Sail across the sea

Chapter 486 What if you have a brilliant idea?
"Sixth brother, you're living in an ivory tower, out of touch with reality. You don't know how difficult it is to get things done at the grassroots level."

Hu Dongming patted Gao Fan on the shoulder and said with emotion.

“I’m the one at the grassroots level, okay?” Gao Fan retorted irritably. “I’m just a small private business owner. I have to bow and scrape to you department heads. Every day when I open my eyes, I’m thinking about where to get a few hundred thousand yuan to cover the company’s various expenses. You, Director Hu, spend half the day with a cup of tea, a cigarette, and a newspaper, and at the end of the month, the government doesn’t reduce your salary by a single penny.”

"You're nothing, a small private business owner. Everyone knows you're using the guise of industry-academia-research integration to spend your days on campus deceiving innocent female students. I just don't understand, back when you were a proper student, you rarely came back to school even once a year. Now that you've graduated, you're always hanging around campus. Isn't that weird?"

"You're the pervert! You got married to your childhood sweetheart from middle school as soon as you returned to Muyang. Back then, you were still a minor, and your sister-in-law was still an innocent young girl. How could you do that?"

"You're the one talking to me, but why don't you bring up your affair with someone at Peking University that ended in heartbreak?"

"Pah! When have I ever messed things up? Oh, I almost forgot, Xia Shihui is back. She participated in a classified national project, which just ended, and now she's working at the research institute of the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources, where she's now a deputy director."

"You beast! The moment I mentioned starting a relationship and then abandoning it, you immediately thought of Xia. And you still say you weren't promiscuous back then?"

“We really only have a working relationship. ... Oh right, I did have a job that required her help, but I was so excited when I saw her that I forgot about it.”

"What's the matter?"

"Secret."

"Pah! Sixth Brother, I'm warning you, you have to take responsibility for Junior Sister Lin, don't be fickle."

"Don't worry, you know my principles, right?" Gao Fan said, but seeing that Hu Dongming was about to veer off-topic, he quickly stopped him and said, "Let's get down to business. What do you think of the market prospects for heavy calcium carbonate?"

Hu Dongming shook his head: "It's hard to say. But this matter has nothing to do with me anymore. I was responsible for raising money for this project. Now that the project has been completed, the rest is none of my business. At this completion ceremony, the Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will announce the decision to establish Fanlin Chemical Group Company. The subsequent operation will be handled by Fanlin Company."

"The Ministry of Chemical Industry is very worried about the prospects of this project," Gao Fan said.

This was actually a message Wu Zhefu had asked him to deliver to Muyang Province; he believed Hu Dongming could relay it to higher authorities.

Hu Dongming put away his teasing expression and said, "These things are all up to us. Actually, we've realized in the last two years that the market for heavy calcium carbonate might not be as good as that for ammonium phosphate, but the project is already under construction, so there's no way to change it."

"The State Planning Commission held several seminars to discuss with people from the agricultural materials department how to sell heavy calcium carbonate and put forward some solutions."

"By the way, Lao Liu, you're a business expert, you must have some ideas in this area, right? Could you share them with me so I can make a suggestion to the Planning Commission later?"

Gao Fan said, "As for my ideas, I won't hide it from you. I did come up with a few, but they're not very mature. The main reason is that Director Wu asked me about them, and I didn't want to offend him."

"You have the nerve to refuse me?"

"Director Wu is genuinely worried about you. You've already risen to the rank of section chief thanks to this project, so its future fate is none of your concern. Why should I care about your reputation?" "What if you come up with some brilliant ideas that will amaze our provincial leaders? As the one who contributed the ideas, I can also get some credit. I'm just a section chief now, and I want to keep advancing."

"Old Hu, you really haven't changed at all. You already showed your ambition for officialdom back in the dormitory."

"Can't you speak properly? I just want to better serve the people, how is that being a power-hungry official?"

“I’ve thought about it, and it’s not entirely true that there’s no market for heavy calcium carbonate. China’s phosphate fertilizer supply is still very tight right now. If things are managed properly, there should be hope that the entire Chinese market can absorb your 62 tons of heavy calcium carbonate.”

"That's what we thought too."

"But now we emphasize marketization, and the government will soon propose a policy of fully shifting to marketization. It's probably unrealistic for you to expect farmers to accept your heavy calcium supplements through administrative orders."

"Even if we could use administrative orders, Muyang Province alone couldn't absorb so much heavy calcium carbonate. We also have dozens of ordinary calcium carbonate factories in our province; we can't just shut them down, can we?"

"If we can't use administrative orders, we have to consider some roundabout methods," Gao Fan said. "Currently, farmers in China lack the habit of using superphosphate. In some situations, superphosphate is more effective than ammonium phosphate, but farmers don't understand this, so they naturally won't consider using superphosphate. Instead, they follow others' practices and prioritize the use of ammonium phosphate. To get these farmers to accept superphosphate, we need to educate them and teach them how to choose phosphate fertilizers scientifically."

"However, even the experts at our provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences can't say for sure which situations are suitable for using heavy calcium carbonate. Theoretically speaking, heavy calcium carbonate is suitable for alkaline soils, while nitrogen-containing ammonium phosphate is not suitable for legumes that have their own nitrogen-fixing ability. This is what I heard from the experts at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. But when it comes to the specific details, they don't know either, saying that experiments are needed," Hu Dongming said.

His reputation as a Peking University chemistry graduate is well-deserved; he possesses at least basic scientific literacy.

"Then let's do it," Gao Fan said with a smile.

“Experiments require money. The people from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences are just asking for money. We're very poor; where would we get extra funds to give them?”

"Who told you to pay for it? Can't your Fanlin Group pay for it? The experts from the Academy of Agricultural Sciences can ask for a few hundred thousand yuan, and they'll be ecstatic."

"This matter...we need to talk to the leaders of Fanlin Group." Hu Dongming looked troubled.

The Fanlin Group is roughly at the level of a department head. If he, a section chief in the Finance Department, went there, they would naturally give him a warm welcome, but that would only be because they wanted to get some money from the Finance Department, not because they wanted him to give them business advice.

Hu Dongming had had a lot of contact with Gao Fan over the past few years and had heard Gao Fan talk about the operations of Canghai Group, so he understood the idea Gao Fan had just proposed. Conducting experiments was only a basic task; the important thing was to disseminate the results, letting farmers who were suited to using superphosphate understand the situation and thus proactively abandon ammonium phosphate in favor of superphosphate.

Such operations are easy for Gao Fan, but they would be more difficult for a large state-owned enterprise like Fan Lin's.

Hu Dongming did not believe he had the ability to persuade the leaders of Fanlin Group.

(End of this chapter)