Chapter 66 a pawn in a chess game

When Dai Guofang boldly said that he would "surpass Baosteel and pursue Pohang", a thick fog had already filled the sky around him.The world situation is like chess, which is always changing. Dai Guofang is a chess piece that only cares about herself and rushes forward. For Chinese entrepreneurs, "what is politics" is always a question.In this group, we see too many overzealous people, those who turn a blind eye, those who openly resist, and those who are ignorant, but we rarely find people who are accurate in their measurements and advance and retreat in a calm and orderly manner.

Dai Guofang, the "private steel magnate" with only a primary school education, didn't figure out this question until he was imprisoned, or he never asked himself this question.Looking at the country at that time, there were two major discussions in full swing, and their conclusions would greatly affect the chessboard of China's economic growth. Dai Guofang was in a changing situation but did not know it. The first big discussion was about the heavy-duty trend of Chinese private enterprises. Since the end of the 1970s, the recovery of China's economy has been a history of the rise of private enterprises. These grassroots factories outside the system have sprouted from the countryside without any resources and industrial background. Starting with the "light, small, and integrated" industry, it has gradually formed a powerful economic force.By around 2001, the contribution rate of private enterprises to the national economy has surpassed that of state-owned enterprises, and they have the largest number of industrial workers and industrial capital. In many industries, "retirement from the state and advancement of the private sector" has become a trend.That is, at this moment, with the growth of terminal demand industries such as housing, automobiles, and electronic communications, the market has formed a huge demand for upstream energy industries, such as steel, non-ferrous metals, electricity, and coal. China's industrial structure There has been an inevitable adjustment from light weight to heavy weight.Private entrepreneurs who have always been keen sense of smell are undoubtedly aware of this important transformation. Those entrepreneurs who have completed primitive accumulation have begun to advance to the upstream industry that has always been regarded as the "forbidden" state-owned enterprise.Among this group, Dai Guofang is probably the least well-known one. When he was dreaming of a big iron and steel dream by the Yangtze River, Guo Guangchang of Shanghai Fosun was planning to build a steel factory of almost the same size in Ningbo, Zhejiang. Hope Group Liu Yongxing is planning an electrolytic aluminum project with an investment of over 10 billion yuan in Inner Mongolia.

Regarding this active scene, the economic and media circles have different views.Some people believe that the upstream industry is the pillar industry of the national economy, and the state-owned enterprises should play the leading role, and private enterprises should not be allowed to enter the market to disrupt the situation.Some economists even believe that these industries cannot be marketized at all and should be monopolized by the state.Another point of view is cheering for this. The "Chinese Entrepreneur" magazine wrote quite passionately in a commentary: When people see that the upgrading of private enterprises and China's new industrialization are docking at the right time, private "entrepreneurs" "Spirit" and private capital are injected into China's heavy industry, and people no longer doubt that private enterprises working in the field of heavy industry will refresh the strongest camp of Chinese private enterprises in the next few years; this round will use market forces as the main engine The new industrial movement will give birth to China's first batch of heavy industry giants who are not officials, are not appointed or dismissed by the government, and only judge their merits and demerits by the market.

The second debate that is quite related to this is whether China should take the road of heavy-duty?The protagonists of this debate are two veteran economists in China—Professor Li Yining and Professor Wu Jinglian.Professor Li believes that since the mid-1990s, after the rapid development of light industry, China's "secondary heavy industry" has begun to emerge.This not only has the objective law of "from light to heavy" at work, but also reflects the huge demand for equipment renewal and transformation in industrial development itself.Therefore, both the government and enterprises should follow this trend in terms of strategic layout and technological innovation.

Wu Jinglian raised objections to Li Yining's theory that "the heavy-duty stage is insurmountable in China".He believes that the main force behind the transformation of the economic structure to the heavy chemical industry is not the central government, but the local government.There are two reasons: first, the government is the main body of adjustment, and the fiscal revenue and performance evaluation determine that the government must engage in heavy chemical industries with large output value and high tax revenue; second, the government is also capable of developing heavy industries because it owns land and loan rights These two greatest resources.Professor Wu believes that the adjustment of industrial structure should use the power of the market. It is wrong for the government to invest and participate in it. Moreover, China should not choose heavy-duty industrialization at this stage, but rely on the tertiary industry and small business development.

The opposition between Li Yining's and Wu Jinglian's views is related to the growth path of China's economy, and it also has macro reference significance for judging the Tieben incident in the future. When Dai Guofang was excited about his dream of steel by the Yangtze River in Changzhou, the Chinese economic and media circles were having two discussions that had a lot to do with him.It's a pity that he has no time to pay attention to these difficult "scholar debates".He seldom reads books or newspapers on weekdays. A familiar Beijing expert once brought him the article in "Chinese Entrepreneur".The expert finally said: "If your project is completed, you must be the richest man in China."

Dai Guofang, who was busy on the construction site, smiled innocently.He didn't hear the thousands of mysteries hidden in the two words "if". Dai Guofang's phrase "catch up with Baosteel" has a special feeling in some people's hearts. Steel, for a modern country, once meant everything.Since the industrial revolution, a country's steel production capacity is almost a symbol of national strength.During the Cold War, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was actually a competition about steel for a long time. The leader of the Soviet Union Stalin put forward the slogan "steel is everything", and the United States spared no effort in the investment in the steel industry. For many years it has been It is the largest steel country in the world.

After the founding of New China, Mao Zedong also had a soft spot for steel.After looking at the general trend of the world, he always regards steel as the most important indicator, and respects him as the "Marshal of Steel".It is based on such a strong steel complex that Mao Zedong proposed the national strategy of "taking steel as the key link". In 1959, he proposed to catch up with the UK, not 15 years, nor 7 years, only 2 to 3 years, 2 years is possible.It's mostly steel here.Under this goal of catching up and surpassing, he launched the "Great Leap Forward", and launched a vigorous national steel-making movement across the country.

In 1978, China opened a new curtain of reform and opening up. The country opened up and all industries flourished. The first large-scale project introduced to China was the Baoshan Iron and Steel Works in Shanghai.From December 18th to 22nd of this year, one of the most important meetings in contemporary Chinese history—the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing. Modernization comes up.Just two days after the end of the plenary session, Baosteel Corporation, with a total investment of 21.4 billion yuan, laid the first pile on a beach in the northern suburbs of Shanghai. It was regarded as a symbolic project by public opinion at home and abroad.For nearly 30 years, China's steel industry has been in a stage of rapid expansion, with an average annual output growth of more than 20%. In 1992, China's steel production surpassed the United States for the first time and became the world's number one.

After 2001, the accelerated process of industrialization and urbanization further caused an overall shortage of steel products, and a frenzy of steelmaking broke out across China.Large state-owned iron and steel companies have announced that they will invest huge sums of money to start new projects, and local small and medium-sized iron and steel factories have sprung up like mushrooms after rain.The steel industry was originally an industry with huge investment and long-term output, but driven by strong demand, it has become a huge profit-making industry that can be speculated in the short term.In the Yangtze River Delta area, there is a saying of "five ones", "it only needs to invest 10 million yuan to produce 1 ton of steel, and it only takes one year to build a production capacity of 1 million tons, and the investment can be recovered in one year."This kind of crazy input-output efficiency sounds almost legendary to people in other industries, and even entrepreneurs in the real estate industry, which has always been regarded as a profiteering industry, find it incredible.Wang Shi, head of Vanke Real Estate, wrote in his blog: "May I ask our entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to recover your investment when you were engaged in light textile and general manufacturing? Now you are proposing a one-year recovery for investment in heavy chemical industry. What is that if not speculation?”

According to data, around 2002, the number of steelmaking enterprises in the country increased from 114 in the 1980s to more than 260, with an average annual output of less than 700,000 tons, and the average annual output of more than 200 of them was less than 100,000 tons. Ton, the problem of "scattered, chaotic, and small" is very prominent. In 2002, the total investment in the national iron and steel industry was 71 billion yuan, an increase of 45.9% over the previous year; in 2003, this figure reached 132.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 96%.Similar to the steel industry, investment in electrolytic aluminum increased by 92.9%, and investment in cement increased by 121.9%.The overheating of macro investment has gradually become the consensus of the top decision-makers. At the end of 2003, the gate of macro-control was finally pulled down. On December 23, the General Office of the State Council issued [2003] No. 103, that is, the "Notice of the General Office of the State Council Forwarding the Development and Reform Commission and Other Departments on Some Opinions on Stopping Blind Investment in the Iron and Steel Electrolytic Aluminum Cement Industry", requiring all localities to use various methods. Quickly curb the momentum of blind investment and low-level redundant construction.In January of the second year, the "Notice of the General Office of the State Council on Carrying out Special Inspections on the Implementation of the Central Economic Work Conference Spirit" was issued again. On February 4, the State Council held a special teleconference on strict control of excessive investment in some industries, and clearly requested that the three major industries of iron and steel, electrolytic aluminum, and cement be cleaned up and inspected. Personnel from the Ministry of Construction, Ministry of Construction, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Commerce, People's Bank of China and other departments formed 8 inspection teams and went to various places for investigation.The focus of the inventory is those private enterprises that have entered the three major industries and "blindly invested". In this way, Dai Guofang and his Tieben were involved in an unexpected storm.