China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [18]
In the Pearl River Delta, the factory manager of a small county-level alcoholic beverages factory went to Guangzhou one day and saw that people were drinking a beverage called Coca-Cola. Li Jing-wei returned to his factory with the idea of producing non-alcoholic beverages as well. A member of the Athletic Commission, he had heard that someone had made a miracle drink that improved the performance of athletes. Not long after, Li Jing-wei began to produce a similar kind of “oriental spirit water” named Jian-li-bao, which means a fortifying health drink. For the next fifteen years, Jian-li-bao was regarded as the number one beverage brand in China.
Also around 1984, a professor named Zhao Xin-xian from a military medical college began a new business near Brush-rest Hills in Shenzhen. This was to become the 999 Group, the most famous pharmaceutical enterprise in China. In Huizhou, Guangdong Province, Li Dong-sheng, a young man who had graduated from the South China University of Technology started his factory in a dilapidated warehouse that housed old tractors and agricultural equipment. With the
Right: Wang Shi,
speaking at the
founding ceremony of
the Shenzhen Modern
Scientific Instruments
Exhibition Center, 1984.
This company later
changed its name to
Vanke. In 2008, it was
the largest real estate
company in China.
cooperation of some people in Hong Kong, he started manufacturing the tape used in tape recordings. The illustrious home electronics company called TCL grew out of this humble beginning.
In a small town in the countryside of Shunde in Guangdong Province, a man named Pan Ning, with no more than a fourth-grade education, fashioned the prototype for China’s first two-door refrigerator out of primitive tools. He made the model out of old soda pop cans, hammered and drilled into something that actually worked. Rain was pelting down on the day that his model ran successfully. Elated by his success, he charged out into the pouring rain, weeping for joy.
Winter, 1985. At a rural market, a group of farmers enjoy a game of pool. In the early 1980s, pool, formerly considered as “aristocrats’ game,” rapidly became the rage throughout China.
Summer, 1985, next to Chaoyang Lake in Pujiang County, Sichuan. Youngsters dancing to the tune of a Teresa Teng song.
This was a period many entrepreneurs are proud of; yet it was also one that they do not wish to remember. In the course of setting up their companies, practically all these men got involved in the “grey-market” areas as they built their initial capital. Their family backgrounds and character were different; however, the qualities they had in common were passion and determination. Each of them fully intended to strike out a new path. Although many had just begun to learn the ABCs of a market economy, their energy and spirit in founding companies and their survival instincts were superlative. They acted just like the eight legendary Chinese immortals who crossed the oceans using their different magical skills, as they underwent a baptism of market economy and globalization.
While this first generation of entrepreneurs was founding companies, China’s state-owned enterprises remained “inside the cage” of the planned economic system. They remained an ongoingheadacheforthegovernment.
The published appeal of factory heads in Fuzhou for “loosening the bonds on us” provoked a positive reaction throughout the country, and the day of the publication became “Factory Managers’ Day” in China.
On March 24, 1984, a group of fifty-five factory heads of some major state-owned enterprises based in Fujian Province sent out a cry for help. This plea in the form of a proposal was entitled, “Please loosen the bonds on us,” and its entire text was published in the Fujian Daily. The article stated that under the current system, the managers were tied hand and foot and
that the enterprises were facing suffocating pressure, with no motivation or vitality. The specific ways in which