My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 506 I'm a Real Tycoon

However, it is clear that the real estate sector is driving the economy.

Someone once said that the enthusiasm of everyone in the 1980s for buying TVs, bicycles, and the like actually had a very significant meaning.

It was the nationwide consumption that supported the industrial manufacturing restructuring brought about by reform and opening up.

Commercial housing developers have taken this to the extreme.

To put it more directly, it means taking all the savings of urban residents to drive construction and all links in the real estate industry chain.

Jiangzhou is now at the forefront of the entire country.

Shangzhou is, after all, a prefecture-level city. The first wave consisted of a few eight-story tenement buildings, and the second wave now consists of two high-rise buildings and about ten tenement buildings, which is still a limited scale.

They learned from Shanghai, but haven't sold any yet. Locals in Shanghai look down on the houses in the electronics industrial park, so they can only sell them to the workers and technicians inside the industrial park after they're built.

Therefore, in this respect, it is not as good as Pingjing, which has at least sold two buildings of pre-sale apartments at Pingqi Foreign Trade Center.

But all of these combined don't compare to the scale of Animal Village, which has already completed and delivered two buildings, and subsequently sold more than ten high-rise buildings with thousands of units.

Unintentionally, Weidong's greatest achievement in 1985 was building a bunch of commercial housing projects in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangzhou, and Shangzhou, each of which was groundbreaking.

These days, you won't find developers this awesome.

Not only did they dare to build them, but they also built them in the most prestigious cities.

But if we look at it from another perspective, if it weren't for the mutual support between Wei Dong and his old leader, and if they had secretly done this in a small place, they might have been rejected by the local leaders or the province, just like what happened to You Qili.

Because he built in these locations, everyone knew he was on imperial orders to explore, so there was absolutely no risk involved!

As long as it wasn't put into one's own pocket.

What made Wei Dong realize the most was this: never assume that doing real estate means you have to make money.

Right now, what matters is status and reputation. Don't try to make money. Even just quietly keeping some garages or public shops is fine. Just don't convert them into cash and give others something to criticize you for.

So, this whole thing has really paid off.

In particular, Jiangzhou has followed Shangzhou in officially abolishing the welfare housing allocation system, encouraging all units in the city to learn from the zoo, and the city's real estate development corporation has also taken the lead in developing commercial housing through collective fundraising.

Without Wei Dong, this step would have taken at least two or three more years.

The annual welfare housing allocation system puts a lot of pressure on the government; now that it's being deregulated, things are much easier.

So he got a little carried away: "Two million square meters, that's tens of thousands of family homes. Weidong, if you develop this project along Airport Road, it will be of great significance to the urban development of Jiangzhou!"

Let Weidong know that he doesn't need to talk about his difficulties; people don't care. He just needs to overcome them.

"This is definitely a good idea. Shanghai is already building this expressway, it seems to run from the Santana car factory to the city center. I must visit it next time. The expressway will greatly shorten the distance. Places that used to seem far away can now be reached in minutes. Therefore, developing new urban areas along the expressway is more justifiable than expanding in other directions along the suburbs. This idea has been approved by experts..."

Actually, it was this fake expert who applauded, but the person who brought it up felt very comfortable.

The problem for Wei Dong is that he has never actually been to Jiangzhou!
He didn't know what Jiangzhou Airport was like, but at least he knew that Shanghai would have two airports in the future.

However, I vaguely know that the area along Jiangzhou Airport Road was indeed developed into a relatively high-end residential area in Jiangzhou, especially around the starting point where the road connects to the city center.

Civil servants in prefecture-level cities who had some savings would later buy houses in the provincial capital; he had heard people in the compound talk about this before.

"But note that the main reason why Shanghai built this foreign-related community is because they have a large number of foreigners and compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Do we have that in Jiangzhou? If not, who will we sell it to? If we haven't thought this through, it's better to just patch things up in the city center as a temporary solution."

At this point, Wei Dong took the opportunity to report on the Pudong development project: "It's almost the same as what you just said. On this side of the Huangpu River is the most prosperous metropolis in Shanghai, while on this side is a factory area and a muddy ditch. People here would never want to live on the other side. There's a saying among the people that they'd rather have a bed on the west side than a room on the east side. How do we solve this?"

Someone next to him nodded: "Building a bridge? Jiangzhou just started construction on a bridge last month... Look, it's right behind the back gate of Jiangda University, oh, it's near your factory."

That injection factory is basically vacated now. Chi Shiming wants to build commercial housing there. No wonder his application kept getting rejected; it turns out it clashed with this major project.

However, Wei Dong didn't change the subject: "Oh, I'll look into it later. The problem here in Shanghai is that it's very flat, extremely flat, so it's impossible to build a bridge. Ships can't pass under a bridge, and if we build an elevated bridge, we'd have to build very long approach bridges. So they used an underwater tunnel, which started construction at the end of the year before last and will take four or five years to complete. We'll only have a chance for major development once this tunnel solves the geographical separation problem. The airport has only just started construction, and the expressway is nowhere to be seen yet. We don't need to consider such a large-scale real estate development for now. Let's get the existing real estate projects sorted out first."

He didn't dare mention the four or five-year construction period. He couldn't wait until the tunnel was completed before starting to build a new commercial building. He planned to start construction in Pudong this year.

But clearly, the pressure on Shanghai comes from opening up to the outside world, while Jiangzhou's focus is on economic reform: "The existing western part of the city is being developed by the zoo, the northern part by the Municipal Real Estate Development Corporation, and the southern part by the Economic Development Zone, including yours. Only the eastern part is currently a blank slate. Develop it, and it will drive other projects." This surprised Wei Dongcai. Holy crap, am I that awesome?

I now own more than half of the real estate development in Jiangzhou, and if you add that, I'm in charge of most of it.

While firmly refusing in his heart, he began to skillfully feign nonchalance on his face: "Okay, okay, but at this stage, we need to consolidate the performance of the cosmetics factory's shampoo. Currently, the monthly output can reach 1.5 million bottles, but because we are sweeping across the national market, this capacity is far from enough. So we are now considering how to expand the scale of the cosmetics factory."

Previously, they invested nearly 10 million yuan in imports and almost faced accountability, but now they have suddenly turned the situation around and their annual output value can exceed 50 million yuan.

The city government, of course, fully supported the idea: "Then expand the factory area. What's the situation around it? Do we need to acquire other land parcels?"

Wei Dong quickly shook his head: "No need, no need. The cosmetics factory is surrounded by chemical plants and bus factories. It's a rather crowded area in the northern district. What I'm thinking about now is whether to move the cosmetics factory to our development zone. The factory size and production management would be much more convenient. The main thing is that I hope to bring more jobs."

Actually, he talked about that matter openly in the factory area.

The sanitary napkin factory was seeing that it might be developing towards automated production lines, but what would happen to the tens of thousands of workers who worked three shifts? Just then, the shampoo factory grew in scale, and if it were to expand into cosmetics production lines, it would need a large number of packaging workers, so they gradually shifted their jobs to the other side.

As it turns out, there are clever people everywhere: "That's right, I know the location of the cosmetics factory. It's near the most prosperous street in the northern district. If you move the cosmetics factory there, the land that's freed up can be used to build a commercial center. You can come and explore it. Last time you mentioned building a commercial center in the Economic Development Zone. The northern district needs one too."

To my surprise, Wei Dong's eyes lit up: "You have such foresight! During our exchange with Hong Kong businessmen in Shanghai, you mentioned wanting to develop large-scale supermarkets in Shanghai and Jiangzhou, like large-scale commercial supermarkets where people can browse inside, select their items, and pay at the cash register at the entrance..."

Honestly, everyone present was completely dumbfounded. Does such a business model even exist?

Even those who have occasionally gone abroad for research have mostly not yet investigated the supermarket sector.

Especially the kind of superstores that are several thousand square meters in size that are very common in later generations.

I've never seen a supermarket in China.

Wei Dong vaguely remembered that it was in the 1990s, when a French supermarket had just entered Jiangzhou. There were quite a few news reports of citizens secretly putting things in their pockets and then being caught on camera and detained.

When supermarkets were available in prefecture-level cities, that was postponed for several more years.

"At the time, Hong Kong businessmen wondered who could afford to buy most of the goods here, since most of them had to be imported from overseas. But I thought, why can't they all be domestic products? Most of the things sold in department stores can be transferred to supermarkets. This would be even more effective for the allocation and sale of our domestic products than industrial product trading centers..."

His intention was to emphasize that this new sales model might be able to resolve the current rigidity in the production and supply system.

But to everyone, it sounds rather confusing.

Since I've never seen a supermarket, it's hard to imagine a shopping mall where you can just grab whatever you want—wouldn't that be chaotic?

This further reinforced the stereotype: "Okay, you know how to do it, then you do it, the city will fully support you!"

Wei Dong accepted the order without much argument.

The main reason is that a lot of people smoke during meetings these days.

Wei Dong now requires that smoking is not allowed in meeting rooms, whether at the Xishan factory or his own company.

It's impossible to say now, but the fact that he's exposed to secondhand smoke is secondary; the real pain he feels taking care of the child is the lack of protection.

So the baby butterfly in the brooder pouch was kept lying on my chest and sleeping with its head down the whole time.

I finally breathed a long sigh of relief. What's the difference between this guy and the big tycoons in Hong Kong? They've all developed into super conglomerates.

Sanitary napkins, jeans, shampoo, and other similar products form the base, while cameras, computers, and vacuum-packed snacks are secondary items, because they don't deserve this scale unless they reach the millions or tens of millions of units.

That's what spurred the investment in real estate, and Hong Kong's billionaires probably have to look up to the total number of new projects launched in a single year.

Now, in addition to owning zoos and amusement parks, they also plan to venture into large shopping malls and commercial center real estate.

This scale is not uncommon in Hong Kong, and it would be quite impressive even if it were placed on the level of a future domestic business tycoon.

But even at this level, he still had a child on his chest as he left his office building in the city, got into his 60,000 yuan four-wheel drive minivan, and drove back to the office building.

They don't even have a home, let alone a mansion.

Wei Dong was even wondering if he was still a super-rich man.
(End of this chapter)