Chapter 53 Figures in corporate history: Dawu Fundraising

After Sun Dawu became a multi-millionaire, once he took a group of guests to visit the enterprise park. In the bungalow, a gray-haired old woman was cooking farm meals in a big iron pot with the firewood she picked up.Sun Dawu introduced calmly, "They are my father and mother", and everyone who heard it turned pale with shock.This is a very different type of entrepreneur. In 2003, he was arrested for illegal fundraising, which aroused a lot of discussion in the public opinion, and it was the "Sun Dawu incident" that caused a sensation. Sun Dawu was born in Xushui County, Hebei Province. This is a remote county that is little known. At the end of the 1950s, this small county became famous for being the first to blow up the "flashy wind" across the country.Sun’s family was extremely poor and humble, and his parents made a living by picking up junk. When he was a child, he couldn’t afford to buy school supplies when he went to school. His father picked up toilet paper used by others in the latrine, cut off the clean corners and made it into an exercise book for him to practice calligraphy. .Sun Dawu joined the army at the age of 16. After being demobilized, he worked as the head of the personnel department of the County Agricultural Bank. Beginning in 1985, Sun Dawu’s wife contracted a cemetery in the northwest of his hometown village and began to experiment with breeding. Three years later, he resigned and went into the sea, and gradually developed from breeding to opening a feed factory. By around 2000, Dawu Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Group had 16 A factory and a school have an annual output value of over 100 million in their most glorious time.

Sun Dawu, who was poor since he was a child, has a natural affection for the poor. He is a firm believer in the "People's Commune".The Dawu Group he founded is not so much an enterprise, but a "Utopian" experimental area, where there are factories, parks, schools, hospitals, and the entire life of 1,600 employees.He called this model "mutual labor": feed can be used to raise chickens, and chicken manure and pig manure can produce biogas, which can be used for hatching; workers can drive the development of tertiary industries such as shops and restaurants, hospitals, schools, etc. It not only meets the needs of workers and nearby villagers, but also creates a new labor space.In Dawu Hospital, employees and villagers can enjoy cooperative medical care for only 1 yuan a month, and a full set of examinations, including B-ultrasound and blood tests, only costs 10 yuan.Sun Dawu posted a self-made couplet on the door of the Dawu Group: "An Dechun is weathered and rained, and the year of the Republic of the world is bathed in the world." From these practices, we can vividly see some kind of shadow of the people's commune back then.As a multi-millionaire, Sun Dawu himself lived a life of a cynic. He didn't have a special car, and he didn't even have a few decent clothes. He lived in a small one-story house, and his parents still made a living by picking through junk.He is very "stingy" in his daily life, known as "Sun Dajia".

The most troublesome thing for Sun Dawu to start a business is that he has nowhere to borrow money.Even though he had worked in a bank, it was still difficult to get a loan. He revealed later: "Good companies can't get loans at all. How can they get a loan? It's about 10%-15% rebate."Sun Dawu, who is full of idealism, once bent over for a loan. One year, Dawu Group needed a loan of 6 million to invest in a thousand-acre vineyard.At that time, someone persuaded Sun Dawu to go through the back door. Sun Dawu was persuaded and sent 10,000 yuan to the leader of the local credit union. However, when the 10,000 yuan was not done, Sun was very angry and insisted on taking the 10,000 yuan back. , and finally got back 6,000 yuan.Since then, Sun has been completely insulated from the local credit union.In order to save himself, starting from 1995, Sun Dawu thought of raising money from relatives, and the Dawu Group issued an IOU, promising to give a certain amount of interest.This model was later copied to the employees of Dawu. Among the 1,300 employees in Dawu, a total of more than 900 people lent or deposited money to Dawu Group. The relatives of these employees brought in 1,000 depositors , and then passed on from household to household, the depositors gradually expanded to several nearby villages, and finally gradually formed a scale of 4,600 households.

Sun Dawu gave this financing model a new name called "Financial Mutual Aid".A media reporter described the operation of the mutual aid club as follows: Dawu Group has specialized business personnel who sell products of Dawu Company in nearby villages, and at the same time take on the task of "absorbing savings". Which one has money to save? , you can find them directly.The local government therefore questioned that these people had set up more than 10 "storage points" for Dawu Group.The certificate that Dawu Group leaves to depositors is a unified IOU. Deposits are divided into two categories. Current deposits have no interest, and regular deposits are given 3.3% annual interest without deducting interest tax, which is almost equivalent to twice the benchmark deposit interest rate at that time.And no matter how much money is deposited, the largest single deposit has reached more than 400,000 yuan, and the least is less than 1,000 yuan.In Langwuzhuang, where the Dawu Group is located, almost every family deposits money in the Dawu Group, and the money can be withdrawn at any time. Some people get sick in the middle of the night and can get it in the middle of the night.During the eight years from 1996 to 2003, there was no credit dispute between depositors and Dawu Group. On May 27, 2003, Sun Dawu was arrested on the charge of "illegally absorbing public deposits".

A national background that needs to be explained is that after 2000, state-owned banks carried out commercial transformation, and the township market, which has always been considered to be very high in operating costs and poor in profitability, was largely abandoned. In the past many years, the Agricultural Bank of China And Industrial and Commercial Bank of China undertakes poverty alleviation loans and small secured loans and other service businesses, which have a certain degree of sociality and "publicity". However, with the shrinking of bank branches, the vast rural areas have become financial blind spots. In March 2002, Xinhua News Agency revealed in a report titled "Commercial Banks Lose the Burden of Poorness" that since 1999, the four major state-owned commercial banks have begun large-scale mergers and acquisitions, with a total of more than 30,000 banks being withdrawn and merged. outlets and branches.Withdrawing from underdeveloped areas and concentrating superior resources to occupy large and medium-sized cities and economically developed areas has become the concerted action of the four major banks to integrate resources.Dr. Qian Xiaoan, a researcher at the Research Office of the Central Financial Working Committee, believes that the move of the four major banks to withdraw and merge institutions is in line with the direction of bank reform, conforms to the principle of efficiency, and is conducive to the centralization of financial services.

In 2003, when Sun Dawu was arrested, the short-term loans of the national non-state-owned enterprise system, including township and village enterprises, individual private enterprises, and foreign-funded enterprises, accounted for only 14.4% of all bank loans; 1.3% of all direct financing; more than 3 million private enterprises across the country have received bank credit support, accounting for only 10%; narrow financing channels and loan difficulties have seriously restricted the development and growth of private enterprises. It is against this background that folk "underground banks" have been revived again, and the Sun Dawu incident is highlighting the harshness and embarrassment of reality.

The controversy over the legality of private financing has been endless since Wenzhou's "underground bank" in the 1980s, and there are still divergent opinions on the Sun Dawu case.Some lawyers believe that "the funds raised by the Dawu Group were not illegally seized or squandered, but were mainly used to build Dawu Middle School to benefit the village; in addition, this kind of borrowing is limited to workers who have a mutual trust relationship with the company. And folks, have a specific scope, not the unspecified general public. Therefore, it should be a legal private lending behavior." Professor Shi Tiantao, who studies business law at Tsinghua University, believes that Sun Dawu's behavior "should be illegal", Because "no matter whether it causes any harm or not, this is something that cannot be done."Veteran economist Mao Yushi has been working around the Sun Dawu case. He called it "illegal fund-raising without victims." People are harmed, but many people are benefited. If such social behavior is considered a crime, it is necessary to question whether the system itself is worth revising.

Under the extensive media reports, the Sun Dawu case became one of the most sensational business events in 2003. In November, after nearly half a year in custody, the Xushui District Court was found guilty of "illegally absorbing public deposits" and sentenced Sun Dawu to 3 years in prison, suspended for 4 years.On the day of the release, CCTV sent reporters to follow up and interview. At the door of the house, an 85-year-old mother hugged her 49-year-old son and burst into tears. Sun Dawu smiled and comforted him.Turning around, his subordinates told him that during his imprisonment, the two orphans he adopted were almost kicked out of the campus because they couldn't pay the tuition fees. Hearing this, Sun's eyes turned red, and he wiped away his tears with a piece of paper facing the TV camera.