Chapter 60 2008 The future unfolding

2008 is a year that requires imagination.A century-long revival drama will reach an unprecedented climax this year. History is like the "double-faced god" Janus in Roman mythology. It has two faces, one looking back at the past and the other looking at the future.Looking back at the beginning of the past, it was midnight when the moon was dim. On July 7, 1869, the 28th day of the fifth lunar month in the eighth year of Tongzhi, in the middle of the night, Zeng Guofan, the most prestigious and powerful Han minister in the Qing Empire, sat in a sad city in the back garden of the Zhili governor's office in Baoding Prefecture.He told his aide Zhao Liewen that in today's world, "the people are running out of money, and there is fear of changes", "I look forward to death day and night, and worry about the death of Zong Er". Three years later, Zeng Guofan "got his wish" and passed away.However, in the last few years of his life, this talented Hunan native vigorously promoted the Westernization Movement, which became the beginning of modern Chinese enterprises. The Kailuan Mining Bureau still has a remnant.

More than 100 years later, in October 1974, China was falling into the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution.At that time, Gu Zhun, the most important thinker in China, was at the last moment of his life.That is, the wife who loved him so much committed suicide in despair, his close friends betrayed and depressed one after another, even his most beloved children have drawn a clear class line from him, and the "Cultural Revolution catastrophe" seems to have no end yet sign.In such a bleak autumn wind, the doctor found cancer cells in Gu Zhun's sputum culture results.Gu Zhun called Wu Jinglian, a 44-year-old "student friend" to the ward, and said calmly, "I will die soon, and soon I will be speechless due to tracheal blockage. It’s time to have a long talk with you, and you won’t need it in the future.” During this long talk, Gu Zhun believed that China’s “Shenwu Jingqi” [“Shenwu Jingqi”: Emperor Shenmu was the first emperor in Japanese legend.Legend has it that he changed from a god to a man more than 2,600 years ago, and ruled Japan by the will of heaven.After World War II, Japan's economy grew rapidly, and people called the economic growth from 1955 to 1957 the "Shenwu boom". 】It will definitely come, but he doesn't know when it will come, so he sent Wu Jinglian four words, "Standby and be punctual".Two months later, when Gu Zhun passed away, Wu Jinglian pushed him into the cold morgue with his own hands.The most influential economist in China in the future recalled, "I felt very cold on the way home. I felt that it was a cold world. Gu Zhun was like a little bit of warm light, but when he walked However, I think he still left us with light..." Four years later, Gu Zhun's prophecy came true, and China bid farewell to the shackles of ideology, and began the great experiment of reform and opening up.

It was a country that was already extremely weak. From the leaders to the common people, everyone seemed at a loss and helpless at the beginning. Foreign aid was helpless, domestic capital was lacking, and the rigid system tied everyone's hands and feet.Those who went on to change the times and their own destiny came from humble beginnings, with little business education.The sparks ignited from the poor villages, rose from the southeast coast, stumbled, appeared and disappeared, stubbornly made progress, and eventually became a prairie fire. Thirty years later, they have created a country with the most vibrant business and the longest sustained economic growth, and they themselves have become the most invincible businessmen in the world.

From the gloomy night in the back garden of Zhili Governor in Baoding Prefecture to the upcoming Beijing night with fireworks in the sky on August 8, 2008, history has completed a period of twists and turns and a mythical grand narrative.It is in such a 130-year-long time and space depth that we experience the "surging 30 years" we have just experienced, and we should have a different kind of emotion. Over the past 30 years, the Chinese business world has changed beyond recognition. In 1979, 8 large state-owned factories were selected as the first batch of enterprise reform pilots in the country. Today, 6 of them no longer exist, and 2 of them are unspeakably brilliant. None of them have become successful waders.In the 1980s, reform figures such as Nian Guangjiu, Bu Xinsheng, Zhang Xingrang, Ma Shengli, etc., who were once all-powerful for a while, have become silent "historical figures."However, many business heroes who emerged in the 1990s, such as Mou Zhong, Chu Shijian, Pan Ning, Li Jingwei, etc., either sank or floated, all of which have become passing clouds.Some places and terms that used to be benchmarks for reform, such as "Wenzhou model", "Southern Jiangsu model" and "Shekou experience", have also lost their glorious first-mover effect. In the past 30 years, the issue of "surname capital and surname society" that people have fiercely debated has now reached a consensus. Many adventurers have paid the price for it and even lost their lives in the "forbidden zone". From today's perspective, it is already a common thing.After several rounds of growth cycles, the theme of economic change and the company's growth path have undergone several transformations, often exceeding people's expectations.Chinese enterprises are trekking on a very unique road to marketization. They have experienced a series of seemingly accidental historical events and social changes (such as the establishment of "special zones", the unexpected rise of township enterprises, the occurrence of the Asian financial turmoil, the Internet economy, etc.) The birth of China and the very special capital market, etc.) continue to adapt and move forward with the trend.In this wonderful and changeable historical process, the "objective laws" that economists like to talk about cannot be observed at all.

If there are any commonalities in this historical process, then there are two most notable points.The first point is that the people and the government’s longing for wealth, firm farewell to the status quo of poverty, and strong pursuit of modernization have become the unshakable value pursuit of all people. People can “cross the river by feeling the stones”, regardless of your It is a white cat and a black cat. As long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat. There are thousands of reasons, and the most difficult one in the history of development.It is under this overall consensus that any twists and turns and repetitions are finally overcome one by one.In a sense, the 30-year Chinese economic miracle is a triumph of extremely pragmatic empirical values.

The second point is the game, compromise and integration of various interest groups around wealth, power and growth space.From the first day of the reform, the competition pattern of the three major capital groups has emerged.State-owned enterprises strive to improve efficiency and get rid of institutional constraints.Backed by strong national policies and resources, it is in a uniquely competitive high position, and finally achieved a reborn achievement by relying on a strong monopoly strategy.Transnational capital has always been favored, and some people even think that China has suffered from "foreign capital dependence".It first obtained astonishing benefits in taxation, employment and land policies, and now it has become an indispensable force in the Chinese economy, and it is also a "Chinese enterprise" in a special sense.

Compared with state-owned and multinational capital, private capital, which has contributed the most to China's reform, has always had a bad fate.They have risen from the reckless, with almost no resource support, and their growth has been subject to multiple restrictions, and they have often become the targets of rectification and restrictions at the moment of macro-control. However, they are the most important and most resolute driving force for change.As James Kinch said in "China Shakes the World": "From the very beginning, China's reform was a process driven by forces and needs from the bottom up, but with top-down policy reforms Presented in the same way.” This feature has brought about a scene that has been going on for 30 years, and the capital power generated by the people always bears the policy risk of reform.And failure can come at any time before their behavior is recognized by policy.They are not only breakers of the planned system, but also violators of the current system, and they have to wander in the gray area of ​​legality and illegality.The so-called "original sin" was born from this, and countless corporate tragedies are staged here one after another.Sometimes, you have to feel that some entrepreneurs can succeed not because of the help of policies, but because they ignore the existence of policies.This kind of corporate evolution may not be an inevitable product.Its formation process and movement trend cannot be regulated by some common economic concepts, nor can it be compared with the broadest and most representative company operating mechanism or economic model.Its gradual path and speed are still full of variability.This process is carried out step by step at different levels throughout the country and localities separately and independently, and then converges into a confluence at a certain point in time.

"China has stepped out of the shoal stage in the early stage of reform, and is standing in the middle of the river, choosing the location on the other side." Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate in economics, described China in this way.Standing on the golden boat in 2008, we often imagine with the wind.We look forward to the not-too-distant future. In the history of world business, "Chinese enterprise" will become a specific concept of a certain enterprise model just like "American company" and "Japanese company".And this is obviously not an easy goal to achieve.

In the past 30 years, there have always been two Chinas: a China with strong economic growth, and a China with serious institutional consumption, which is the result of ownership problems. In the corporate history of this department, we have repeatedly thought about a question, why has no great world-class company been born in this great business rising movement?The first time a Chinese company entered the global business evaluation system was in 1989. In this year's "Fortune", Bank of China entered the list of the world's top 500 for the first time.Since 1996, building a world-class company in China has become a high-profile dream, and at least more than 200 companies have set their goals here.Today, when China's rise has become an indisputable fact, "When will we have a world-class company?" This has become a very embarrassing challenge that the Chinese business community must face.

A world-class enterprise should be born in an advanced business system.Of course monopoly can produce benefits, just as centralization can bring efficiency, but monopoly and centralization cannot coexist with a market-oriented and fair business system.It is a pity that none of the Chinese companies that have entered the "Fortune 500" was born in the field of perfect competition. Paranoid institutional arrangements have brought about the accumulation of resources, which is not the birth of a great man.A world-class enterprise should have experienced great adventures and conquests.Among the names we call world-class companies today, from Coca-Cola, General Motors, Volkswagen to Sony and Samsung, none of them has not experienced the baptism of globalization, and none of them has conquered thousands and rushed out in passionate competition.There are also losers in this list, such as South Korea's Daewoo and America's AT&T, but their fall is also a respectable and valuable experience.World-class enterprises should also have great management ideas and great entrepreneurs.Perhaps a shameful fact is that China has already produced the world’s most valuable company and the most profitable company in Asia—and more and more “market capitalization” and “most profitable companies” will be born in China, but they What may be contributed is boring or even disgusting management thinking, behind which there are a group of incompetent managers and a huge monopoly hand.For many, this is a worrying truth.

In related observations, another reaction is the crusade against Chinese entrepreneurs.For example, Haier and Lenovo have grown for more than 20 years. Dell and Cisco, which were born at the same time, have achieved world-class reputations, but why has our company not reached such heights? This condemnation is shared by many, but it is not the whole truth.They may indeed have lost a great opportunity at some critical moment.In the late 1990s, they had the opportunity to gain a solid market position through the improvement of core technical capabilities, but ended up being entangled in price wars.In today's Chinese manufacturing industry, almost none of the well-known large companies have complete core technologies, which has become the biggest difficulty preventing them from participating in global competition, and it is also the root cause of their failure to become world-class companies. In addition, we must also see that the growth of these enterprises has been fatally restricted by at least two aspects.In terms of ownership, they are inherently vague, which consumes a lot of wisdom of entrepreneurs and directly leads to detours in decision-making.It is “rare in the world” for large Chinese companies to be troubled by property rights. It is hard to imagine that a company with unclear ownership can devote itself wholeheartedly to sophisticated and intense commercial operations.In terms of scale expansion, they have not received the financial support they deserve, and they cannot complete the great leap at the most suitable time.Stimulated by the Asian financial turmoil, China finally gave up the idea of ​​developing consortium-style enterprises, and also prevented those enterprises that succeeded through manufacturing from obtaining full financial support. Some private enterprises that tried to break through, such as Delong and Greencool , Brilliance, etc., because of the gray and risky operation. In the past many years, all new Chinese enterprises that have grown up in the field of perfect competition have all been troubled by one of them.In this sense, the deformity of the property rights system and the backwardness of the system are important reasons why Chinese enterprises cannot complete world-class leapfrogging. The late management guru Peter Drucker once used the following four characteristics to describe the "entrepreneur economy" in his mind: In a policy environment of full market competition, medium-sized companies with a large number of areas and a wide range become the backbone of the national economy; Professional managers have become an independent group; management as a technology has been applied to a wide range of economic and non-economic fields; entrepreneurial behavior has become the key to social innovation and the construction of a new order.In the 1980s when Drucker proposed the "entrepreneur economy", the U.S. economy was coming out of the recession of zero growth. In this revival, new enterprises represented by the software industry replaced the government for the first time to solve the problem of employment and get rid of poverty. Leadership in the economic crisis.The innovative entrepreneurial spirit has profoundly affected all areas of society and reshaped a generation of American youth. Drucker's description is so vivid that everyone who reads it will compare it with China after the reform and opening up.Indeed, we have seen many similarities. However, the multiple motivations for reform and the resulting system design seem to make us drift away from the "entrepreneur economy".As Hong Kong economist Zhang Wuchang said, "China's reforms in the past two decades, in short, have shifted from hierarchical privileges to assets to define rights. This is an extremely difficult reform, and no matter how you criticize it, China's experience It is an unprecedented success story.” In the future, what we need to observe is whether hierarchical privileges are still fermented in the clearly defined asset competition, or whether assets with a certain status have the privilege of priority access to resources and development opportunities. The existence of a large number of monopolies is a national disgrace.The history of the world's century-old commercial civilization proves that the evolution of a modern commercial country is the process of the gradual self-disintegration of state-owned capital.In today's China, both state-owned and private companies are implementing a series of Americanized corporate transformations. Not surprisingly, before 2010, there will be a group of companies with the most American characteristics in Asia.On the other hand, ideas that are not the same as the free economic system of the United States still profoundly affect the growth of China's economy.The state-owned companies that have gradually completed the transformation of the corporate governance structure have regained control of the rhythm of economic development with an unprecedentedly powerful posture. It is a very curious subject how the conflicts will break out and be resolved. In May 2007, the 78-year-old Wu Jinglian published "A Market Economy Calling for the Rule of Law".In the "Preface", he wrote worryingly, "China's reform has not been successful all the way. The strategy of economic reform adopted by starting from the non-state-owned sector and moving from easy to difficult, on the one hand, reduces the resistance to reform and increases the With the help of reform, on the other hand, the rent-seeking environment characterized by the dual-track system exists widely, and the corruption of power for personal gain spreads everywhere.” He further said, “Two prospects for reform are grimly before us, one is The road of market economy under the rule of law under political civilization, one is the road of aristocracy and capitalism. In the battle of the two roads, the afterlife of the latter is aggressive. We must clearly understand the threat of this trend to the future and future of our nation. In our It seems that the only way to overcome this danger lies in the concerted efforts of the ruling and opposition parties to effectively promote reforms and build a fair market economy ruled by law... The delay in economic and political reforms has caused serious consequences in two aspects: first, China’s economy continues to Running along the extensive growth model driven by capital and other resource inputs has caused a series of social and economic problems; second, rent-setting and rent-seeking activities, and the ensuing corruption, widening gap between rich and poor, and social anomie All these have aroused strong dissatisfaction from people from all walks of life.” The most humanistic and morally courageous economist in contemporary history wrote that in this sense, our seasons here are “the spring of hope.” ", also "Winter of Disappointment", "Our future is boundless, and at the same time we feel hopeless", "We are going to heaven together, or we may all go the other way." From around 1991, Wu Jinglian took the lead in proposing that "the system is greater than technology", to Yang Xiaokai's warning of "the disadvantage of latecomers" in 2003, and to 2007 when Wu Jinglian, Jiang Ping and others called for a market economy ruled by law again. In the second half of China's 30-year reform Cheng, Chinese scholars have always maintained vigilance and criticism of institutional lag.How to build a healthy, harmonious and fair business country will be the biggest proposition of China's business reform after 2008.Have we found the exit of the maze yet? Mahatma Gandhi of India had a famous saying: "If you want to change the world, you must first change yourself." This may have special meaning for growing Chinese. From the perspective of macro-control and enterprise development, the 2008 Olympic Games is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate national strength and stimulate domestic demand. The confidence and impulse of national consumption will be greatly improved. In the next two years, China will also welcome To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, this is a prosperous path full of endless imagination.There is no indication yet that it might be interrupted. However, in such a commercial uplift, are we psychologically and morally prepared to withstand a huge explosion of wealth?Are we falling into what the Nobel laureate Naipaul described as "the flames of self-worship"?Have we learned to play the role of a great power?Worldwide glory and the same huge crisis seem to be like a pair of twin brothers lurking in the distance ahead of Chinese entrepreneurs.Facing a vast and unpredictable future world, it is not a kind of cowardice, but a kind of mature self-cultivation to be afraid of the situation and maintain the necessary awe. Time has the same meaning for everyone and every era.Yesterday's rebellion will gradually evolve into today's orthodoxy, and then "support" it into tomorrow's classics.The difference is that the ignited light will gradually burn to ashes, and people will less and less pursue the origin of the ignited light. R. G. Collingwood wrote in "The Idea of ​​History": "Time has put the world on the back of an elephant, but it hopes that people will no longer ask what it is that supports the elephant." He added, "We may have gone so far that we have forgotten the purpose of our departure." Maybe we should really review the purpose of our departure on the threshold of 30 years: this country is to achieve rejuvenation, and this nation is to get rid of poverty , this land should return to the embrace of globalization, and everyone here should enjoy equal and democratic universal rights. The so-called vicissitudes of life have been seen by this generation of Chinese only 30 years later. Youth is gone.For this era, we have an innate nostalgia. Many people's past is buried here. When we move away from it step by step, we can feel its existence more and more clearly.We actually don’t know much about this period of history that we have experienced together. Many things still need to be unraveled on the level of facts and rationality, and some are still undergoing drastic evolution.The business world is a field full of contingencies, and there is not the only corresponding relationship between facts and conclusions. Perhaps the details we state today will have new or even diametrically opposite interpretations at some point in the future, and after a few years , once again produce interesting and strange new ideas. Maybe looking back many years later, people will say, what a secular era these turbulent 30 years were, everyone pursued material pursuits, moral bottom lines were easily crossed, anxiety was everywhere, and identity was subverted from time to time.All wealth stories are ambiguous, and many entrepreneurs have uncertain futures. However, more people may argue that our most precious wealth is the past that we walked together.It gave birth to the grandeur and grandeur of an era, and it also nourished sophistication, ugliness and emptiness.We are confronted with an era of unprecedented complexity and largely unknown.The rapidly changing world, the disappointing personal destiny, tradition and modernity, individual and group, the collision and questioning of different interest groups, this is the background of 30 years of growth: "One year's change is not as good as imagined, five years' change is unimaginable, and ten years' change is unimaginable. Change is unimaginable", this is the evolution of 30 years.In this genesis-like history, each of us has never been a tourist, and great dreams will continue to be born from the blind and boundless grass roots. The pursuit of the secular itself also has an indescribable romance. poeticism. On the way to the future, this new world that is being created must still contain answers that we don't yet know. Maybe the best is yet to come, and maybe when prosperity is being created, decay has already begun. Despite all the complaints, losses and anxieties, after many years, we may still say that it was a good time.Because, it allows new possibilities to happen.