Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry.

"What are their conditions?" Ren Zhong asked after sorting out his thoughts for a while.

"It's a 50:50 joint venture. We will inject all the intellectual property rights of the products into the new company, specifically targeting the European market, but the car brand needs to be marked with the VW logo," said Staff Officer Ye.

"That's absolutely not possible." Ren Zhong immediately felt that there was no need to cooperate when he heard this condition. "If they want to swallow up our brand and inject intellectual property, then there is no need for cooperation at all. We can take off without their participation, it's just a matter of wasting some time. They can forget about losing their autonomy."

"This is totally inconsistent with our auto brand development strategy. We must continue to build our brand in the automotive sector and we cannot do anything that weakens our brand."

Staff Officer Ye didn't have much knowledge about this aspect. After all, they didn't have much experience with these things in their time, so he was still a little confused after listening.

"Hasn't Airbus, which we cooperated with Rolls-Royce, also given up on brand development? Why is it possible for passenger aircraft but not for cars? They said that if we change to the VW trademark, sales volume and sales price will be even better." Staff Officer Ye asked sincerely.

"There is nothing we can do about passenger aircraft. We need to obtain an airworthiness certificate, but cars do not require any special permits. Moreover, the customers are different. For passenger aircraft, they are all small group customers. Their inspection of a passenger aircraft product is completely different from that of ordinary customers buying a car. In this product, the influence of the brand plays a role, but it is not decisive.

Passenger aircraft require safety, reliability and economy. Only when these two are achieved can airlines really make money. Other factors are not important to airline customers. Flyers rarely care what aircraft they are flying on. Unless there is a major accident that makes people uncomfortable, they usually do not have much choice. "Ren Zhong explained.

"For us, a passenger aircraft is considered a bestseller if its sales are in the four figures, but for a car, if its sales are not in the seven figures, it is not considered a successful model. Therefore, the number of customers facing cars is countless times that of passenger aircraft, at least several orders of magnitude different. One is a consumer product, and the other is a production tool. These are two completely different fields."

Ren Zhong explained patiently for a while.

Staff Officer Ye seemed to understand what was said, but not quite.

He has not experienced the era of explosive commodity growth and has little understanding of the fierce competition in consumer goods, so his understanding of brands is very superficial.

Fortunately, Staff Officer Ye has one advantage, that is, when it comes to important matters, he will consult Ren Zhong's opinion first. If Ren Zhong says it is not possible, then it is definitely not possible.

Therefore, in the field of economic development led by Chief of Staff Ye, there has been no deviation in the general direction in recent years.

Whether it is industrial planning or technological focus, they are currently following the trend of the times.

"So are we just going to give up this cooperation?" said Staff Officer Ye.

"It's fine if they want to cooperate, but we have to renegotiate the terms with them. A 50:50 joint venture can be considered, but the intellectual property rights are not injected, but authorized to the joint venture company by charging patent fees. The brand cannot be changed, and brand building must be strengthened. We should not covet the VW brand's promotion of sales in the short term, but should consider making our own brand comparable to mass brands such as VW and FORD through long-term efforts. We should look at this from the long-term perspective of a century-old brand. The future world product competition is brand competition. Today's consumers are not very aware of brands because the current products are not rich enough. Now is an era of product shortages. So it seems that any brand's product, as long as the product strength is good enough, it will easily stand out and become a hit. But this golden age will soon pass. Perhaps in more than ten or twenty years, after the level of world industrial development has rapidly increased, we will enter an era of oversupply in many products. In this case, when users have many choices, the added value of the brand to the product will be reflected."

Ren Zhong went on to say that the tone of the cooperation was set.

Brand and intellectual property rights are the soul of the independent development of Dongda's automotive industry, and these two points must never be lost.

"These foreigners are really cunning. They look sincere and honest, but they are actually full of calculations." After listening to Ren Zhong's explanation, Staff Officer Ye gained a further understanding of the trap of this cooperation.

Don't be fooled by these well-dressed guys with blue eyes and red noses who seem like gentlemen. They are very good at setting traps and swindling people.

"Brother Ren, you'll have to look into this matter. Since we think the cooperation is possible, we should try our best to promote a win-win cooperation. Otherwise, it would be better not to cooperate." Staff Officer Ye felt that the trip to see Ren Zhong was not in vain.

“We do need to be wary of being deceived by foreigners in our external cooperation. In our business cooperation, the most important thing is to seize the initiative, especially for products where the technology is in our hands. We must ensure that the intellectual property rights and brands are firmly in our hands and not lose our autonomy due to interference from external forces. Even though our strength is weaker at this stage, we have huge room for growth in the domestic market. Give us time and we will develop sooner or later,” said Ren Zhong.

"Although our slogan is that technology has no borders, in actual operation, we must not give up what belongs to us, and what belongs to others must gradually become ours."

There are only so many resources in this world. If you don’t fight for them, do you expect others to feed you?
impossible things.

Even if another hundred years pass and you are too poor to have food to eat, no one will take the initiative to fill your bowl.

"Yes, that's right. Everything we have belongs to us, and others' can also become ours." Staff Officer Ye agreed. "By the way, the deal that Li Yunlong negotiated with the Athens Navy was about three ships being paid in installments, but without interest. In total, we have to pay tens of millions less in interest, and some people feel that this is a bit of a loss."

"I've looked at it. The initial gross profit margin of that business is about 66%. As our first large-scale foreign military trade, this is already very good. We can't expect to get rich overnight. Currently, foreign military trade is small-scale. On the one hand, we dare not take out cutting-edge large-scale equipment for takeaway. On the other hand, we have not yet opened up the market and have no international reputation."

"This order is to sell large equipment, which has a strong demonstration effect on the subsequent development of international markets. I think we must open up the market even if it means a small loss, not to mention that we are not losing money at all now."

"On the other hand, I think Lao Li's analysis is correct. The Athens Navy needs a small but elite naval squadron. Our Jianghai-class and Luhai-class ships can fill the gap in missile destroyers in the Mediterranean. The deterrent effect of their combat power is unquestionable. Once formed, it will put great pressure on neighboring opponents. I think it is very likely to trigger imitation and then start a new round of competition. We still have a second chance to sell it to them." Ren Zhong did not just see this opportunity.

"Once they use our stuff, to be honest, although our Jianghai-class is the third-tier in our East China University, its combat capability is not based on the old frigate-destroyer concept, but a brand-new over-the-horizon strike concept and a one-defense-two-anti-all-round type, air defense, anti-submarine and anti-ship! In the short term, I don't think the frigates and destroyers on the European side can catch up quickly. I'm afraid only the Rogue Eagle side can follow up, but their cost is much higher than ours."

"I think that within ten years, our Jianghai-class and Luhai-class destroyers will be top-notch in the Mediterranean. Ten years later, others may catch up, but by that time, we can sell the first generation of Luyang-class destroyers, and our Luhai-class and Luyang-class destroyers can be updated to the second or even third generation. The Jianghai-class destroyers will not be updated with new versions. Considering our sea borders and the role of the future navy, destroyers starting at 6000 tons will meet the needs of ocean-going operations, and 4000-ton destroyers may be the main force of future ocean-going operations, and the -ton class can be stopped."

“So selling the first generation of Jianghai-class and Luhai-class will not let the opponent feel our true strength. Although Athens Naval Manufacturing has certain strength, they have absolutely no possibility of successfully copying missiles and radar electronics, so the possibility of our technology being mastered by others is basically non-existent.

But it can increase the financial resources for our navy to build new ships. Selling 10 ships means we can add 5 more ships. If we miss this opportunity, we will be wasting our time."

"If that's the case, then we're relieved. Let the negotiation team turn this intention into an agreement as soon as possible." After listening to this, Staff Officer Ye nodded repeatedly.

No one has more say than Ren Zhong on the current technological development trends at Dongda University. Ren Zhong said that these two main battle equipment will soon become obsolete at Dongda University, so they must be replaced by new main battle equipment.

Actually, there is nothing wrong with this.

Currently, the Jianghai-class and Luhai-class radars are basically the initial versions of the first generation of sea-based radars. The Luyang-class has been updated to a new generation of sea-based radars. Both the transmitting and receiving modules have been upgraded, basically reaching 80% of the level of the first generation of top plate radars. Thanks to the improvement of computer computing power, they have begun to have preliminary three-coordinate positioning functions.

The air detection range is 150 kilometers, and it can detect air fighter targets 150 kilometers away. The sea detection range is 30 kilometers, which is almost the strongest among the sea-based radars at this stage.

However, with the successful development of the Z-100 helicopter, after installing the ship-borne helicopter early warning radar, the ship's target detection distance is as far as about kilometers. Both the Jianghai and Luhai classes have a landing pad for ship-borne helicopters, and the Luhai and Luyang classes are even designed with a parking hangar, which can be fully loaded with two ship-borne helicopters to take off alternately for radar warning when necessary.

For destroyers, this is a key step in extending firepower and precision strikes. The current Dongda anti-ship missiles support radar guidance.

Of course, the old models sold to the Athens Navy obviously do not have these functions, and will not be equipped with ship-borne helicopters.

"Although the displacement of our new generation of navy battleships, Luyang-class II and Luhai-class II, has not increased much, their technological content will increase greatly. The most important change is the breakthrough in our personal computers. In the future, the computers of the new generation of battleships will all be replaced with transistor computers and directly adopt the new generation of integrated circuit computers. Not only will the computing speed be greatly increased, but the space occupied on the ship will also be greatly reduced, providing more living space for the crew on the ship."

"At the same time, the automation of our weapons will be greatly improved, and computer-assisted aiming and control equipment will be more handy. The number of operators required on our ships will be further reduced, and we will be able to make the lives of the crew better, thus making the sustainable combat capability of the ships stronger."

Ren Zhong said, "We make money from arms trade to develop a new generation of ships. This is a very positive cycle. We have no reason to refuse."

With the intentions of these two people, the military trade negotiations for the Athens Navy to introduce ships have entered the fast lane.

As Li Yunlong analyzed, after comparing the performance indicators of the Jianghai-class and Luhai-class destroyers with those of the surrounding navies, the Athens Navy confirmed that it was unique and could not resist the temptation to lead the Mediterranean Navy.

Although the budget was a bit tight, under the relaxed payment conditions of ten-year installments, the Athens Navy tried its best to fight for the budget in the cabinet. Even though they had a few quarrels, they did not change their original intention. Finally, they got the budget as they wished and secretly signed a military trade agreement with the University of Tokyo to introduce three destroyers.

At this time, Lao Li had ended his global voyage and returned to Southeast University. Although he did not continue to participate in the negotiations, the news of the final signing of the agreement reached Lao Li's ears.

Old Li was still very happy and took Kong Erlengzi to Ren Zhong's house to celebrate a little.

Unfortunately, Ding Wei was not in the country at that time. As the leader of the new generation of food giants, Ding Wei now looks like an international tycoon. He often appears between Asia, Africa and Europe, running around for food.

There are more and more plantations now. With the hybrid technology from Dongda, the fertile land of Heifei and Dongda's complete set of agricultural mechanization products, Ding Wei is getting closer and closer to his original goal of 100 million mu.

Of course, EIC has not made back its investment until now, but seeing that its achievements have benefited nearly hundreds of millions of people, Ding Wei has fallen deeply in love with this industry and has completely forgotten that he used to be a wise and capable general!

He traveled around, either negotiating with locals for arable land or conducting international commercial negotiations for the sale of grain from plantations.

Although most of the grain is consumed by Darfu, the plantations do not only grow grain, but also include non-grain varieties such as sesame, cotton, and soybeans. EIC has embarked on a diversified development path and started new side businesses such as oil pressing, feed, and food processing.

In the future, plantations will form an integrated planting and breeding model and begin to evolve into the second generation of plantations!
After all, it is difficult to make back the investment simply by selling grain, but after deep processing, it is a whole new world! (End of this chapter)