% is impossible to achieve in the short term, and the Ministry of Foreign Trade can rest assured about this. Secondly, the application of rare earths is growing rapidly, and more and more fields will use rare earths, so the global demand for rare earths will definitely continue to rise."

(End of this chapter)