March 2013, Port of Miami, USA.
Then-President Barack Obama, in order to counter Made in China, was giving a passionate speech on "Made in America." Unexpectedly, a demon wind blew through, "ripping off" the Star-Spangled Banner behind him, revealing the words "Zhenhua ZPMC".
So, in such a "highlight" moment, Obama completed an embarrassing speech that encouraged "Made in America". At that time, Biden, who was still vice president, sat in the audience.
Coincidentally.
After 8 years, in November 2021, in the case of the Sino-US trade war, Biden, who has turned positive, also "reappeared in the past", ran to the port of Baltimore, Maryland, stood not far from the line of "Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industry ZPMC" blocked by the Star-Spangled Banner, and blew the old half-day US "infrastructure rejuvenation" plan.
In the front there is Ao Guan Hai, after there is Bai Zhenhua, familiar recipe, familiar taste. No matter how much you cover your ears and steal the bell, and use the Star-Spangled Banner as a fig leaf, you can't cover up the fact that China has made it, and you can't stop the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
In this video, we will talk about the "king of China's port machinery" - how good is Zhenhua Heavy Industry? How did it come from scratch, be encircled and suppressed all the way, smash the blockade of developed countries, and achieve the first place in the world in 6 years, and stunned that it was a heavy weapon of China that dominated the world?
01
Speaking of Zhenhua Heavy Industry, it is definitely a story that makes people's blood boil.
Not only because its founder Guan Tongxian started a business at the age of 59 and let China HAECO dominate the world at the age of 76; but also because at that time, strong enemies were around, 95% of the market of China's haeji industry was monopolized by international giants, And Mitsui, Samsung, Krupp and so on held the right to speak, and the development of China's HAECO was subject to people everywhere.
In 1955, at the age of 22, Guan Tongxian graduated from Beijing Institute of Technology (now Beijing Institute of Technology) and was assigned to work as a technician in the Ministry of Communications. After only two years in this post, he was beaten into a "rightist" and assigned to the Xingkai Lake Laogai Farm on the Sino-Soviet border, and the life in the great wilderness tempered his strong willpower and self-management ability in the future.
After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he was transferred back to the Ministry of Communications. During this period, he successively served as the deputy director of the factory department of the Department of Water Transport of the Ministry of Communications and the director of the ship and machinery department of the China Hong Kong Corporation.
In those years, at the highest point of the management department of China's port machinery industry, Guan Tongxian witnessed the fact that the core technology, key equipment and major orders of China's port machinery were all controlled by the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea. Although the Ministry of Communications also has a "Shanghai HauJi", due to backward technology and inferior quality, it is too collapsed, and even our own people would rather spend high prices to buy foreign second-hand goods than domestic goods.
In the face of the current situation and predicament of China's port machinery industry, he was worried and held his stomach, in his own words: "You have not seen the arrogance of foreigners, and you look down on us at all!" ”
In 1992, Guan Tongxian was 59 years old, and he was about to retire and enjoy his old age, but Deng Gong's "Southern Tour Speech" suddenly inspired his lofty ambitions: "Where there are container terminals in the world, there should be Products of China Port Machinery!" ”
Therefore, he reported to his superiors that he wanted to go to the sea to start a business and manufacture the port machinery equipment that China had done well, so he established the Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Manufacturing Factory, with himself as the general manager.
The name Zhenhua is to revitalize China!
When the company was first established, it was all worth US$500,000 from China Harbor Group Corporation (a subsidiary of the Ministry of Communications), plus a piece of land priced at US$500,000 from Shanghai Hafen Machinery Factory. In this way, he took 13 employees assigned from the Shanghai Port Machinery Factory, rented three broken houses in Pudong, Shanghai, and quietly opened them.
There may be a small partner who thinks that if there is state support, give another 1 million US dollars, I can also achieve a Zhenhua Heavy Industry. But in fact, of the $1 million, only $500,000 is liquidity, and THE MANUFACTURE OF HAEMANY IS A HIGH-COST JOB, COSTING AS MUCH AS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ALONE, PLUS MILLIONS IN FREIGHT. Therefore, a mere $500,000 in liquidity is a drop in the bucket, and it is not enough to revitalize the gap between the teeth.
Looking back now, in the words of Guan Tongxian, the fledgling Zhenhua had no funds, no technology, no fame, no market, no talent, and was completely a "leather bag company", not to mention competing with international giants, not even the qualifications for bidding, and could only rely on professional cooperation, asking others to do parts and assemble everywhere, barely surviving.
You know, at that time, the Chinese market had just opened, the manufacturing industry was not yet mature, and most of the start-ups started by relying on this way. At that time, many companies' products were "only to see the assembly, not to see the manufacturing", relying on imitating other people's products to accumulate technology and experience, after having an order, let other companies help make parts, and do the final assembly and debugging by themselves.
Initially, Zhenhua also came according to this routine, but it also has its own unique development path, that is, to take the strategy of "first foreign markets".
02
In May 1992, the Port of Vancouver in Canada was publicly bidding for haeel suppliers, and giants such as Japan's Mitsui and South Korea's Samsung went. Zhenhua also hardened his scalp, under the banner of "Shanghai Port Machinery", and handed out his bidding documents.
At the beginning, these giants did not pay attention to the newly established small minions of China Zhenhua, but they did not expect to rely on the price below 30% of the quotation, and did not want freight and shipping, Zhenhua broke the "first order" to grab the hand.
At that time, the port machinery that produced the Port of Vancouver cost $5.46 million, freight was $950,000, a total of $6.41 million was needed, and Zhenhua had only $500,000 in liquidity.
However, Guan Tongxian has this account in mind, Zhenhua has no money, no technology, and if he wants to survive in a desperate situation, he must take this opportunity to play out his reputation, so that it is possible to get follow-up orders in the huge hong Kong machinery market.
Under this, a war of excellence was launched.
Guan Tongxian immediately rushed back to Shanghai, recruited soldiers, recruited a number of technical backbones from the Shanghai Port Machinery Factory, used the company's land to mortgage the bank, signed a production cooperation agreement with the Jiangyin Port Machinery Factory, and signed a parts purchase agreement with the world's major brands. At the same time, he also asked employees to make every part of the crane like a handicraft, and all the key parts that they did not make well were all world famous brands.
With this kind of loss-making style of play, Zhenhua successfully went out of the circle, the first order has not been delivered, the Port of Vancouver has quickly added a second order, and even continues to blow wind to the small partners of neighboring countries, and the news spread to the Port of Miami in the United States. Of course, the Americans did not believe that China could actually manufacture such a large-scale port machine with high quality and low price, so they sent someone to the Port of Vancouver to find out in person, and the result was shocked by the seller's show, and they ordered 4 Zhenhua port machines with a total price of 14 million US dollars in one breath.
Zhenhua has also become famous, and in the blockade and encirclement of international giants, it has successfully broken out of a blood road and become a new star in the industry.
After winning the first battle and reaping a big order from the United States, Guan Tongxian had no time to be happy, but Mitsui in Japan poured a basin of cold water:
The U.S. market is a trap.
At the beginning, Mitsui also did business in U.S. ports, but the Americans were more difficult, there were many strange regulations, and as a result, because of the terms and delivery delays, they were fined $30 million, and they were pit by the Americans.
At the end, Mitsui also had a Versailles, because of their strength, they did not overturn the big ship in the gutter, the implication is that you small companies, or automatically quit, don't go to the United States to find death.
However, Guan Tongxian was born not to believe in evil, and sooner or later Zhenhua, the head of the Mountain, must be conquered by the United States, otherwise what will we talk about entering the world? Therefore, he immediately found the agreement signed by Mitsui and the United States, repeatedly studied it against more than 800 English terms, and finally gritted his teeth and clapped: take this hard bone, and at the same time be prepared for litigation.
However, even so, Zhenhua almost hit the American Way. At that time, the Americans threw out a strange clause: they were not allowed to assemble in Hong Kong, and they had to be transported by the whole plane, and there was no room for negotiation. You know, these port machines are steel giants, twenty or thirty stories high, the United States clearly wants to find fault.
Zhenhua worked hard to find it, this steel giant, the world's only Dutch shipping company called Duckwise has a special transport ship to transport. However, the Dutch company, which is exclusive and very domineering, not only sits on the ground and starts to ship for $1.3 million at a time, but also offers unreasonable conditions: if it does not guarantee that it will arrive on time, it will have to be delivered immediately, otherwise it will be fined by the hour.
Zhenhua was of course dissatisfied with these unreasonable demands, and repeatedly negotiated with Duckwise, and the result was that the other party said: "We can only follow our rules", which is to make Zhenhua repeat the mistakes of "Mitsui failure".
Guan Tongxian, who was forced into a corner, realized that if the bottleneck of transportation was not broken, he would be subject to people forever, stuck in the neck, and humiliated. He was not accustomed to this stink of the Dutch, and decided to build his own ships and build his own fleet of transport ships.
Therefore, Zhenhua raised money everywhere, spent $2 million to buy a very large old transport ship, and then gathered the experienced engineers in the factory, according to the style of the Dutch special ship, according to the gourd painting scoop, after more than four months of meticulous restructuring, a special transport ship was copied. In this way, the world's first largest, 60,000-ton large-scale container machinery transport ship - "Zhenhua No. 1" was born, and this ship can transport several port machines at a time, far exceeding the transportation capacity of Duckwise's transport ships, Zhenhua finally took its fate into its own hands!
In 1995, Zhenhua Port Machinery successfully landed in the United States port, ending the history of the use of Chinese port machinery in the United States terminal.
At this moment, China's amazing and omnipotent learning ability made the Dutch completely dumbfounded, and their wishful thinking was empty, and they hurriedly sent someone to negotiate cooperation with Zhenhua, hoping that the two would join forces. However, after Zhenhua flatly refused, Duckwise became angry and immediately turned his face and sued Zhenhua in an international court on the grounds of patent infringement. In court, Guan Tongxian said something that could not be refuted: "Cars all over the world are four wheels and one steering wheel, so why am I making an infringement?" It seems that Geely Li Shufu said that "building a car is nothing more than four wheels, plus a few sofas", which is to learn the essence of guan lao.
Go the Dutch way and leave them with nowhere to go.
After the Dutch lost the case, Zhenhua changed 26 special transport ships in one breath, becoming the only heavy port machinery manufacturer in the world that can be self-built and self-transported, which not only greatly shortened the delivery date of port machinery equipment, but also saved the cost of single-machine transportation to more than 50%, which also became the "killer weapon" for Zhenhua to defeat opponents in the future.
Under the effect of the two "live advertisements" of the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Miami, other ports such as the United States and Germany have thrown orders, and Zhenhua cannot receive it with full firepower. After this, the original arrogant Dutch Duckwise company deteriorated, and gradually withdrew from the port machinery transportation market.
In 1998, the United States launched 6 international tenders for port machinery, Zhenhua "independent China 5 yuan", after which the port machinery market, which has been firmly occupied by Western countries for decades, has been completely opened. In fact, since this year, Zhenhua has won a quarter of the world's market, leaping to the first place in the world, from selling the first equipment to reaching the top of the world's first, it only took 6 years.
In 2000, Zhenhua relied on the world's leading technology to knock on the door of Germany, the home of industrial machinery. Later, at the CAT terminal of the Port of Hamburg, Germany, Zhenhua demonstrated a suffocating operation - container GPS positioning, from loading to the yard to achieve unmanned operation, the huge container automatically moves throughout the process, corrects deviations, and finally lands, with an error of only 15 mm! Let the Germans kneel. At that time, when I heard that Germany had introduced 4 Zhenhua port machines, the overseas Chinese in Germany could not sit still, and specially took a car from all over the world to witness this historical moment. When the Zhenhua port machine passed on both sides of the port river, a casino owner on the shore was greatly moved and spontaneously raised the Chinese flag at the scene.
In 2004, Maersk, the world's largest shipping company, signed a New Year's Eve order with Zhenhua, with a frequency of 100 million US dollars per year, and placed orders for 3 consecutive years; in the same year, Zhenhua successfully developed the world's first double 40-foot port machine, which can grab 2 super containers (40 feet) or 4 standard containers (20 feet) at a time, which makes the rich Dubai Port extremely favored, so it won a large order of 218 million US dollars in one fell swoop. With this, Zhenhua also won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2005.
What's more, the aircraft carriers built by Western countries are also inseparable from Zhenhua's port machinery. In 2009, the British wanted to build the "Queen Elizabeth" aircraft carrier, the British Empire, the country turned over the box and cabinet is unable to build a thousand tons of gantry crane, no way, and finally had to turn around and spend $20 million from China to buy a "Goliath" gantry crane back.
Interestingly, after this, India also wants to build a gantry to hang back and save his rotten tail aircraft carrier. However, at that time, India and China were having an unpleasant quarrel, the country was boycotting Chinese manufacturing, hindered by the face of not looking for China, wanted to buy a second-hand gantry crane from the British sea, it just so happened that at that time, Britain felt that the aircraft carrier was built, and it was not necessary to use such a large gantry crane, and was interested in selling it.
Therefore, Lang had a concubine intention, and the two sides hit it off, and India bought this second-hand "Goliath" gantry crane. In fact, not only India, but even the United States of Light, the light of the light, has also asked us for gantry cranes when building warships, and the United States has bought much more than India.
In July 2008, the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands held the opening ceremony of Euromax, the world's most advanced and largest automated container terminal, and the "ZPMC" nameplate was everywhere. At that time, Zhenhua controlled more than 70% of the global market share, and the original overlords Mitsui and Mitsubishi were forced to gradually abandon the port machinery market. Later, in the world's Dagang bidding, as long as the Japanese saw Zhenhua bidding, they would immediately pick up their bags and leave.
Nowadays, looking at the global port machinery rivers and lakes, Zhenhua is no longer invincible, and its products have covered about 300 terminals in 104 countries and regions around the world, ranking first in the world for 23 consecutive years and becoming the well-deserved "king of port machinery".
03
At the beginning of Zhenhua's establishment, he visited modern enterprises in South Korea, and the head of modern enterprises arrogantly said to Zhenhua's engineers: "You go directly to the dock to visit, your country's terminal will use our products in the future." ”
From being subject to people, being sneered at, and being surrounded and suppressed all the way, to now reversing the counterattack, cutting down the international giants, monopolizing the global market, and realizing all this, why is Zhenhua?
In terms of the lyrics that Guan Tongxian likes to hum, it is:
The most difficult thing is loneliness, and the hardest thing to throw away is glory.
Never learn to deceive the rich, the real article is under the lone lamp.
As the ceo of the world's largest PORT MACHINERY company, this old man is particularly energetic, sleeping four or five hours a day, the mobile phone ringtone is "Matador March", 24 hours of boot, more than 10 hours a day, he declares that as long as he can climb more than 20 floors of Hong Kong Machinery in one breath, he will never retire.
And this old man who single-handedly founded Zhenhua and made "Made in China" famous in the world, but did not enjoy any equity incentives, and his annual salary in 2008 was only 350,000 yuan, which was not as much as the deputy at the bottom. Compared with the hundreds of millions of salaries of some assembly plant executives, it is even less worth mentioning.
Although Guan Lao is particularly cruel to himself, he is very generous to the tens of thousands of migrant workers at the bottom, and he has a set of management.
The tens of thousands of migrant workers on Zhenhua Changxing Island were once a long-standing and difficult problem restricting the progress of Zhenhua's production. Because these farmers and workers have left their hometowns to work in Shanghai, their wives and children are not around, they have no sense of belonging, and they have to go home to do a bumper harvest during the busy season, resulting in efficiency that has not been improved.
In order to stabilize them, the old man first built a house and gave them a home; then let the wife and children come over, so that they can rest assured, the family can get a 30 square meter house, there is a kitchen and bathroom, "as soon as the wife comes, it will be stable for a large half"; finally, the overtime pay will be increased. In this way, the peasant workers have no worries, and it is not a problem to shake off their arms and work all night.
After the military's morale was stabilized, in order to arouse everyone's enthusiasm for study, Guan Lao also spent money to run schools and conduct training. Since most of Zhenhua's orders are from abroad, the business level of employees will directly affect the company's order and service quality. Therefore, he organized foreign language examinations twice a year, invited foreigners to be examiners, and then simply and rudely stipulated that as long as they passed the examination, each person could increase his salary by 600 yuan to 1200 yuan based on the test results. At this moment, everyone's enthusiasm for learning is high, and every day after work, they step up their learning of foreign languages, and they can't hold back.
In 2006, in the bidding for the New Bay Bridge in San Francisco, the double test of technology and language overwhelmed almost all bidders, but Zhenhua stood out in one fell swoop. Zhenhua welders not only passed all certifications, but also communicated with the US side at the construction site without obstacles.
In addition, Guan Lao also gave Zhenhua a hard requirement, "At least one world record a year!" To this end, Zhenhua takes out 5% of its sales every year to concentrate on scientific research, rewards technological innovators, and later adds "Zhenhua Heroes" and issues millions of awards, and the winners only look at the ability to contribute, regardless of position, education, and identity.
In addition, he also has his own unique vision of market management. At the beginning, when Zhenhua Port Machinery was in full swing, Guan Tongxian was planning a broader offshore equipment market. Because in his view, even if the global port machinery is completely monopolized, it is only a "small pond" of 3 billion US dollars, while the world's offshore equipment is a "vast ocean" of up to 300 billion US dollars. Later, he established the strategy of "focusing on hong kong machinery and diversifying to offshore and steel structure industry", and the company was renamed Zhenhua Heavy Industry.
Since officially entering the offshore equipment market in 2006, Zhenhua has built a number of marine engineering ships represented by giant floating cranes and pipe laying boats, which have become famous abroad.
To give a few examples, Asia's largest heavy-duty self-propelled suction dredger, the Tiankun, is the world's most advanced dredging vessel, known as the "island-making artifact", and the seabed mixture dug in 30 minutes can fill a pit the size of a standard football field and a depth of half a meter. At the beginning, Vietnam also engaged in reclamation and island reclamation on the islands and reefs in the South China Sea that invaded the mainland, but it did not have Chinese technology, nor did it have China's "island-making artifacts", and could only use fishing boats to transport sand and gravel a little bit to "pile up mud", and as a result, when the typhoon came, all of them were in vain.
Zhenhua 30 is the world's largest single-arm slalom crane ship, lifting weight of 12,000 tons, a total weight of 140,000 tons, the ship can rotate 360 degrees, displacement of 240,000 tons, the volume exceeds all the aircraft carriers in service in the world, this giant is not only powerful, but also high lifting accuracy, in the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge hoisting 6,000 tons of immersed pipe joints, and finally reached an accuracy of 1.5 cm, so that the world is amazed. The sinking of the South Korean Sewol cruise ship in 2014 was also successfully salvaged by the Zhenhua 30.
Nowadays, such a big country heavy weapon is the new "killer weapon" of Zhenhua's sea engineering equipment manufacturing.
04
However, the grand plan has not yet begun, 76-year-old Guan Tongxian suddenly retired in December 2009, the reason is a mystery, causing a lot of shocks within Zhenhua, a generation of legends have withdrawn, people can not hide their inner loss.
A management member of the company said, "In fact, everyone was very surprised, and everyone thought that he would continue to do it, at least not leave now." "It is lamentable that this company, which was once proud, actually took Guan Tongxian's retirement as a watershed, and has never been brilliant again."
After the Guan Xiantong era, Zhenhua's atmosphere has deteriorated, product quality has declined, management obstacles are numerous, on the one hand, the extensive management of the entrepreneurial stage continues, there are many loopholes and low efficiency, on the other hand, the institutions are bloated, the departments are numerous, people are floating, nepotism is complicated, the work is mutually constrained, everyone pays attention to their own interests, fattening themselves and harming the public, and the company has suffered huge losses for several consecutive years.
In 2012, Zhenhua once again lost a huge loss of 1 billion yuan, and Guan Tongxian, who had been retired for several years, finally couldn't bear it anymore and angrily rebuked his successor for messing up Zhenhua and eventually "committing many acts of injustice will kill himself."
After that, Zhenhua's management changed several times, a large number of technical talents were lost, although in 2013 finally turned a profit, but Zhenhua has long ceased to be brave, in July 2021, two vice presidents and executives resigned.
Holding the "Heavenly Card" in hand, but playing a mess, Zhenhua's successor should indeed reflect on it.
Today's Zhenhua, although the shell of the "world's first" of HONG KONG MACHINERY is still there, it is still the pride of China's manufacturing, but it is only relying on the Jiangshan laid by its predecessors to "eat the old money".
Made in China wants global hegemony, doomed to obstacles and long.
Throughout the history of Zhenhua's development and growth in the past thirty years, it is actually a history of China's manufacturing counterattack, China is like a huge machine, rolling forward, crushing all the obstacles on the way forward little by little, playing the role of a mill in a developed country.
For example, before China developed the shield machine, the Germans sold us 350 million yuan a piece, which could only be stopped if it was broken, and the Germans came to repair it, 3,000 US dollars per person per day, and when repairing, they also had to pull the cordon, and the Chinese was not allowed to enter. However, after China developed the shield machine, a machine cost only tens of millions, which is one-eighth of the original German goods.
In the medical field, the same is true of the heart coronary stent that turns into cabbage price in 2020. Mainland China is a big country for cardiovascular diseases, and it takes 1.5 million coronary stents alone to consume a year, with a total cost of 15 billion yuan, accounting for 10% of the total market for high-value medical consumables.
But before 2000, imported cardiac stents monopolized the domestic market, and the price of an imported drug-containing stent was about 40,000 yuan, and many families could not afford to use it. Until 2004, the first domestic drug-containing stent was listed, which finally broke the import monopoly, and the price of domestic stents after listing was only half of the imported. Since then, the rapid rise of domestic stents, gradually replacing imported goods, until 2020, the state directly hit the price of coronary stents to the floor price of 700 yuan! Compared with the original 40,000 yuan, we can imagine how much the Western countries have eaten the hard-earned money of the Chinese people over the years.
Nowadays, China is the only country in the world with all industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification, 39 major categories, 191 medium categories, and 525 sub-categories, forming a complete and independent industrial system; China is also the first country in the world to exceed one million annual patent applications, accounting for 40% of the total number of global patent applications, more than the United States, Japan, Germany, and Italy combined.
There is a saying in "Kill a Mockingbird" that I like very much: May you overcome your prejudices, may you keep moving forward.
May China's manufacturing have the support of countless compatriots, stepping on thorns and going to glory.
There are many more such Chinese manufacturing, follow-up articles will continue to be published, together to cheer for China manufacturing!!