Cui Bingbing hesitated to speak. It might not necessarily be Liu Jun taking advantage of Qian Hongming – the two would be mutually beneficial. But she was too risk-conscious from working at the bank and always dared not touch Qian Hongming’s business, so she secretly swallowed her words and didn’t mention it.
Liu Jun was also half-reluctant and half-willing. He had many grievances in his heart – couldn’t he beat inflation on his own? How could he always want to depend on Hongming like Jia Li? Fortunately, there were plenty of inflation-beating treasures on the market now. Liu Jun only needed to spend an hour browsing subscribed economic news to roughly form a blueprint for fighting inflation. Since the state was currently caught between exports and inflation, with no good options and couldn’t suppress inflation, the working people could only rely on themselves without waiting or depending on others.
Liu Jun thought about expanding Tengda’s land. Others speculated on houses? Speculating on houses that real estate developers had wrung dry of profits before spitting them out? Then, since he had the means, he would directly buy land for storage. But the reality shocked Liu Jun greatly. Standing at Tengda company’s highest point and looking left, right, front, and back, two years ago, this place was still green rice fields, but now it was either houses or slag – in just two years, this land had undergone earth-shaking changes. Everywhere he looked, he couldn’t see a single intact piece of green land. Liu Jun had nowhere to expand his Tengda.
Not to mention other places, just looking at this area, suddenly so many factories had sprung up, including Liu Jun’s factory, running at full capacity with zero inventory. This market was really like a sponge, actually able to absorb so much densely emerging production capacity – truly incomprehensible. Anyone who doubted GDP being too high only needed to step out of their study and see with their own eyes to understand. Liu Jun suspected this year’s GDP was even higher than the government’s published figures. Just as everyone suspected the government of understating CPI, Liu Jun suspected the government also understated GDP, deceiving themselves.
After Tengda’s middle shift finished handing over to the early shift, Liu Jun deliberately walked around the factory area, carefully driving his Porsche around in circles. He found that those lands already filled with slag had owners – either surrounded by walls or marked with signs indicating they belonged to such-and-such company. For those without obvious markings, Liu Jun took a pen to note them down, planning to ask the investment promotion authorities later. Driving to a village area, the Porsche’s chassis couldn’t handle the low-grade rural roads, so he had to park and walk.
Having grown up in the city, Liu Jun had a peculiar curiosity about rural areas. Although this trip wasn’t to visit the countryside, since he was here, he might as well go in and look around. Coastal rural areas were no longer pure concrete buildings with little design were everywhere. Liu Jun had expected to see stone pathways like those near Aunt Fu’s house, but unexpectedly, the pathways here had long been paved with smooth concrete and drainage ditches dug. At the end of the concrete was a small monument indicating this was a model socialist new village. He had to admit that although Jiangnan’s rural flavor had greatly diminished, for locals, life was much more convenient.
What greatly surprised Liu Jun were the wisps of thick smoke he encountered along the way. Of course, this was no longer the poetic rising cooking smoke, but several women he saw tending coal-burning stoves. Yes, exactly the coal ball stoves he remembered seeing only when very young. His family’s economic conditions had always been good – in his memory, they had always used gas stoves, while many neighbors still used coal balls or coal cake stoves, carrying them out to light every evening after work. He couldn’t be wrong – the worse a family’s economic conditions, the later they abandoned coal-burning stoves.
Liu Jun hadn’t expected rural areas to still use coal-burning stoves so commonly. Logically, local rural economic conditions weren’t bad – look at the many beautiful two or three-story buildings behind those coal ball stoves. The owners were not just migrant workers living in run-down old houses. But weren’t coal-burning stoves dirty and troublesome? How could they bear to use coal-burning stoves in good houses? Liu Jun couldn’t understand and returned to his car through the thick smoke, thinking that although rural areas were prosperous, their lifestyle was still somewhat different from city people.
But when he passed Tengda on his way back, he saw a crowd gathered at the entrance, apparently making a commotion. Liu Jun stopped his car from afar and called to ask the facility manager what had happened. It turned out that a family member of a middle-shift employee had come to the door, seeking company leadership to complain about a modern Chen Shimei. Security personnel told Qin Xianglian to go home and resolve it herself, but she insisted on finding leadership to report the problem, hoping the organization would intervene, thus creating the current scene. Liu Jun started his car and left upon hearing this. Initially, when there was only Tengfei, employee family members would also come directly to his office to cause trouble, for all kinds of reasons: marital relations, supporting elderly parents, neighborhood disputes. When agitated, the aggrieved parties would even grab chairs and throw them at Liu Jun. But as a private enterprise owner, he was neither a judicial institution nor a criminal organization – where did he get the authority to manage others’ domestic affairs? After his office and guard reception room were smashed several times, he established a rule that all domestic matters were refused at the door – the company would not handle them.
But both factories had too many young employees who usually spent little energy watching automated machine tools during work, and most employees capable of independently operating machining centers had high salaries, so what they did after work was unpredictable. Liu Jun’s response strategy was: anyone breaking the law would be fired immediately. Those whose partying affected their energy for work the next day would be sent home, counted as one day of absence. All employees were treated equally.
Although company regulations were strict, Liu Jun could now enforce them strictly without staging the tragedy of tearfully executing Ma Su just because he had to fire a key employee. Because he had consistently focused on employee training over the years, methodically and systematically training employees, so when the A-team had problems, the B-team and C-team could easily substitute. No one was irreplaceable anymore, and everyone had to maintain competitive tension in their hearts. In recent years, although many other companies had come to poach from Tengfei and Tengda, the current Tengfei and Tengda were not easily shaken.
What most tested factory management was that set of long-term personnel training strategies. Supporting this required a complete and generous salary and benefits package – otherwise, you’d train one and lose one. These two points sounded easy but were difficult to implement, ultimately testing the boss’s financial strength. Liu Jun could finally roughly achieve this now, and his massive past investments in training were finally beginning to pay off.
When Liu Jun arrived at the airport, another call came from Tengda. The “Qin Xianglian,” seeing that no management personnel came out after making a fuss for so long, smashed the security office’s large glass window and left. The company had already notified the employee involved that glass repair costs would be deducted from that month’s salary. Liu Jun laughed it off. If he hadn’t happened to encounter this and inquired about it, Tengda would probably have handled it according to regulations without necessarily informing him of such a minor matter. Such things were now just small matters.
The big matter was Liu Jun picking up Luo Qing, who had just gotten off a plane, and the two discussing content for tomorrow’s mid-year production planning meeting. Recently, both were very busy – one flying all over the country, the other flying around the world. It was rare to get together, and they’d have to part ways again the day after tomorrow, so their meeting time was even more precious. But Liu Jun saw Luo Qing focused on his phone, walking out with eyes straight ahead, not even noticing his boss waiting outside. Liu Jun curiously went over to see what text message was so important that Luo Qing had been looking at it for so long. Looking, it turned out to be stock information. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, snatching Luo Qing’s phone: “I want to kill someone every time I see stocks now. Even Engineer Liao, who’s so focused on work, secretly visits stock websites during work hours. When scheduling factory shifts, everyone avoids day shifts for fear of affecting daytime stock trading. Even you’ve become a crazy stock investor. Universal stock speculation – do you think this is normal?”
“Boss, calm down. Let me see the last line. You know I never delay work – it’s just entertainment when I’m bored on the road.”
Liu Jun handed back the phone: “What stocks did you buy? How are the returns?”
“Thank you, boss. Actually, how do I have time to trade stocks? Our schedule is too irregular. I bought some funds, letting professionals worry for me. The returns are very good. My wife and her colleagues at the government office are the ones trading seriously – basically from 9:30 AM to 3 PM, they have no mind for work, all hunched over computers watching trends.” Luo Qing multitasked, scanning the information at ten lines per glance, then quickly closed his phone. “The market is so good it’s unbelievable. I don’t know where all the money comes from to drive stocks so high. I thought 4,000 points should be the peak, but turns out there’s no highest, only higher. Just like our current sales volume. Already so high, yet you can still feel strong momentum behind it.”
“I was just planning to discuss this problem with you. Theoretically, we really shouldn’t believe demand would suddenly expand. Today, when our company’s production capacity has multiplied, our equipment runs three shifts around the clock and still can’t keep up. But rationally analyzing the current market, the problem is that such a large actual demand exists. I intercepted you midway today so we could analyze together before tomorrow’s meeting. I have twenty randomly selected contracts from the first half of this year. Let’s sit down and calmly analyze whether the other parties to these contracts will have follow-up demand and what their reasons would be. We can’t make decisions based on impressions – we must make scientific probability analyses.”
Luo Qing immediately knew this wouldn’t finish before midnight and wanted to call his wife to ask for leave. But Liu Jun laughed: “Don’t call. Tonight, your wife and mine, plus Sister Liang and several familiar wealthy ladies, have all dumped their kids at the Song house for Mr. Song to watch while they go out to eat, bar-hop, and spa. Let’s also find a restaurant to eat and talk while eating.”
Luo Qing laughed in shock: “They should indeed relax well. These days, actually let the R&D center people off the hook, too, boss. They’ve suffered so many days – now let them unwind and trade stocks.”
“Don’t mention stocks to me. Speaking of which, I admire our R&D center brothers. F-1 just left our hands, and Engineer Sun is already leading everyone to voluntarily start researching other problems with servo motors encountered during F-1 development. They plan to use this as an opportunity to improve the entire B-series products, converting everything from hydraulic to motor drive. I promised them that if they have ideas, they can first operate on one of Tengda’s punch presses. Strive to completely slim down B-series products by two to three times by the end of next year, with precision improved at least tenfold.”
“Impressive. But boss, do you know what it means when the new B-series comes out?”
Liu Jun smiled: “Oh, hopefully there won’t be a directive to nationalize my entire R&D center. I need to take it easy and still avoid touching that bottom line currently reserved for state-owned enterprises. Avoid certain products. Recently, crude oil has risen sharply – the curve is as steep as our Chinese A-shares. I discussed with Sister Liang that although domestic refined oil prices are still being suppressed without much adjustment, international prices all follow market rates, and international freight prices are soaring. I felt it in several recent export deals – freight costs change every time, always doubling. Sister Liang says if freight continues rising like this, our country’s export price advantage to Europe and America will be greatly weakened, especially for heavy electromechanical products. When shipping plus product prices reach a certain level, America will first turn to Mexico for processors, and Europe will turn to Eastern Europe. I’m wondering if this will weaken some of our clients’ sales – how many of our clients have final products going to exports?”
“You won’t let me talk about stocks, but I’ll mention stocks anyway. Our market right now is similar to the stock market – everyone knows being this high is dangerous, but watching stock indices continue upward, would you dare to miss this opportunity to make money riding the wave? If I don’t buy, others will. The market capacity is so large that it won’t care about one person’s exit – plenty of people want to join. How dare we exit the market conservatively? If we hand over mature clients to other companies, it’ll cost us dearly to win them back later. I believe markets have self-regulating ability. If they reach saturation, they’ll slow down themselves, with demand growth gradually approaching zero. After all, our industry is relatively far from speculators – those dramatic ups and downs shouldn’t appear here. But this current growth curve doesn’t look like it’s approaching saturation, no matter how you see it. So what I plan to say at tomorrow’s meeting is that we must, at a minimum, satisfy existing clients’ demands. This is the minimum, most conservative approach – already very conservative.”
“That’s right. This is the conclusion I reached after consulting many experienced people. What you said is still the most conservative. Looks like I’ll have to invest hugely to break through current production bottlenecks. Tonight, let’s look at these twenty contracts one last time. If we still get the same result after reviewing them, tomorrow, Tengda’s second phase will start building a heat treatment plant. Heat treatment has been the real bottleneck lately.”
The two arrived at a restaurant with a very quiet, spacious dining environment – and of course, very frightening prices. Liu Jun handed Luo Qing a set of documents as soon as he got out of the car, clearly prepared to start talking during the meal. Luo Qing was already used to this – this habit was his creation. When he first joined Tengfei, he was especially busy and didn’t understand many things, so he could only grab the boss during meals to get clarity. Over time, if the two didn’t discuss business when dining alone, that would be very abnormal.
They sat down, ordered food, and began eating. They hadn’t eaten long when the waiter brought the restaurant’s signature dishes – thick soup, elephant trunk, and sliced fatty goose liver with garnish – saying a gentleman had sent them. The two couldn’t help looking around, but didn’t see anyone familiar, extremely curious. Luo Qing even joked with the waiter, asking whether it was a man or a woman who sent it, and if it was a woman, which of them she admired – this was a very important question.
But the answer was soon revealed. A middle-aged man came over, handed over his business card – he was the boss of a trading company. This person spent a long time bowing and scraping to build rapport, saying many nice things, finally asking Liu Jun to help smooth things over with Qian Hongming to let him delay repayment by one month. Then he gave many very objective and very pitiful reasons, saying everyone knew Boss Liu was Boss Qian’s good friend, begging Boss Liu to help, promising generous thanks if successful.
Liu Jun finally managed to send away this boss who clung and wouldn’t leave. Luo Qing said, puzzledly: “Are people so sincere about repaying money now? Shouldn’t it be Boss Qian chasing this gentleman’s friends, hoping friends would help make this gentleman repay quickly?”
Liu Jun had infinitely more borrowing experience than Luo Qing. Luo Qing only heard hearsay while he had personal experience. So after brief consideration, he understood the situation: “Looks like Hongming has considerable influence now. Let’s not discuss it and continue.”
Luo Qing was familiar and unrestrained with Liu Jun, couldn’t help saying: “Can’t tell – Boss Qian doesn’t seem like someone with very rough connections.”
“Each industry is a mold. People entering this industry are essentially placed in this mold to be shaped. The industry professionals who finally emerge are all roughly the same – the difficulty is how to preserve the final one or two-tenths of self.” Liu Jun looked toward where the middle-aged man had left, his thoughts churning. After thinking for a long while, he took out his phone to send Qian Hongming a text, telling him his recent schedule and making an appointment for three hours of detailed discussion.