Chapter 442 – National Automobile Brand
The next morning, the Station Chief was still considering about Deputy Station Chief Jia’s suggestion about purchasing Songjiang Motors vehicles when his secretary come into his office with the newspapers.
As usual, the first papers he read was the People’s Daily.
Is joint-venture the only way to build our automobile industry?
The was the headlines. This article was written by someone Station Chief knew, and he immediately starts to read the article seriously.
The automobile companies from the developed nations were making use of joint ventures to control the Chinese market. But the western countries were setting barriers to their technologies from us, and this was unfair! If China’s automobile manufacturer got to depend on the technologies of these western companies to develop, then most of the profits will be taken away by them. Our country will be at the losing end!
On the surface, those developed nations were transferring their automobile manufacturing technologies to us, but these technologies were all their obsoleted or about to outdated technologies. These companies will never sell us their advanced technologies.
Our automobile manufacturing industry might seem to be doing well with the production and sales figures increasing rapidly, but at the same time, a large portion of their profits was siphoned away by those foreign companies. Those companies were taking away our people’s money.
If this carries on, we will be those developed nation automobile companies’ cash cow. They were eating away our grass and still milking us dry!
China does have our own automobile brands. But these brands have stopped the production of their own cars to manufacture vehicles for those foreign brands. Our local automobile brands were disappearing slowly.
All these while, we were just tools for the foreign brands. Our Chinese consumers prefer overseas brands, and the local brands were slowly dying. Even if these local brands wanted to make a comeback in the future, there was no way for these brands to survive. Joint-venture might look like a shortcut, but it was killing our own local companies!
It was because there were no other choices in the past and the state-owned enterprises had to go into joint ventures with those foreign companies. But now, we have better options!
The Machinery Company in Bing City had successfully developed its own vehicles without any support from the government. Their cars were the most advanced in China and can be compared to some of the top vehicle models in the world. Do note that this company was also a joint-venture. But all of the company’s assets were owned by Chinese and Hong Kong’s private enterprises. This company can be considered a real Chinese company.
They had created Songjiang Motors vehicles. The exterior designs and core technologies were all developed in China and had better performances than those joint-ventured vehicles. This company had even developed a diesel engine to be used on cars.
This company had carved out its own path, showed its creativity and grew independently to become our own national automobile brand. This brand will break the barriers to automobile technologies imposed by those western nations and lead our Chinese automobile manufacturers to the peak!
CCTV’s Station Chief finished reading the article and lit a cigarette. Joint-venture was suggested by that person first, and the whole nation starts to use this strategy. This article, which criticized this strategy, was allowed to be published now. Does that mean the higher-ups were going to change their direction?
Luckily, he did not object to purchasing Songjiang Motors vehicles yesterday. The TV station still needs to discuss this today. This article had shown the intentions of the higher-ups. It seems that the higher-ups want to support this Songjiang Motors.
This Songjiang Motors must have strong backings. They even got connections with that person. There was nothing more to discuss. There was only one brand of vehicles for CCTV, Songjiang Motors!
Feng Yu was also reading the article. He had only written the brief of this article and someone had written this article from his brief. This person was able to transform this article into such a compelling article.
Will any problems be arising from this article? Feng Yu remembered that it was the Chief Architect. Damn, will Bing City Machinery Company get into trouble?
But the Chief Architect was still in power now. Since this article was able to be published, there should not be any problems. If the Chief Architect agrees with this article, Songjiang Motors will be a success!
At the same time, all the leaders around China had read this article, and they realized that other than joint-ventured cars, China also has its own brand of vehicles with advanced technologies.
Not only the People’s Daily had published this article. Other papers also published similar reports. Of course, the newspapers from the places where the joint-ventured automobile manufacturers were based did not publish.
The leader if the Planning Commission called the person who wrote the article to his office. He wanted to know why this person wrote such an article.
Both of them spoke for a long time, and the Leader of the Planning Commission was convinced.
China’s 5-year plan currently was to developed China’s automobile industry, and this industry will become one of the key sectors in the next 5-year plan.
If the technologies of China’s key industry were in the hands of foreign companies, then if those companies withdraw from China, like the time when those Soviet Union experts withdraw from China, China’s automobile industry will go back 10 years!
But the actual situation was not as severe as what was written in the papers. Those foreign companies in the joint-ventures had given the Chinese companies some of their technologies and had increased China’s technologies. If these Chinese companies were to continue to develop these technologies, they would be able to catch up with the developed countries.
But this Bing City’s Machinery Company was able to successfully develop China’s best cars, and the technologies used was said to be one of the best in the world. This was something to shout about.
Although the Leader of the Planning Commission knew this Songjiang Motors had imported the production lines and technologies from the former Soviet Union and merged it with Bing City’s Aviation Factory’s automobile manufacturing technologies, he never expects the combination of these two technologies could create such a significant improvement.
Then if all the automobile manufacturer in China were to combine their technologies, will they develop a more advanced technology?
This way, China does not need to renew the joint partnership with those foreign companies once the contract was over. China could concentrate on building their own national brand and develop their own automobile industry!
The Chief Architect was also reading this article seriously. He knew about the contents of this article before it was published, and he was the one who had given the green light. He was someone who likes everybody to discuss the problems together and think of a solution.
Also, he does not care whether Bing City’s Machinery Company was a state-owned enterprise or a private-owned enterprise. As long as this company was a Chinese company, he was okay with it. This Spring, when he was inspecting Shenzhen, he said his famous quote. This Machinery Company was the cat that could catch mice.
Although the article seems to be against joint partnerships and ventures, the Chief Architect was not angry. Only the ones who dare to explore can find the most suitable path. This Bing City’s Machinery Company was very interesting. He wants to make a visit when he’s free/
That afternoon, Feng Yu received a page from Chief Jia to ask him to be at CCTV for a discussion about their purchase of Songjiang Motors vehicles.
Feng Yu was overjoyed. His tactics were successful. In the future, those public buses should be changed to Songjiang Motors! Audi, Volvo, Toyota can all step aside!
Translator’s notes: Deng Xiaoping was also known as “the architect” in China. His planning and ideology had led to China’s success today. More information about him can be found on this Wikipedia page.
One of Deng’s most famous quote: It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.