Riding the wind of rebirth

In his previous life, Zhou Zhi believed that Liangshan had not played its soft power card well, thus losing the opportunity to become a first-class tourist destination. It wasn't until twenty years later that it became the "back garden of Chengdu" by relying on the "health and wellness holy land" card. However, its reception capacity has always been a bottleneck restricting its development.

Zhou Zhi believes that if local areas could have this awareness earlier, this card would be easy to play when there is no competition, which would be very beneficial to enhancing the reputation of Liangshan Prefecture and naturally attract more talent and investment to the area.

Putting aside other things, if the small fishing village and Qionghai Hotel across Qionghai Lake could be upgraded to international star-rated standards, and the lakeside road could be improved, it would surely attract many tourism developers to develop the service and tourism industries. This would not only enhance the commercial value of Qionghai Lake, but also combine it with environmental protection and ecology, and incidentally provide a means to improve the ecology of the Qionghai Lake basin.

This is a necessary measure to leverage soft power, which involves taking a comprehensive approach to considering various aspects of soft power.

“We still need government funding for this to happen…” After listening to Zhou Zhi’s explanation, Li Yutang pondered for a moment and realized that although the plan was very good, the key problem was difficult to solve, which was money.

However, Zhouzhi believes that money is the easiest problem to solve: "In terms of funding, we must actively seek national funding, especially by combining ecological environmental protection with local poverty alleviation and disaster reduction. We should be able to secure some funding from both the national and provincial levels. But I think the most crucial thing is to create a money-attracting effect and then attract more private enterprises to invest."

"Then I'd like to ask if your group can support this project?" Li Yutang asked.

“If the local government is determined to develop the ecology of Qionghai Lake and the area around it to the level that meets our requirements, our group can support it,” Zhou Zhi said with a smile. “At least building a health and wellness center or training base for the group would not be a problem.”

"Great!" Li Yutang laughed, "Then I'll bring your idea to the meeting for discussion. I feel it would be very beneficial to the local area. Elbow has given us another helpful suggestion."

After saying that, he picked up his wine glass again: "When we get to Chengdu, we may bother you from time to time. We will definitely need your help with some things. We will need your help to look after us then."

"Brother Li, you're too kind." Zhou Zhi quickly picked up his cup as well: "Don't worry, I'll do my best to help."

After the two finished their drinks, Zhou Zhi said, "You asked earlier if our group could invest in and build a factory in Liangshan. Our group doesn't currently have such business, but we have thought of another company."

"Oh? Is it your aunt's company?"

“Even if the soy sauce factory and mushroom sauce factory that run the food processing business on Saturdays and Thursdays expand their production capacity, the help to the state will be very limited. I’m not talking about that,” Zhou Zhi said. “I’m talking about the Blue Sky Sunshine Group.”

"Oh? Tell me more?"

“Blue Sky Sunshine Group is a group whose main products are green energy equipment, including hydropower, wind power, and solar power plants,” Zhou Zhi said. “These three resources are all good in the state, especially wind power and solar power, which are particularly well-suited.”

“Wait a minute, elbow,” Li Yutang said, a little puzzled. “You said the conditions for building a power station here in the prefecture are exceptionally favorable, right? Isn’t this a project that costs money? It’s not the same as attracting investment, is it?”

“Yes, the state has ideal conditions for building wind and solar power plants, but these all require money. Thinking about this when the finances are tight is wishful thinking,” Zhou Zhi said. “However, I want to point out that Sunshine Group also needs to research, upgrade, and replace its equipment.” “Before each new product is launched, it also needs to be tested and finalized. So, wouldn’t it be best if their testing base could be a place that can fully test all three types of energy equipment?”

“Yes! For example, the green energy project in Lianhe Township, was it brought to you because of this?” Li Yutang understood what Zhou Zhi meant.

"So I think we can talk to Lantian Sunshine Group and try to get their testing center located in Liangshan Prefecture. Even if we can't build a large-scale production plant due to transportation restrictions, it would be great to conduct experiments and scientific research."

“There is another point,” Zhou Zhi said. “Because the output of wind and solar energy is not stable, an intermediate device is needed to store the energy they generate and release it stably.”

“I’ve heard you and Renzhong mention this before,” Li Yutang nodded. “In Lianhe Township, you used electricity to pump water to the power station, converting electrical energy into the potential energy of the water and storing it, right?”

"Yes. But this method consumes a lot of energy and is extremely limited in its application scenarios. For example, it is not suitable for deserts, grasslands, and plains."

"The best and most common energy storage method is still batteries," Zhou Zhi said. "So this has always been a research direction for Blue Sky Sunshine Group."

"However, ordinary batteries currently have many problems such as short effective time, frequent replacement, unreliable quality, and high pollution. Therefore, the future development will inevitably focus on new materials as the direction for batteries."

"Currently, the biggest development direction seems to be lithium raw materials," Zhou Zhi said. "The so-called lithium raw materials are batteries that use metallic lithium or lithium alloys as the negative electrode. This research actually started in the 1950s, and military and civilian applications were realized in the 1970s."

"This industrial island nation has always been at the forefront of the world. In 1970, Panasonic developed a new type of fluorocarbon as a new cathode material. Combining it with an inorganic lithium salt and organic solvent electrochemical system, the battery was mass-produced and applied to fishing boats three years later."

"Two years later, Sanyo successfully developed a battery based on manganese dioxide and lithium, and also achieved mass production."

"Subsequently, lithium-iodine primary batteries and lithium-silver-vanadium oxide batteries emerged. Among them, the latter has excellent performance and once occupied a large market share of batteries used in implantable cardiac devices."

"So far, the development of this series of batteries has actually been about making variations on positive and negative electrode materials and electrolytes. Only when both positive and negative electrode materials adopt embedded materials and can be recharged can the issues of lifespan and safety be initially resolved, thus achieving commercialization."

"As new electrolyte systems were continuously developed, lithium metal secondary batteries were finally introduced in the late 80s. However, researchers found that no matter how much the lithium anode and electrolyte system were improved, the problem of lithium dendrite formation in lithium metal secondary batteries was not fundamentally solved. This caused lithium to form 'forks' in the battery, which could easily puncture protective components, leading to leakage and fire, making it very unsafe."

"Therefore, despite the very high specific capacity of lithium metal, scientists have had to abandon lithium metal and look for new anode materials."

"With the discovery of the rocking chair effect, this battery concept gradually came to the forefront. The so-called rocking chair effect refers to the phenomenon where lithium ions are inserted and extracted between the positive and negative electrodes during the charging and discharging process, rocking back and forth like a rocking chair, hence the name." (End of Chapter)