On September 27, 1867, Leo Tolstoy wrote in a letter to his wife: "God has given me health and tranquility, and I will describe the Battle of Borodino in a way no one has ever done before. ’” At the time he was working on a book called “The Great Labor,” which was later renamed Immortals. One night in July 2004, I also proposed the idea of ​​writing the history of Chinese companies from 1978 to 2008 in an MSN conversation with my wife Shao Bingbing. At that time, I was a short-term visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University. That daytime afternoon.I had a discussion with some professors and students from Harvard Business School and Kennedy School of Government on the banks of the elegant Charles River. The topic was the growth path of Chinese companies.Since we come from different countries and academic backgrounds, our discussion focuses on Chinese companies, but we travel from time to time in different countries and institutional spaces such as the United States, Japan, Europe and India. Phase and refute.In such communication, I deeply feel the weakness of Chinese company research. Not only do we lack a complete case library and a credible data system, but we have not yet formed a systematic description of historical evolution, all judgments and conclusions about Chinese companies. It is often based on some perceptual, personal observation, or even inspirational basis, which has become the biggest obstacle to international communication.Therefore, how to leave something for the fragmented history of contemporary Chinese enterprises has become a topic that has suddenly emerged.

When this idea suddenly came to me, I was startled even myself.At that time, there were many job choices in front of me, and this was undoubtedly the most difficult and complicated.As far as my personal ability is concerned, this is actually a difficult project. I have not received any training in history, nor did I come from an economics class. Although my years of experience in media work have given me the opportunity to contact a large number of Although I have published nearly 10 books on finance and economics, it is an unprecedented challenge to complete a grand narrative spanning 30 years. My academic foundation, mastery of history My experience, creative skills and methodology, and even my time and physical strength, etc., are all facing an unprecedented test.

But, after all, someone has to do the job.On that sunny afternoon on the banks of the Charles River at Harvard University, it descended from the sky like a huge and silent mission, standing in front of me silently, looking down at me.In that discussion, which was mixed in English and Chinese, I knew that I had nowhere to escape, and the next four years of exhaustion seemed to be doomed. "I think now is the time to start preparing for this work." I wrote eagerly on MSN, and at this moment, I can suddenly feel very clearly what Tolstoy wrote more than 100 years ago. The sense of mission, the confidence to find another way, and the satisfaction of starting a fulfilling work.

Although any period of history has its irreplaceable uniqueness, China from 1978 to 2008 is the least likely to be repeated.In a large country with a population of nearly 1.3 billion, the rigid planned economic system is gradually disintegrating. A group of small people have turned China into a huge testing ground. It is making an irreversible transition to a commercial society under the watchful eyes of everyone. In the past 20 years, the magnitude of the changes in the world often makes people feel like a lifetime away.There are many facts that are so absurd and unbelievable today. Before 1983, the government explicitly did not allow private individuals to buy cars for transportation. An economic crime term that has disappeared today - "speculation" was a very serious crime at the time .In the area of ​​Jiangsu and Zhejiang, if you ride a bicycle from one village to another, and there are more than 3 chickens and ducks in the basket on the back seat, if you are found out, you will be speculative, and you will be arrested, denounced, or even imprisoned.In the Wenzhou area, we also found such a material, a woman was sentenced to death for speculating.By the end of the 1980s, buying short and selling short was still a bad term, and the businessmen vividly described by Mao Dun in his novels left a deep impression on people.Until around 1992, commercial banks still stipulated that loans to private enterprises should not exceed 50,000 yuan, otherwise they would be regarded as "discipline violations."

Throughout the 1980s, in many cities, it was a shame to work in a private factory, and to open a small shop and do a small business would be scornfully called "self-employed", that is, an "unorganized person". ’, an unprotected bum outside the system.This social impression lasted until the term "ten thousand yuan household" appeared, from contempt to secret envy, and then to the endless praise of the whole society. The state-owned and collective enterprises 20 years ago were terrifying behemoths, and many large state-owned factories had almost all social functions, "except crematoriums, everything."A job is very precious and can be "hereditary". After retirement, a father can immediately designate one of his own children to replace it. A business is as important as "a bigger family" to a family.Zong Qinghou, who is already a rich man, "jumped in the queue and settled down" in the countryside. In order to return to the city, he begged his mother who worked in a factory run by a district school to retire early. She gave up the position to her son, who rode He drove a tricycle to the gates of various schools to sell exercise books and pencils. After raising enough money, he founded Wahaha Children's Health Products Factory, which is now the largest beverage company in China.

Just now, I mentioned "a group of little people". Perhaps there is no other title that is more suitable for this group of people who transform history.They never imagined that they would play such an important role in history.A small official in Wenzhou once said to me generously, "In many cases, reforms start with violations." Anyone can hear the sobriety, helplessness and absoluteness in his words, and you can refute him , hit him, despise him, but you can't make him stop, because he is almost saying the above sentence in place of history. From the very beginning, I decided not to write this work in the traditional way of textbooks or history books. I didn't want to use cold figures or models to drown out people's passion, joy, cry, anguish and grief in history creation.In fact, history should be a description of people themselves. Sima Qian's "Historical Records" is the best reference in this regard. It should be palpable and perceivable. It is full of flesh and blood, movement and chance.

I want to write more about the fate of people.I really found some really interesting examples. In 1978, when the college entrance examination was resumed, millions of young people flocked to universities that had just opened their doors like crucian carp crossing the river. The radio major of South China University of Technology recruited dozens of students with an age difference of more than 20 years. They are Li Dongsheng, Chen Weirong, and Huang Hongsheng.More than ten years later, the three of them founded TCL, Konka and Skyworth respectively. At their peak, the combined color TV output of these three companies accounted for 40% of the country's total output.

Also around 1978, two men with strong local accents came out of prisons in Hunan and Sichuan successively. One was Yang Xiguang and the other was Mou Zhong. They were imprisoned because they wrote a Wanyan book with the same title. "Where is China Going" was labeled a counter-revolutionary.In Hunan and Sichuan, which have always advocated worrying about the country, they are recognized as "underground young thinkers", and they are good men who are always ready to use their blood to awaken the confused motherland.These are two men so similar.After Yang Xiguang was released from prison, he took part in the national college entrance examination and made it to the list. Three years later, he became a graduate student of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and two years later, he was admitted to Princeton University for a Ph.D. in economics. He later changed his name to Yang Xiaokai and became a representative of the Chinese economics circle. , he used models, data and very sharp ideas to torture the question raised when he was young again and again on a rational level. In 2004, he passed away after converting to Christianity.Mou Zhongzhi embarked on a more thrilling path. Immediately after he was released from prison, he borrowed 300 yuan to start a small trading company. In the following 10 years, he quickly became rich by means of "canned food for airplanes". , became one of the earliest "richest man in China", his political enthusiasm never lost, but became more and more intense under the halo of the richest man, and finally he was imprisoned again when he was over 50 years old, and he is still in prison in Wuhan China and Japan read newspapers every day, and sometimes write one or two letters that make people feel full of emotion.

Such a story about fate will run through the entire history of the enterprise.In my opinion, corporate history is fundamentally the process by which entrepreneurs create history.Only through detailed historical sketches can time and space be restored to its proper intricacies and unpredictability. People's wisdom and charm, as well as their selfishness, ignorance and mistakes, will be carefully recorded and recorded by future generations. read.In the Chinese business circle from 1978 to 2008, there was such a group: they were born in the rough, not without barbarism, with drifting temperament, perseverance and courage to win.Their superficiality enables them to use the simplest method to deal with any business problem and get to the core. Their ruthlessness enables them to get rid of all moral sentiments and return to the fundamentals of interest relations. Their fearlessness of destiny makes them Able to break all the rules and standards without restraint, their greed makes them dare to use all methods and fabricate the most beautiful lies.

They are actually no strangers.There have been, and must have been, such crowds in the early stages of the accumulation of wealth in any commercial nation.I believe that wealth transforms a person just as prosperity transforms a nation.On a certain night when I was sorting out the manuscript, I even suddenly had a very strange emotion: I am very grateful to live in this era full of changes and passions, but to be honest, I hope it will pass quickly. Over the past 20 years, there have been three forces in the Chinese market: state-owned companies, private companies, and foreign-funded companies.In my opinion, a history of Chinese enterprises is basically a process in which these three forces ebb and flow and compete with each other. The division of their interests and the resulting industrial and capital structure finally constitute all the appearances of China's economic growth. .

To a large extent, the budding of the private economy was an accident, or an expected accident.When the gates of the market are carefully opened, free water flows in, and everything becomes irreversible. Those free water flows are so weak, but they are so wanton. They travel with the wind, It bends when encountering stones, gathers trickles into streams, and suddenly becomes a force. It is a force that is good at compromise, but any compromise must follow the law of its mighty progress. It is a master of builders and destroyers. However, when it was overthrown, the new world also showed a chaotic appearance. For more than 20 years, Chinese companies have grown up in a non-standardized market atmosphere. Millions of private enterprises have grown outside the system and have no advantages in resources, markets, talents, policies, funds or even geographical locations. High-speed growth has been achieved under the premise. This growth characteristic determines the recklessness and grayness of Chinese companies. I will spend quite a lot of space recording the growth trajectory of famous multinational companies in China. They are a force that cannot be bypassed. To a certain extent, since the day they entered the Chinese market, they have been For Chinese enterprises, in the past 30 years, the ups and downs of these foreign companies in China are themselves a lesson plan with great reference value.In the early 1980s, Japanese groups represented by Panasonic, Sony, and Toshiba were the first to enter China. Konosuke Matsushita was the first international entrepreneur to visit China. The "Toshiba" is still unforgettable, which is inseparable from the strength of Japanese companies in the world at that time.So far, in various fields with intensive interests, the power of foreign capital and the wisdom of its managers still profoundly influence the direction of China's economy and policies. At the same time, we must be soberly aware that China's commercial transformation is a corporate game in which the state personally participates, and its inevitability and inherent unfairness exist in the law.Perhaps only after a panoramic interpretation, can we discover the fog that exists in the depths of history through the miraculous light, for example, what role does the country play in this corporate rise?Why haven't great economic miracles produced great companies?What is the difference between the transcendence mode of Chinese enterprises and other transcendence countries?Only then can we observe some equally important but often overlooked propositions, such as issues of social fairness, environmental protection, and general respect for people, while rejoicing at the rate of economic growth. Beyond this framework, I try to argue that not everything that happened in business history was inevitable.If Lenovo's Ni Guangnan and Liu Chuanzhi hadn't turned against each other, would Lenovo have embarked on another more technical path?If Zhang Ruimin and his team had become the asset controllers of Haier Group early on, perhaps he would not have made Haier's capital structure so complicated, and Haier's growth trajectory might have been more transparent and clear?If the Asian financial turmoil did not suddenly appear in 1997, the Chinese government would probably focus on cultivating Japanese and Korean-style large conglomerate companies. Then, would the growth landscape of Chinese companies be completely changed? If you think that these questions are not very meaningful, you may not be able to appreciate the inherent drama of history. I will also prove in my future writings that in this place full of ghostly temperament so far, the following description has been confirmed time and again: anything that is regarded as a miracle is often difficult to continue, because it comes from a process that transcends the routine , the people in it, the people who have gained huge benefits from it, are often impossible to get rid of those encounters that make them unforgettable forever. They believe that it is fate, and they always hope that they will be lucky every time and win by luck every time. In the end, all glory tends to wither in its own aura. Any myth that seems to be taken for granted is often unreliable, and the more impeccable it is, the more doubtful it is.We have always believed that the development of things is crude, with sharp edges and flaws.When a business story appears in front of you in an extremely smooth and vivid manner, you must first have doubts, and all doubts will eventually prove to be correct, or at least worthwhile. The Chinese corporate world is a business circle that believes in miracles, but 30 years have been enough for people in this circle to start rethinking the various effects brought about by the unconventional.The truth is like floating on the bottom of the water, and sooner or later it will surface.I even believe that there is "retribution" in the corporate world. The writing of enterprise history made me start to think about the growth process of Chinese enterprises as a whole.This is a process of unraveling. The past 30 years are so glorious, especially for the Chinese nation that has been silent for a hundred years. It carries the glory and dreams of too many people. It is almost the entire memory of a generation growing up together.When I feel tired, I often use a passage from Walter Lippmann to encourage myself. The greatest reporter in the history of American media said at his 70th birthday party: "We work from the outside to the inside, from the outside to the inside. It is our duty to explore near and far. We deliberate, summarize, imagine and speculate what is happening inside, what it means yesterday, and what it may mean tomorrow. Here, what we do is that each sovereign Citizens should be doing things that other people just don't have the time and interest to do. That's our profession, and it's not an easy profession. We have the right to be proud of it, we have the right to be happy because it's our work." How well said Lippmann - because this is our job. I think I am happy.Since I decided to write this time in the summer of 2004, I have been immersed in the busyness of investigation, organization and creation, which has consumed a large part of the most energetic and active thinking time in my life.It is actually not difficult for a person to make himself happy. You just need to give yourself a long-term goal, and then approach it step by step to achieve it.The result may be unimportant in a sense, what is important is that you will be very pure and satisfied in the process. Every moonlit night, I break into the fog of history alone.My study house is facing the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The river flows under my window and turns west three kilometers to the Gongchen Bridge, the starting point of the canal.This line of river meanders to the north, traverses the entire North China Plain during the rising and setting of the sun, and finally enters the city of Beijing. . More than 20 years ago, the Hangzhou section of the canal was clear and fish could be seen. Over the past 20 years, buildings have become more and more numerous, and the water body has become turbid. Now, the local government suddenly turned around to manage the canal, and wanted to develop it into a night tour in the south of the Yangtze River. a place of interest.At this moment, when I am writing this text, there is a night boat pulling goods rumbling past under the window.It is said that after this year, these cement boats are no longer able to travel at night in the canal because the noise is too loud and affects the residents on both sides of the canal. My thoughts often wander in this kind of time and space that seem to be related but are actually thousands of times apart. The Frenchman Roland Barthes once said a wonderful sentence, "I am always puzzled by the improbable and the nature of history. .” The pleasure and weirdness of writing contemporary history are all here. Wu Xiaobo Friday, January 12, 2007