Jiali’s due date approached, so Qian Hongming reduced his business trips. However, he had grown accustomed to a life of constant travel, and after staying home for three days, he began to feel restless. Early Sunday morning, he called Liu Jun, arranging to play tennis together. Learning that Liu Jun had already scheduled a meeting with industrial zone investment officials, Qian Hongming dropped his tennis racket and hurried over to Liu Jun’s house to join him.
Yang Li had been sick from drinking all night. She woke up early in the morning, vaguely remembering that she had driven home. She went downstairs to look for her car and indeed found it parked in the middle of the curved road, bearing several footprints from car owners whose way had been blocked. Following the trail of her memories, Yang Li recalled even more – yesterday seemed to have involved romantic scenery, strong arms, and a solid chest. Whenever Yang Li got drunk, the next day always included an important task: searching the entire residential complex for her car, which she had parked somewhere unknown the night before. But this time was different – she had to rack her brains trying to remember whether she had been intimate with someone, and who that man might have been. Yet she could see that her clothes were intact.
Yang Li wasn’t certain and thought she might have been dreaming. She slowly walked back to the elevator, and seeing the elevator buttons brought back a familiar scene – she remembered wanting very much to embrace that person, and she had acted on that impulse. Who was it? It should have been whoever helped her get home. Could it have been the security guard? When the elevator reached the floor, Yang Li stepped out and looked up to see Liu Jun and Qian Hongming standing before her. Qian Hongming greeted her first, but Yang Li was looking at Liu Jun, her face instantly burning red. It was him!
Qian Hongming, sharp-eyed, asked, “What’s going on?”
“Yesterday, Miss Yang was drunk and may have mistaken me for someone else. Miss Yang, we’re going out to handle some business. See you later.”
Yang Li blushed crimson with embarrassment, repeatedly saying “goodbye” before rushing back into her own home. Qian Hongming looked at her, but Liu Jun dragged him into the elevator.
“You two…?”
“Don’t make wild guesses. I did a good deed, and ended up being taken advantage of by her while she was drunk. Don’t laugh like that, please – I’m not the type to take advantage of people.”
“Yes, yes, yes, plenty are throwing themselves at you – where would you need to actively take advantage? Have you considered her feelings?”
“I don’t like her. Hey, are foreign investments really that popular? When I contacted them, they said they don’t work on Sundays, but as soon as I mentioned I was a foreign investor, they immediately changed their tune.”
“Remember last year’s financial crisis that swept across Asia? Many Asian countries suffered losses precisely because of insufficient foreign exchange reserves. Our country’s ability to help Hong Kong resist that crisis was reportedly related to our foreign exchange reserves. So now there’s even more emphasis on attracting investment, and local officials all have quotas for bringing in foreign capital. Our exports are also highly valued – after the crisis, bank lending became much more favorable.”
“No wonder you’re taking this opportunity to go independent.”
“I’m hesitating. After I submitted my resignation, the boss called me for a talk and offered extremely generous terms – letting me independently establish a development zone branch company with basically independent financial accounting, remitting a certain percentage of profits, but with letters of credit guaranteed by the company. Everything else is so-so, but that last point is the most crucial. You know, if I resigned and established a private company, going to banks for letters of credit would require very high guarantee deposits. But our company is different – banks court our company to open letters of credit, whichever bank promises the lowest guarantee deposit percentage gets our business…”
“Oh, your company is a major financing client, so banks favor it.”
“It’s not just that reason. It’s also because our company is a state enterprise under the Municipal Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Commission, and banks show considerable preference to state enterprises. After the boss made this offer, I’m somewhat reluctant to leave. I negotiated extensively with the boss, taking all the flexible rights I could have by resigning and starting my own company, and bargaining with him to authorize them to the branch company. The boss surprisingly agreed to many conditions, beyond my imagination. But the boss’s conditions were also harsh – the annual import-export total he set for the branch company is almost three times my department’s total this year. He said otherwise, he’d have trouble explaining to the other department managers why he was treating me so favorably – he couldn’t maintain balance.”
“Three times? That’s a great leap forward. Are you worried about not meeting it?”
Qian Hongming hesitated before saying, “I’m not afraid of not meeting it – where there’s a will, there’s a way. But I can’t agree too readily, or the boss will think it’s too easy for me, and next year he’ll use other managers to pressure me and raise the business volume again.”
“But three times, not twice – isn’t this leap too big?”
“People run faster under pressure. Besides, I used to spend enormous time and energy on my parents, but now that’s gone, I can focus wholeheartedly on business.”
“But you’re about to become a father. Upgrading to daddy isn’t easy.”
“Haven’t I already had Jiali quit her job? Plus, my mother-in-law is helping.”
“Work hard, you can do it. I’m also starting my entrepreneurial journey today – should we compete?”
Qian Hongming smiled slightly, “I won’t compete with you. I’m directly getting on track with the company’s deep pockets backing me. You, opening a medium-sized factory, will have plenty of troubles ahead – it wouldn’t be a fair victory for me.”
“Since you’ve already decided not to resign, why are you still coming out with me to meet investment officials? It’s completely unrelated.”
“Understanding more doesn’t hurt. Understanding more rules means I can be more targeted when dealing with similar manufacturers in the future.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Liu Jun looked at Qian Hongming as if he were looking at a strange person, completely baffled.
After driving for over half an hour, they reached an industrial zone. Investment officials were already waiting in the office, immediately greeting them warmly with tea and small talk upon entry. Liu Jun began by asking his most pressing question – he had a German passport, but his funds had been converted to RMB when he returned to China six months ago, and previous remittances had also been converted to RMB without keeping receipts. Could he use RMB for capital contribution?
Liu Jun had asked this question at a national-level development zone and an established industrial zone, but the investment officials had looked troubled, saying that, according to regulations, registered capital must be foreign currency remitted from abroad. Unexpectedly, today’s investment official readily agreed there was no problem – he would coordinate with higher authorities, explaining the procedures in detail, clearly not speaking off the cuff. Then, the investment official produced documents one by one, explaining preferential policies to Liu Jun, solemnly guaranteeing that these were all preferential policies issued by the state to foreign enterprises, not local ad hoc policies, and all were direct tax exemptions, not tax refunds after one year. There would be no situations like some regions that promise everything when courting businesses but fail to deliver after entry.
If the investment official hadn’t mentioned this, Liu Jun wouldn’t have known that some regions had such malicious practices of “inviting guests in, then closing the door to beat the dog.” Even Qian Hongming had never heard of such things. Liu Jun listened to the introduction while casually taking notes. Previously, when he visited the other two locations, his purpose wasn’t clear – he was just getting a general understanding. This time was different – based on his research of materials from the previous two development zones, he asked very targeted questions. What he wanted, besides data, was still data. No matter how eloquently the investment official spoke, he considered everything else secondary. This was his working style – he always relied solely on data. This made it hard on the investment official, who was encountering such a demanding foreign investor for the first time.
Qian Hongming didn’t speak much, only interjecting to smooth things over when he saw the investment official looking embarrassed. Although Qian Hongming didn’t take notes, he listened carefully and calculated silently. He discovered that foreign enterprises had many preferential treatments, so many that it made people envious. Previously, he only knew that foreign enterprises had “two years tax-free, three years half-tax” benefits, but today he learned that besides this, there were many other miscellaneous preferential benefits, all of them substantial and practical.
At lunch, treating the investment official to a meal, it was finally Qian Hongming’s turn to find topics of conversation. Qian Hongming knew many people and discovered that he and the investment official knew several people in common. So the conversation turned to the administrative team of the county and townships where the industrial zone was located. Liu Jun completely didn’t understand this, only listening dumbfoundedly as Qian Hongming enthusiastically gossiped about personnel matters with the official, who had prospects for further promotion, who was underappreciated and preparing to seek other paths, whose political career seemed to be ending here, and so on. Liu Jun thought, was this also what Qian Hongming meant by “understanding more doesn’t hurt”? But he didn’t see where the benefit was.
After lunch, they each returned home. As soon as Qian Hongming got in the car, he said, “This place can be considered among the top three candidates.”
“Why?”
“Because of what we discussed at the dinner table just now. This county’s party secretary is young, wants achievements, acts with great determination, is willing to invest, and understands the principle of ‘letting water nurture fish.’ I often hear people say that running a real business requires a good local administrative environment. Unlike us trading companies that can ‘fire a shot and change location,’ you can’t do that – you have factory buildings and equipment, ‘you can run away but the temple can’t,’ and if you encounter a government that ‘closes the door to beat the dog,’ you’ll be trapped to death.”
“Eh, there’s such a consideration. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Convinced?”
“Convinced.”
Qian Hongming laughed heartily, feeling extremely pleased. He had no malicious intent to outshine his good friend, but being able to make Liu Jun genuinely convinced still made him very proud. “In domestic business, many regulations may be written on paper, but when implemented, they all have a ‘but’ – or you could say there’s flexibility. For example, your hope to use RMB for capital contribution just now was one case. So, just looking at materials isn’t enough – you need to extensively contact relevant personnel and learn from them where the limits of that flexibility are, and what degree you can reach through various efforts. Understanding more is never wrong – you’ll use it someday, or apply it elsewhere by analogy.”
Liu Jun again looked at Qian Hongming as if looking at a strange person, barely managing to swallow back the “Really?” that had risen to his lips. “But doesn’t giving individuals such broad discretionary power encourage rent-seeking?”
“That’s not a problem for you and me to consider.”
Hearing this, Liu Jun finally understood completely and grasped what was going on.