The Red Era: Living in Seclusion in a Siheyuan as a Boss

Chapter 784 The Kingdom of Auto Parts!!!

In the autumn of 1998, Yanjing Automobile Group celebrated two happy events.

On September 15, with the 9th "Warrior" off-road vehicle rolling off the production line at the third assembly plant, the group achieved its strategic goal of "10 vehicles in three steps" two years ahead of schedule.

On the same day, the upgraded version of the automotive CAD system developed by the team led by Dr. Xie Xiaojuan passed the national acceptance test. The system shortened the development cycle of new models by 60% and reduced the design error rate to below 0.5%.

At the celebration banquet, Liu Jianguo announced the launch of the "Millennium Plan": investing 15 billion yuan to build a national-level automobile test track, and at the same time, jointly building an automotive engineering college with Yanjing Institute of Technology.

An Qingshan specially presented Chen Daohua with the first "Warrior" gold model car to roll off the production line, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the research and development of military vehicles.

The base of this 1:18 scale gold model is engraved with the eight characters "Iron Cavalry Spirit, Never Give Up".

In the spring of 1999, Yanqi Group ushered in a major turning point.

With the help of the municipal government, the group successfully acquired the nearly bankrupt Northern Bus Factory.

By injecting capital and technology, the factory turned a profit in just six months, and its "Jingcheng" medium-sized bus quickly captured 30% of the public transportation market in North China.

This acquisition not only expanded the product line, but also gave Yanqi Group a valuable bus production qualification.

As the new millennium approached, Yanqi Group established a European R&D center in Munich, Germany, headed by Zhang Mingyuan, a young engineer who had returned from studying abroad.

This dynamic team quickly developed a diesel engine that met Euro IV emission standards, laying the foundation for Yanqi Group to open up the EU market.

At the same time, the fourth assembly plant located in the High-tech Zone broke ground. This modern factory, which adopts a fully automated production line, will become an important support for the "Double Million Project".

On New Year's Day 2000, Yanjing Automobile Group held a grand celebration at its newly built automobile theme park.

As the first rays of sunlight fell upon the "Wheel of the Times" sculpture in the center of the square, Liu Jianguo, An Qingshan, and all the employees witnessed the arrival of the new century.

The inscription "1978-2000" on the sculpture's base records the company's legendary transformation from a motorcycle parts factory to an automobile group.

In early summer, Zhang Mingyuan's team made a stunning debut at the Hannover Messe.

The system can achieve Level 2 autonomous driving capabilities, and European media praised it as a "milestone in China's intelligent manufacturing".

During the exhibition, Yanqi signed strategic agreements with three European dealers, and the first batch of 500 medium-sized buses will soon be launched in the South American Pampas market.

In September, Yanjing Automotive Engineering College welcomed its first batch of freshmen.

The college's unique "dual-mentor system" training model extends the classroom directly to the trial production workshop.

Chen Daohua, who is over forty years old, personally serves as a specially appointed professor. His course "Modern Vehicle Mechanical Engineering" is always packed, and students call him a "walking encyclopedia of automobiles".

Among these students, there was one who was noticeably older than the others, in his early thirties, and he studied very diligently.
His name is Wang Guangrong, and he is the founder of an auto parts factory.

Wang Guangrong was well-known among his classmates; he was the only student who, after starting his own business, also enrolled in adult higher education.

In the early 1990s, in the polishing workshop of a watch factory in Bao County, 18-year-old Wang Guangrong wore a hat and mask, his hands blistered from being rubbed raw by a burlap wheel.

In the dusty air, the boy worked more than ten hours a day, earning only 150 yuan a month.

Back in his dormitory at night, Wang Guangrong had to scrub his face vigorously with soap. "Except for the parts covered by the mask, his face was completely black."

No one could have imagined that this rural boy would become a leading figure in the Yanjing auto parts industry ten years later, building a business empire with annual revenue exceeding 100 million yuan.

Wang Guangrong's entrepreneurial story began in a poor rural village in the Beihe Taihang Mountains.

He lost his father at the age of 4, and his mother raised three children on her own.

When Wang Guangrong was still in junior high school, he followed his brother to collect herbs and resell them to a medicinal herb company, earning a meager profit each month.

It was this seemingly insignificant act of "buying and selling" that allowed him to taste the sweetness of doing business for the first time.

One year, a watchmaker from Wang Guangrong's village suggested that he become an apprentice in Baoxian Special Economic Zone.

Without much thought, Wang Guangrong took the 150 yuan his brother had given him and embarked on his journey south.

In the factory in Baoxian Special Economic Zone, he absorbed technology like a sponge, and in less than two years he became a key member of the polishing workshop, with a monthly salary exceeding 1000 yuan.

When everyone thought Wang Guangrong would be content with this relatively respectable job, he made an unexpected decision: to switch jobs to a machine processing factory where the monthly salary was less than a thousand yuan, simply because it would allow him to become a production team leader.

"Everyone needs affirmation from others," this simple statement reveals his inner longing for dignity.

The turning point in their lives occurred in 1992.

When the factory shifted from export to domestic sales, Wang Guangrong, who could speak the local Cantonese dialect, was recommended to run sales.

Wang Guangrong rides his bicycle and takes a bus every day, traversing the entire Shenzhen city area to Cuizhu Road, where auto parts factories are concentrated, to sell car anti-theft locks.

Opportunity always favors the diligent.

Through the introduction of a distant relative, he secured an order for more than 20,000 anti-theft locks from the vehicle management department of Chenzhou City, Hunan Province.

But the payment of more than 200 million yuan became a stumbling block.

Faced with immense pressure, Wang Guangrong made a crucial decision: to give most of the price difference to the factory, and to earn only a few yuan for each lock himself.

“A key reason I was able to close this deal was that I wasn’t afraid of taking a loss,” Wang Guangrong later recalled. “If I had been too calculating, I probably wouldn’t have even made back the 5 yuan.”

It was this wisdom of not being afraid of taking a loss that enabled Wang Guangrong to earn his first 5 yuan and own his own "Holiland" auto hardware parts store in the Dong'an District of Liujiazhuang.

A year later, Wang Guangrong experienced the first major leap in his career.

A regulation issued by the Ministry of Public Security required all motor vehicles entering highways to be equipped with rear fog lights—Wang Guangrong saw a huge business opportunity in this.

“Every night at midnight, people would still be lining up at my shop to pick up their goods,” Wang Guangrong recalled the bustling scene at the time.

However, individual auto parts stores have limited purchasing power and cannot obtain goods directly from manufacturers.

Wang Guangrong creatively integrated the needs of multiple stores and placed orders with designated manufacturers.

This strategy made Wang Guangrong a key supplier in the industry, attracting auto parts stores from surrounding provinces and cities, including Yanjing.

In the same year, Wang Guangrong met a woman who would change his life during business dealings—a sales manager at Yanjing Automobile Group.

After the two got married, his wife, who was deeply influenced by the "group's" business philosophy, not only helped Wang Guangrong earn his first million in the rear fog light business, but also encouraged him to "make the business bigger and stronger".

In 1995, at his wife's suggestion, Wang Guangrong made a crucial decision: to rent a 110-square-meter shop and a 1000-square-meter warehouse in a building on the Second Ring Road of Yanjing City to create Yanjing's first warehouse-style supermarket for auto parts.

“At that time, the price per square meter on the first floor was more than 70 yuan, while the price per square meter of the warehouse on the second floor was only more than 10 yuan,” Wang Guangrong accurately grasped the cost control.

In less than three years, Holiland has become the leader in the Yanjing auto parts market.

In 1998, Wang Guangrong's career took off for the second time. He keenly recognized the huge potential of the car detailing market and invested 200 million yuan to import fully automatic car wash equipment from Germany, establishing the first flagship car detailing store in North China in the western suburbs of Beijing.

On the opening day, the line of cars waiting to experience the "contactless car wash" stretched for two kilometers, becoming a local sensation.

At the same time, Wang Guangrong began to lay out the upstream of the industrial chain.

He acquired a near-bankrupt car lighting factory abroad and assembled a 100-person R&D team.

After 18 months of dedicated research, we have successfully developed a series of LED vehicle lighting products with independent intellectual property rights.

The "Holiland" brand has since transformed from a simple trading company into a comprehensive enterprise integrating research and development, production, and sales.

Last year, Wang Guangrong once again broke through his own limits and opened the AiChe Space Auto Service Flagship Store in the most prosperous Liujiazhuang West Bank Commercial District in Yanjing.

Contrary to the strategy of choosing low-priced locations, Wang Guangrong meticulously created an audio listening area, a screen protector application area, a relaxation area, and even a small internet cafe.

"Consumers in urban areas are more sophisticated and have higher demands," Wang Guangrong said, well aware of the importance of consumption upgrading.

This bold attempt propelled his business to new heights, and Holiland gradually developed into a commercial empire with independent production capabilities, over 300 international buyers, and over 800 distributors.

Now, sitting in a classroom at Yanjing Automotive Engineering College, Wang Guangrong's notebook is filled with key points about automotive electronic systems.

Whenever Professor Chen Daohua reached a crucial point in his lecture, he would always raise his hand to ask a question, his calloused hands forming a stark contrast with the young students around him.

"Mr. Wang, you're already so successful, why did you choose to study this major?" During the break, a junior in my group couldn't help but ask.

Wang Guangrong unscrewed his thermos, took a sip of water, and said with a smile, "Back when I was in the auto parts business, I didn't even know what an ECU was."

Car manufacturing technology is advancing rapidly; if you don't keep learning, you'll be left behind.

His enthusiasm for learning inspired the entire class.

On weekends, Wang Guangrong and several classmates could often be seen discussing disassembled gearboxes late into the night in the training workshop.

In order to understand the working principle of a hybrid power system, he once bought a teaching model at his own expense for the whole class to use.

"What's most admirable about Wang Guangrong is that he always maintains an open mind," Chen Daohua commented at a teachers' meeting. "He treats himself like a blank sheet of paper, and this learning attitude is something all young people should learn from."

At the same time, Wang Guangrong's company is also undergoing intelligent transformation.

His automotive electronics R&D center, built with an investment of 5000 million yuan, is nearing completion. Among the first batch of 30 engineers recruited, 15 are senior students he met at Yanqi Engineering College.

"We want to be more than just a parts supplier," he said at the new employee training session. "In the next three years, Holiland aims to become the strongest partner for Yan Auto Parts System..."

This rural youth, who came from a watch factory, is writing a new chapter in the automotive industry of Xia Guo with his unique perseverance and vision.

At the end of the 18th century, English inventor James Watt improved the steam engine, thus ushering in the Industrial Revolution, with automobile manufacturing becoming the most prominent representative of the Industrial Revolution.

Subsequently, France manufactured the first steam-powered automobile, England invented the first internal combustion engine ignition device, and the Germans manufactured the first modern automobile...

In the 1950s and 60s, the first domestically produced car in China rolled off the assembly line at the Chuncheng Automobile Factory.

Subsequently, the Second Automobile Manufacturing Plant was built, and the automobile manufacturing industry in Xia State entered a stage of independent development.

At this time, the auto parts industry in Liujiazhuang, west of Beijing, was also beginning to emerge in a hazy state.

The history of auto parts development in Liujiazhuang dates back to the 1950s and 60s—at that time, Liujiazhuang was one of the poorest areas in Yanjing (Beijing), with poor land and poor people, and most people's annual income was only ten or twenty yuan.

However, the people of Liujiazhuang were not defeated by poverty; in fact, they possessed a spirit of not being afraid of difficulties, daring to fight, and being willing to break through and innovate.

With the development of the automobile industry in Xia Guo, many thoughtful people in Qinghe realized that the automobile industry will be a major trend for future development.

Meanwhile, driven by the automotive industrial park in the high-tech zone, some villages around Liujiazhuang area have started village-run sideline businesses mainly producing automotive rubber products, such as hoses and gaskets, thus forming the initial Liujiazhuang automotive parts production and processing "market".

In addition to manufacturing and processing auto parts, the people of Liujiazhuang also diligently engage in "diplomatic efforts" to attract business or sell their products.

"Running diplomatic missions" was a popular expression at the time, meaning running business.

The salesmen, with just a briefcase in hand containing a few steamed buns and a letter of introduction, left their hometowns to venture out across the country.

Enduring hunger, sleeping under bridges, and being turned away at door... the first generation of auto parts salesmen laid the foundation for the development of the auto parts industry in Liujiazhuang with their strong perseverance and hard work.

With the advent of reform and opening up, the automotive parts processing industry in western Beijing has grown stronger, with an increase in the variety of parts produced, and the production of motorcycle parts has been added.

At the same time, the number of people involved in processing and operation is also increasing, spreading from village-run sideline businesses to individual households. Many villagers have joined the "auto parts industry" by combining simple processing equipment with pure manual labor.

By the 1990s, dozens of auto parts markets of varying sizes had formed in the western part of Beijing. The larger markets had hundreds of stalls, while the smaller ones had dozens. On market days, auto repair shop salesmen from the local area and even all over the country would flock to these markets to make purchases and place orders.

The auto parts industry in western Beijing has thus reached a certain scale, opening the door to economic development and prosperity for the entire western Beijing region.

However, as is well known, Xia's automotive industry started late and lagged behind advanced countries. As a result, there are many imperfections in the entire automotive parts industry chain. For a considerable period of time, both the complete vehicle and parts industries were in a state of "crossing the river by feeling the stones".

The same was true for the auto parts industry in Liujiazhuang. Between the 1990s and 2000, there were also prominent problems such as poor product quality, serious homogenization, small production scale, and even counterfeit and shoddy products.

However, the practitioners persevered, and with the country's continuous adjustments to the market economy and improvements to the market legal system, the Jingxi auto parts industry, which was riddled with problems, gradually improved. Many companies with strong management and technical capabilities emerged and, through improvements in production management and innovative technology development, drove the entire Jingxi auto parts industry toward higher quality.

Among them is Wang Guangrong's "Holiland". Under his hard work, the factory was transformed and upgraded and officially named "Yanjing Holiland Parts Co., Ltd.", continuing to move forward with the times.

Entering the year 2000, the new millennium brought about rapid social development.

The booming development of the domestic internet, China's accession to the WTO, and a series of new economic operating models, lifestyles, and changes in consumption attitudes have led to tremendous changes in all sectors across the country.

At the beginning of the year, Wang Guangrong stood on the booth at the Frankfurt Auto Parts Exhibition in Germany for the first time.

He stroked the electronic throttle valve that he had independently developed on the exhibition stand, and the international inquiries coming from all around him made his heart surge with excitement.

"How many generations of Bosch products can this ECU control module reach?" A question from a German engineer made Wang Guangrong realize the urgency of catching up in technology.

Upon returning to China, Wang Guangrong immediately formed a "technical task force".

He personally led a team to Japan three times for inspection and recruited Toyota engineers as consultants with high salaries.

In the R&D center laboratory, Wang Guangrong often argued with young engineers until the early hours of the morning over a single parameter.

The lights in the R&D center often went out all night, and Wang Guangrong and his technical team searched for a breakthrough through repeated failures.

They discovered that to overcome the technological bottleneck, they had to start with basic materials.

Therefore, Wang Guangrong invested in establishing a materials laboratory to specifically research new alloy materials that are resistant to high temperatures and corrosion.

(End of this chapter)