“I have always known that there is a big gap between China and America, and I had a very intuitive feeling when I exchanged in Santa Barbara.
But before, my comparison object was the people around me. When I was studying at Yan University, those who could come to Yan University were able to maintain above a certain level. After graduation, they could quickly get a job in China, which is considered good. work. Not to mention the kids who grew up around me.
Their economic level, if we use probability to describe it, would be considered an underestimate if we use one ten thousandth to describe it.
After going to the Yangtze River Delta and going deep into the front lines of the manufacturing industry, I intuitively realized how hard the labor force was living.
For example, the agreed unit price of parts is 20 cents each. The workers work hard and can produce more than 30,000 pieces a month. They work more than 12 hours a day, which means their highest monthly salary exceeds 6,000 yuan.
Then the factory will use various excuses to lower the unit price, and in the second month the unit price will be reduced to ten cents a piece, or even lower. I have talked with the heads of joint venture factories in China such as Wanwan, Gaoli, and Neon. They generally responded that wage costs should be controlled below 2,000 yuan.
When I was in the Yangtze River Delta region, I used another identity, which was roughly related to a local business administration leader. That leader used to be my grandfather's security guard, and later changed his job to a local job.
Therefore, the heads of local private enterprises are very polite to me and almost always answer my questions truthfully.
In other words, if the rules are formulated, if the worker's salary exceeds 2,000 yuan, the rules can be changed flexibly.
Even so, workers lacked the means to resist. Therefore, companies like Yongxin that can follow the rules and do not set salary caps are particularly rare.
Also in the Yangtze River Delta, I went shopping around the West Lake. The unit price per square meter of a lake-view room with a view of the West Lake has exceeded US$4,000. Many foreign businessmen or executives of foreign companies in China go there to buy houses and then go on vacation on the weekends. "
In 2000, the unit price of houses with lake views such as Hyatt Residences and Yuanhua Apartments in West Lake was around US$4,000 per square meter.
Cao Yongluo said with emotion: "What I want to say is, can we really change the status quo and let the Chinese people live like Americans?"
Zhou Xin said: "There will be a day.
Do you know where will be the fastest affected place after China joins the WTO? "
Cao Yongluo said without thinking: "It must be Xiangjiang. Xiangjiang is definitely the first area to be affected. In the past, many goods manufactured in China needed to be transferred to Xiangjiang, and then stamped with the Xiangjiang logo and exported to Europe and the United States.
In order to avoid the risk of cargo transit and at the same time reduce taxes on the flow of goods between the mainland and Hong Kong, Chinese manufacturing companies will transport parts and components to Xiangjiang and complete the final assembly in Xiangjiang.
After China joins the WTO, there is no need for it. Xiangjiang, which has no advantages except for tariffs, will be completely swallowed up by the mainland in manufacturing. The siphon effect of the Yangtze River Delta region will soon destroy Xiangjiang's manufacturing industry. "
After listening to this, Zhou Xin knew that Cao Yongluo did know a lot about the manufacturing industry, because from his understanding, Xiangjiang was indeed the first to be affected.
In the original time and space, Zhou Xin was studying abroad in Berkeley, and he had a conversation with a classmate from Xiangjiang. This classmate's family used to be in the manufacturing industry. After 2001, the family's business declined sharply, and they later changed to collecting rent to survive.
According to official statistics, after China joined the WTO at the end of 2001, by March 2002, Xiangjiang's foreign trade orders dropped by more than 15%, with the metal manufacturing, electronics, and machinery industries experiencing the sharpest declines, as high as 30%. %.
This is why Xiangjiang later mainly developed the financial industry, service industry and real estate industry, because they had no choice.
Zhou Xin said: "Yes, after China joins the WTO, it will slowly eat up the manufacturing share of other countries."
Because he was worried that equipment would be installed in his own home, Zhou Xin could not speak too directly. He could only start from the perspective of manufacturing development.
"So for China, I can put some more valuable industrial chains in China, such as the current Internet mobile phones, I put the production in China, and under the leadership of matrix, other mobile phone brands will also Some of the production links are placed in China.
Even if there is no matrix, this process will gradually occur, because China's manufacturing industry has unique advantages in many aspects. Joining the WTO has completely released its advantages in manufacturing for China. matrix just speeds up the process.
But there is one thing that only Matrix can do that other mobile phone manufacturers cannot do, and that is to give Chinese companies opportunities in parts with technical content, so that Chinese companies can also enjoy technological dividends. "
Talking about this, Cao Yongluo was a little frustrated, "I told you in the email before that matrix keyboards were counterfeited by other Chinese companies and then exported to Amerikan.
This incident gave me great doubts. China has done a very poor job in protecting intellectual property rights. In such an environment, can Chinese companies really enjoy technological dividends?
What I said in the email was relatively simple. It was that the matrix keyboard was disassembled and reproduced by other manufacturing manufacturers in about two months.
After they achieved the replica, they manufactured a large number of products that simulated matrix keyboards, and then exported them to Amerikan. This product is almost exactly the same as matrix. At most, the quality control and quality are slightly worse than matrix.
But the matrix keyboard sells for US$499, and the export price of these products has dropped from US$100 to only US$15 now. I estimate that their profit margin is only 20% at most.
At first, one or two companies started to imitate, and then more and more companies began to imitate, and the export price plummeted.
In the face of the price advantage, except for some users who are really not short of money or respect the original version, they buy matrix keyboards from official channels. And it’s useless for me to look for connections here, because companies that are counterfeiting matrix keyboards are everywhere from the Yangtze River Delta to the Pearl River Delta.
It is impossible to manage it, and the local government is not willing to manage it. If only Matrix makes Matrix keyboards, the export volume will only be a few million US dollars at most, because even the American people can afford the high price of US$499.
After the export price was reduced to US$15, the entire export volume instantly increased to a market worth tens of millions of US dollars. And because the matrix keyboard structure has brought a severe impact to the original keyboard industry, from Cherry to Filco to Dell and Logitech, a series of manufacturers that originally made membrane keyboards and mechanical keyboards have begun to enter the field of imitating matrix keyboards.
And almost without exception, they are looking for OEM companies in China. If you include the export volume of the entire keyboard industry, it is about 50 million US dollars.
If the responsibilities for technology patents are to be investigated one by one, it will severely hit the export and foreign trade industry. There are even counties in the Yangtze River Delta. More than 30% of the companies in the entire county focus on the production of keycaps, shafts and metal casings.
From the perspectives of protecting the local economy, protecting the survival of enterprises, generating local income, and creating job opportunities, the priority of protecting intellectual property rights is much lower.
Therefore, under this background, it is difficult for me to have confidence that Chinese enterprises can truly enjoy technological dividends, or enjoy long-term technological dividends. "
Cao Yongluo took a sip of Coca-Cola to moisten his throat and continued: "When I was in the ivory tower, I always felt that the rules took precedence. After the rules were formulated, they needed to be implemented according to the rules. In the real world, many times the rules do not play their role. .
Rules are not necessarily enforced, and enforcing the rules may cause greater losses in the short term than not enforcing the rules. Including rules on intellectual property protection, which were rushed out after joining the WTO. In fact, the implementation level is very limited. "
Zhou Xin smiled and looked at this problem from a higher perspective. He could give a good answer in the future. Zhou Xin never worried about this problem:
"When I was making the matrix keyboard, I didn't expect how many units it would sell. It was purely to build the matrix brand so that everyone would recognize that matrix is a high-end, technological, and innovative brand.
Quickly associate your brand with these concepts. Therefore, we need to subvert a certain industry. Keyboards are a popular field. People who have used computers will have a need to use keyboards. This is another field of extremely homogeneous competition. If you succeed in making membrane keyboards, then I Also makes membrane keyboards.
The R&D ideas of enterprises in this field also revolve around lower latency and longer use time, and R&D investment is very small.
This also means that this area is easy to subvert. There are so many ways to change this area in terms of appearance, overall texture, typing sound and touch. There are a lot of changes, but honestly nothing technical.
It is more like a creative subversion, coupled with high pricing and advertisements everywhere, it actually allows users to have a concept of the Matrix brand at the minimum cost.
The product itself is only secondary. Now judging from the sales volume of Mphone, this is a very successful step. The release of Mphone has once again deepened users' recognition of the matrix brand and brand concept.
Therefore, the matrix keyboard has no technical content, so other companies can easily reverse engineer it and then produce it.
In other fields, it would not be that easy. Like Mphone, it sells very well in Amerikan and the price is very high. Has any company copied it?
I'm afraid not? Just for the mobile phone chip of Mphone, no one can copy it, let alone Chinese companies or American companies. "
"So matrix cannot be regarded as a technical advantage, it is an advantage in design and concept, which is easy to copy."
Cao Yongluo shook his head: "I don't agree with what you said.
Take Mphone as an example. Currently, Chinese companies can only make mobile phone casings and assembly. In the future, they will probably slowly move from batteries, to PCB boards, to screens, and finally to chips and cameras.
The problem is that Chinese companies have limited advantages. Their technical advantages are also weak and can easily be reverse-engineered.
In this case, it will be difficult for Chinese companies to accumulate technological advantages. "
Zhou Xin said: "We can choose to choose companies with patent rights. With the support of matrix, companies with patent rights can enjoy technological advantages. They will either maintain their technological advantages or one day be eliminated by other companies.
Nothing more than these two results. "
Zhou Xin continued: "The biggest problem with Mphone now is that the battery is not enough. Users need to charge it once a day, and if it is used frequently, it may even need to be charged twice a day.
If someone can solve the battery problem, even if there is only a slight technological improvement, then we will choose it as a supplier. Mphone has now completed distribution in Maple Leaf Country, South America, and Europe, and it is expected that sales will exceed 5 million next year.
For suppliers who can optimize batteries, this is a market of five million, which also means that the entire mobile phone industry will be open to them. Isn’t this market huge enough?
The great advantage of making Mphone is the brand effect. If Mphone is successful enough, in the future, suppliers upstream and downstream of the Mphone supply chain will also be highly valued by other mobile phone manufacturers, and even directly enter their supply chain processes.
When we are selecting Mphone suppliers, we will naturally take a high look at Nokia's suppliers. After Mphone replaces Nokia in the future, Mphone suppliers will be able to enjoy the same treatment. "
The problem for Chinese companies is that it is difficult to continue to increase investment in R&D once they have technological advantages.
Take Changhong as an example. At this time, Changhong was the most technologically advanced TV manufacturing company in China and the only manufacturer in China that could manufacture fourth-generation rear-projection TVs. Later, it gradually lost its technical advantages and lost its core technical advantages.
Zhou Xin remembered something he heard from a Morgan investor when he met before, and then told Cao Yongluo: "China is actually able to achieve technological leadership or obtain technological advantages in a few fields.
I heard that China launched a brand new multimedia TV transmission protocol last year, which is much ahead of the TV transmission protocol standards of Americen, Europe and Neon.
It seems to be called DMB-T. It is a company founded by Shuimu University and Shuimu University alumni who returned to China. It jointly developed a set of standards that improves transmission efficiency by 10% compared with European technical standards.
They are now developing decoding chips based on this set of standards. I think we need to have confidence in Chinese companies. "
The DMB-T standard completed laboratory research and development in 2000 and became a national standard in 2006. It was able to achieve a transmission speed of 33MB/s, which was sufficient for the TV definition at the time.
Of course they just design the chip.
Later, the chip LGS-8G52 they launched has excellent single-carrier and multi-carrier performance, and shows obvious technical advantages in anti-multipath interference and low power consumption, reducing chip implementation costs. At that time, the digital TV all-in-one machine launched by LG on the market adopted a dual-chip solution, while the LGS-8G52 only required a single chip.
Coincidentally, the OEM of LGS-8G52 is SMIC.
Cao Yongluo: “Maybe I’m too pessimistic.”
Zhou Xin: "It is easy to be pessimistic when you lower your head when doing things, and ignore the power of time. It is easy to be optimistic when you look up at the sky, feeling that the sun is not far away from you."
Regarding the LGS-8G52 TV decoding chip, you can read the report on the official website of SMIC on April 18, 2008.
I don’t know if I have yang or not. It happened twice during this period, about three or four days apart. At night, I first had an itchy throat, and then coughed wildly. After drinking cough syrup, I was fine the next day.
(End of chapter)
