My Lord, you need to stand up!

Chapter 968 On the Value of Classmates

Wei Dong certainly couldn't imagine what kind of sparks would fly between Wu Shengyun and Xiong Guoming at this moment.

He's working as a teacher.

Even the smallest sanatorium has a basketball court these days.

So Wei Dong stayed on the mountain for a month or so, playing basketball, fishing, enjoying the scenery, talking, and holding meetings every day.

They were living a carefree and leisurely life.

The others, who have been detained on the mountain for so long, are actually able to go out for walks, visit the local market, or even work in the fields.

Of course, he was accompanied by bodyguards when he went out.

Making long-distance calls is impossible; there aren't any in the surrounding mountains and villages.

Writing and receiving letters is even less practical, mainly because of the fear of disappearances or suicides.

Engineers and technicians couldn't even go down the mountain to the shipyard. They gathered together every day to discuss the technical points of building container ships. Shanghai Shipyard provided popular science introductions to everyone, and then they discussed the project preparation for section shipbuilding together. They first worked behind closed doors to figure out the whole thing.

I also watched the factory leaders attend a restructuring training course.

Factory leaders who can become directors of factories with tens of thousands of employees are at the division commander level, in terms of headcount.

Rang Weidong was right; these were all-around executives who had to be able to balance everything from managing the daily lives of tens of thousands of people, to controlling the situation and managing finances.

Whether it's good or bad, you can tell by spending time together day and night.

In particular, Wei Dong was asked to use the Xiajiang Factory, a third-line factory for self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, as a case study for its restructuring.

They thoroughly investigated the factory leaders, numbering around twenty, and identified them completely.

Since everything is already tied up here, Wei Dong might as well teach everyone how to restructure it step by step.

First, list out all the information about the Xiajiang Factory and send it to everyone so they can each consider what to do.

Some things, when they come crashing down on you, can be devastating.

But after voluntarily confessing or repeatedly sorting out the details, instead of being dragged away immediately, they slowly hardened their hearts and thought, "When a person dies, the bird flies to the sky; I still have to live my life."

Attention has begun to focus on the company again, as is their habit.

Moreover, it's a completely unrelated factory, like doing practice problems, a brand new field, with someone to teach you step by step, and "classmates" with the same conditions.

When you have a completely different experience than before, it's easy to get fully engaged.

This process is actually similar to the quenching and forging process in steelmaking to remove impurities.

The factory leaders of Xiajiang Plant were not qualified to participate.

At most, you're just here to give an introduction, so please don't disturb our high-level cadre training class at the Investment Promotion Bureau.

Hearing this assessment, everyone felt a little more at ease and cherished the learning opportunity even more eagerly.

This psychological change is quite subtle.

People in their forties and fifties feel like they've lived their lives all over again, just like young people.

Playing basketball with Rang Weidong and his group of guards and drivers was especially exciting.

In a few days, we'll take everyone to the Xiajiang Factory by car.

Let Weidong go with them to carefully inspect the factory, equipment, inventory, technical strength, and employee situation.

After visiting all the air-raid shelters, dormitories, small docks, and small train stations hidden in the mountains, we came back and held a meeting to discuss them.

In a couple of days, I will take you by hydrofoil to the upstream of Jiangzhou to inspect the long excavator plant in southern Sichuan that the Xiajiang plant director mentioned before.

This is indeed one of only two or three manufacturers in China with the capability to produce hydraulic excavators.

This leading company, which also belongs to the third-tier factories, is quite good. It has seized the opportunity of the recent housing reform to expand its construction and has also participated in the auto expo more than 200 kilometers away, where it showcased its excavators.

The sample excavator was unloaded from the ship at the factory area on the banks of the Yangtze River, or rather, at Wei Dong's small dock.

Therefore, they sold several excavators for the mountain-moving operation at the south end of the Jiangzhou Yangtze River Bridge, showing great enthusiasm for their major clients.

They showcased their various tracked excavators and cranes.

The non-hydraulic type is the kind of machine that many children drew in the 70s and 80s. It uses a lot of steel cables to pull the bucket, and a winch pulls the steel cables to achieve pitching and digging.

Hydraulics, however, was a technical standard that was only finalized in the late 1970s.

Wei Dong was well aware that the durability of the equipment was inferior to that of international brands, but if he did not support this kind of state-owned equipment, there would be no future for development.

Therefore, the urban construction company that had received "bank investment" was required to place an order for another ten or twenty units, and at the same time, to train maintenance personnel for the infrastructure team to ensure the supply of spare parts.

The experienced shipyard leaders could all see that the Xiajiang Shipyard had made solid progress in professionalism.

It's absolutely not something you can achieve by simply modifying a tank chassis and creating a product that can compete with similar products.

Comparing this hydrofoil developed by Boeing in the 1970s, it feels like the technological level of the entire industry in the 1970s and 80s had risen to a level that was no longer something that could be achieved by starting from scratch and tinkering.

Going back to the old approach of seemingly arduous self-developed research and development, which is actually just a charade with no market competitiveness, might fool the authorities, but it won't fool the market.

Wei Dong was told to abandon his previous assumptions that Xiajiang Factory should produce excavators and construction machinery.

After enjoying local delicacies and specialties, upon returning to Jiangzhou, they visited the bustling Yishan construction project and even went to the more crowded North District commercial center to learn about modern real estate projects.

Finally, they returned to the mountain to continue the meeting and discussions. They basically dissected the factory completely.

It seems that the company actively shifted from military to civilian production starting with the reform, reaching more than two million by the end of the 1970s, and by 1985, its annual output value had exceeded ninety million.

It's just like when Wei Dong discussed the details of industrial product sales with the Jiangzhou municipal government back then. Behind the impressive data, a little closer look at the accounts reveals the problems.

A factory with more than 10,000 employees has an annual output value of more than 90 million yuan, averaging several thousand yuan per person.
People in the countryside can achieve this level of skill when twisting straw ropes or weaving reed mats.

Not to mention profits.

A closer analysis reveals that in the years since the restructuring, the company has not produced any flagship products and has instead focused on taking on small, unsold orders, developing and producing thousands of different manufacturing collaboration products.

The process resulted in a mountain of scrapped test products.

This kind of waste was commonplace for state-owned factories, and they didn't care at all.

It is understandable to pay a price for innovation and research, but it is unreasonable to waste research and development, and to produce something that is completely inferior to similar products internationally or even domestically.

This kind of research and development is simply toxic.

For each new project, they would build a workshop and a factory; if the market didn't accept it, they would switch to developing a new product.

Add water if there's too much flour, add flour if there's too much water.

With more and more equipment, the entire factory area is getting bigger and bigger...

The shipyard managers were shocked by what they saw!
The reform expert felt utterly helpless.

It seems that, by chance, we all stumbled upon a stubborn problem that combined all the problems of third-line factories and state-owned factories.

It is also a condensed portrayal of the entire Third Front construction project.

Given the situation and assessments at the time, launching the Third Front project was certainly not a problem.

However, there are both advantages and disadvantages, and here we will focus on all the disadvantages.

More than 20 factory leaders worked with Rang Weidong to write a computer-generated PowerPoint presentation of the Xiajiang Factory restructuring investigation report.

The document vividly presents the entire factory's current state with both text and images, detailing its problems, challenges, and predicaments, and estimating its massive insolvency.

The final suggestions were also very detailed.

Alternatively, the entire factory could be broken up and relocated to other units;
Either it's bankruptcy liquidation, and then we'll see if there's a chance for a phoenix-like rebirth;
If the factory continues operating like this, it will only become an ever-growing black hole.

It even included a detailed feasibility report suggesting that the factory could develop into an auto parts manufacturer, but that it needed to comprehensively strengthen its quality control and inspection system.

All the factory leaders followed behind Rang Weidong to sign the documents and submit them to the Fifth Ministry of Machinery Industry.

That's when you can say you've completed the training.

Based on the problems found in each factory, some people were actually on the verge of being prosecuted in this day and age, but the standards for ten or twenty years later would not be considered very serious.

Back then, even if you wanted to have economic problems, there weren't many; everyone was dirt poor.

They spoke with Wei Dong individually, stating frankly that it was the "private enterprise" nature of the company that saved them. They could resign or transfer to Pengzhen West District to serve as the factory leader of a new factory, which would be much smaller in scale, but they would see if there was any possibility of starting a second business and rebuilding it into a factory with 10,000 employees.

Their income and benefits are actually higher.

The mere fact that it wasn't announced to the public was enough to make these people extremely grateful, at least giving them the face to go back and "transfer" their families.

The leadership teams of two factories and the entire leadership team of the Shanghai Dodge Motors General Factory were swapped.

This indicates a deviation in the overall atmosphere or development direction of the factory, requiring a comprehensive overhaul.

Then all the factories added bidding and investment bureau reform offices, and a group of young people selected from automobile factories and Dongsheng Trading took on the role of assistants to the factory leaders.

In addition to coordinating work, they also serve as firefighters who can fill in at any time.

The key point is that three of these factory leaders are technical leaders at the chief engineer level, who, together with a dozen or twenty engineers and technicians who stayed for a month or so, formed the Changjiang Heavy Industry Technical Committee.

This is the core of the future of Changjiang Shipping Heavy Industry.

The seven factories of Changjiang Shipbuilding Heavy Industry were all formerly under the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, so they were all in single-line contact with each other, and their superiors were all in the Sixth Ministry of Machinery Industry in Beijing.

If it were separated and made into a second-level group under the bidding bureau, wouldn't that mean there would be a Changjiang Shipping Heavy Industry Group?

Wei Dong is definitely holding the position of chairman of the group concurrently.

But this behemoth, whose assets were initially estimated to be around 10 billion, turned out to be over 20 billion after liquidation.

Especially considering that this does not include the land price of each factory, one can imagine how large the shipyard's land area is.

It consists of only twelve slipways, two dry docks, a floating dock, a 100-ton gantry crane, a steel processing line, a processing plant, real estate, and so on.

Anyway, Xiong Guoming looked at it with great interest and suggested, "Why don't we package this up and list it on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange?"
Only Lao Fang knew that after China Merchants Bank established operations in Hong Kong, it would allow Wei Dong to invest a guaranteed amount of money in "wealth management" projects.

Even Lao Wang believed that the chairman could bring in funds from Hong Kong.

Therefore, Xiong Guoming, as the head of the insurance company, still felt that this source of funds was not secure. He thought that as long as he listed the assets worth tens of billions of yuan, the money would flow in.

Because he didn't accompany Wei Dong to Shanghai to investigate along the Yangtze River, he stayed in Hong Kong to seriously investigate Asia Television, Wing On Bank, CUHK, and even went further along this line to investigate the Heinz Group and the De family.

When he returned to Shenzhen to report for duty, he had already recruited three professional managers from Hong Kong.

Then, by taking them along to participate in the restructuring of Changjiang Shipping Heavy Industry, this conclusion was naturally reached.

This marked the beginning of a golden path in finance!
(End of this chapter)