Zhan Rui was able to get out of trouble in three years, how much was the credit of Chu Qing himself?
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The author | no biography Si Ji
Edited | Lin Haifeng
On the evening of February 28, former Unigroup Zhanrui CEO Chu Qing left a resignation speech in the internal WeChat group.
"Dear directors, I have received a resolution from the Board of Directors of Zhan Rui to dismiss me as CEO and director."
The reluctance is beyond words.
"Zhan Rui has been out of difficulties for three years and has entered a strong upward development track." This is another passage left by Chu Qing.
In the days when the purple light showed its sharpness, Chu Qing has always been a controversial figure.
Some people think that he is the Shang Martin who made the "Zhao Zhao Old Qin" country rich and strong, and some people think that he is the father of Qing.
Now Unigroup Zhanrui has just shaken off the shadow of years of stagnation, and the dawn of the listing of the science and technology innovation version is near. Chu Qing left at this time, far from being a successful retirement. For Zhan Rui, it is really not called unloading and killing donkeys. Whether it was for Chu Qing or Zhan Rui, this personnel change seemed a bit strange.
1
Zhan Rui's life was hanging in the balance, and Chu Qing was in danger
On the eve of Chu Qing's arrival, Zhan Rui was in the autumn of crisis and survival.
After Tsinghua Unigroup acquired Spreadtrum and Rui Dike in 2014, the former CEO of Spreadtrum Li Li took up his post and became the head of Zhan Rui.
Li Liyou
Li Liyou is not an idle generation, as early as the spreadtrum period, the founding team Chen Datong, Wu Pingren withdrew from spreadtrum, Li Liyou resolutely and resolutely took over this hot potato, when Spreadtrum experienced the dividends of the cottage machine era successfully flew to the NASDAQ in the United States, but under the 2G to 3G switch, the lack of competitiveness and other issues were highlighted, and the financial crisis faced the risk of collapse.
After taking over as spreadtrum CEO, Li Liyou, a self-proclaimed semiconductor farmer, made a strong reform of Spreadtrum, and the market value soared 51 times in 5 years, until 2015, it still maintained 530 million chip shipments, of which smart phone chips accounted for 200 million, feature phone chips accounted for more than 300 million, and in 2016, the baseband chip volume shipped 700 million, and Samsung became Spreadtrum's largest customer.
However, as Li Liyou grew older, his grasp of the market obviously lost his previous sensitivity.
In 2015, ZhanRui's feature phone chips shipped 100 million more than smartphone chips. This billion chip has become the bane of Zhan Rui's transformation from prosperity to decline.
The entire mobile phone is greatly evolving from a feature phone to a smart phone, and spreadtrum after becoming a sharp has not yet seen the situation, it has been beaten by the market, a dead functional machine, a moment of cooperation with shareholder Intel to develop 5G baseband chips into the high-end market but finally there is no follow-up, the cooperation is terminated, and soon lost Samsung, a big customer, in the Chinese market.
2015-2017 is a period of rapid development of the mainland semiconductor industry. During this period, the domestic leading chip design company HiSilicon Semiconductor grew by 72.62% in three years, but the revenue growth of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhanrui in three years was only less than 0.55%. Sail against the current, and if you don't advance, you will retreat.
At this time, Li Liyou was also gradually unable to do so, and Zhao Weiguo, then chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, also gradually changed his intentions.
Zhao Weiguo
Zhao Weiguo eventually invited Zeng Xuezhong, who was known as "Zeng Billion" and "Eight King Kongs" within ZTE, as Li Liyou's successor.
Zeng Xuezhong went to Xiaomi today, when ZTE was recognized as a young zhuang faction, Zhao Weiguo hoped that after the smooth transfer of Zhan Rui's authority to Zeng Xuezhong, backed by ZTE contacts to bring new changes to Zhan Rui, but also considering that ZTE's performance in overseas markets can help Zhan Rui open up the global market.
But man is not as good as heaven.
In 2018, ZTE was subject to U.S. sanctions. Hou Weigui, the founder of ZTE who re-emerged from the mountains, pulled his suitcase and rushed to the Shenzhen airport to tell the loneliness and helplessness of ZTE at this time.
ZTE is already difficult to protect itself, and Zhao Weiguo's expectations of Zeng Xuezhong have naturally become a bubble.
At the same time, 6 kilometers southwest of Shanghai Zhan Rui's office, a middle-aged man from the newly established laboratory has just resigned from HiSilicon and soon became the director of the microelectronics research institute of the laboratory. It is said that in this domestic top 1 chip design company to reach the rank of 20 and above talent is rare, and this middle-aged man's rank is as high as 23, and the final title is hiSilicon's chief strategy officer.
When Zhao Weiguo heard the news, he did not even take into account the feelings of Zeng Xuezhong, who had just ascended to the throne and had not yet unleashed his fists and feet, and immediately paid homage to this "great god" and sincerely invited him to take charge of the Purple Light Exhibition.
This "great god" was Chu Qing.
2
Savior or Triumph?
Just as Zeng Xuezhong first joined forces with Li Liyou for several months after he came to Fuzheng, in March 2018, Chu Qing joined forces with Zeng Xuezhong for several months, Zeng Xuezhong left, and Chu Qing took charge of Rui Qiankun alone.
Compared with Zeng Xuezhong, Chu Qing prefers to show his face, and he also prefers to use the power of the media to sing praises for himself.
On August 15, 2019, at the Tsinghua Unigroup Media Open Day, Chu Qing, who has been employed for half a year, made his first public appearance, wearing white POLO short sleeves, black jeans, and blue half-frame glasses, excitedly sharing the achievements made in the past six months to the outside world.
Chu Qing
Chu Qing used the word "earth-shaking" to describe the changes in Zhan Rui in the past six months, he believes that Zhan Rui has not only changed the chaotic and loose and even bureaucratic organizational structure, but also all the models of products provided by Zhan Rui have also been generally praised, and the repair rate is only two thousandths, far exceeding the customer quality standards by 20 thousandths.
"I think this is also the achievement of our change, so we call it 'New Showcase.'" Chu Qing was extremely proud of the merits he had achieved in leading Zhan Rui.
To be fair, after Chu Qing's arrival, Zhan Rui really took on a new look.
The changes in Zhan Rui are obvious to all, not only in the field of mobile communication business to achieve leapfrog development, from 15 years behind the world's first 2G mobile phone chip, to become one of the only 5 providers in the world (Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, HiSilicon, Zhan Rui) to launch 5G modem.
In 2020, the revenue of Zhanrui smart machine exceeded that of functional machines, and the revenue of smart machines increased by more than 50%, exceeding 100 million US dollars, and achieved the market share of smart children's watches, low-speed Internet of Things (GSM+NB-IoT), smart POS, LET Cat.1 and other fields in the world or the country.
But how much is the credit of Chu Qing himself?
For example, Chu Qing constantly claimed that he made two major strategic decisions on the second day of taking office: cutting off 90% of the company's projects and starting independent research and development of 5G.
But today, Zhan Rui can rise again, in large part because 4G gives Zhan Rui the opportunity to re-take the team.
In Chu Qing's many self-narrated scripts, he always intentionally or unintentionally missed an important factor: 5G killer applications have not yet appeared, and 4G mobile phones are still in high demand.
Even in 2022, the third year of 5G commercialization, the global shipment volume of 4G mobile phones is still 400-500 million, accounting for nearly 40% of the global annual shipments of 1.3 billion smartphones.
In the case of Qualcomm All in 5G, the industry's leading company, 4G has become an opportunity for Zhanrui's rapid development.
According to the latest report of Counterpoint in the third quarter, the 2021Q3 ZhanRui has a market share of 10% in the global smartphone AP market for the first time, surpassing Samsung and ranking fourth in the world, achieving an unprecedented surpass. Counterpoint analyst Parv Sharma commented on this achievement, saying that the change in Zhan Rui's global market share is mainly due to the strong penetration of Zhan Rui into the 4G SoC market, which has won orders from customers such as Samsung, Honor, Realme, Motorola, ZTE, and Transsion.
Among The 4G SoC series of products, the highest-selling T610 was launched in June 2020, while Chu Qing joined ZhanRui in December 2018, according to the research and development cycle of a new product every 2 to 3 years, it is impossible to fully confirm whether the T610 is a newly developed chip. However, there are rumors that during Chu Qing's tenure, there was a dedicated internal code name for x6, and it is not known whether this x6 and T610 belong to the same one.
In terms of customers, especially the benchmark customer of Samsung, to a large extent, it is the foundation laid by Li Liyou that year, and ZTE Transsion and others have a great relationship with Zeng Xuezhong, as for glory, it is more because of the national fortune that the opportunities of the times are not taken by Zhan Rui, but it is interesting that Chu Qing's efforts and preparations for his predecessors are not mentioned at all, but he talks about how he turned the tide, especially Chu Qing's video interview with the CCTV host was released, and there was an uproar inside Zhan Rui, and many people even thought that Chu Qing's behavior was the work of greed.
Many veterans believe that the development of the company in such a market environment is a matter of course. They are more willing to explain the changes in Zhan Rui with the historical materialist viewpoint of the masses of the people creating history than Chu Qing's boasting on the stage.
The reason why the old ZhanRui people are not convinced of the "savior" Chu Qing is that on the one hand, they feel that Chu Qing's words are exaggerated. On the other hand, it was because of Chu Qing's many internal behaviors during his reign that many old exhibitors chilled.
3
Chu Qing's employment of people has caused contradictions to intensify
After Chu Qing took office with the "Shang Fang Sword" given by Zhao Weiguo, he immediately declared war on Zhan Rui's management system.
Deeply influenced by Huawei's culture, Chu Qing has no doubt about the strength of Huawei's management system.
In the past few years, ZhanRui's management system is indeed difficult to be satisfactory.
After years of development, ZhanRui has long been lined with mountains, some departments can't fall off, and some managers are not worthy of morality. Zhan Rui is also being gradually sucked dry by this intertwined network of relationships: Chu Qing revealed in an interview with the media that when Zhan Rui inspected internally, he even found that a project team used the company's resources to start a business to develop drones, planned for two or three years, and there was no product when the company found it.
All this made Chu Qing realize that repairing and tinkering with the original system could not save Zhan Rui, and only when a fire burned the branches and vines to re-take root could there be a glimmer of life. Under such a cognition, Chu Qing began to carry out drastic reforms to Zhan Rui.
The sharper the reform, the more it is necessary to have a trusted right and left arm around.
Chu Qing, who knew that the strong dragon could not fight the snake on the ground, began the "Great Purge" of Zhan Rui's old minister. With Shang Fang's sword in his hand, Chu Qing's first sword slashed at a heavyweight executive.
On the night of April 20, 2020, Zhan Rui fired Wu Di, the former head of the mobile phone department, and Chen Jiefeng, the marketing company, on the grounds that he "invited the head of the sales department of the competitor and strongly persuaded Wang Mou, who was going through the resignation procedure, not to return to the United States and switch to the competitor's company".
The next day, Zhan Rui issued an internal letter, emphasizing the matter, while harshly criticizing the pre-2018 Zhan Rui management system: the management team was irresponsible, and a group of warlord-style figures took the opportunity to seize power and deceive the upper and lower levels. "For a time: the mountains are lined with black smoke and miasma; the public instruments are used privately, the law is abolished; the talents are scattered, and the cause is withered."
With the double blessing of Zhao Weiguo's trust and public opinion, Chu Qing was able to successfully expel a group of old people and promote his old comrades-in-arms Zhou Chen, Huang Yuning, and Mi Xiaolong, who had worked together, as his cronies.
After Chu Qing's reform, these former colleagues of Chu Qing are in important positions in Zhan Rui: Zhou Chen, executive vice president of Tsinghua Unigroup Zhan Rui and director of the Market Management Department, took over the relevant work of the consumer electronics business management department and the product engineering management department; Huang Yuning was the assistant director of the market management department; and Mi Xiaolong was appointed as the assistant director of the pan-connection business management department.
With the addition of the old partner, the famous management consulting expert, senior CMMI/IPD consultant Chen Fengyu, Zhan Rui established a new quality system, introducing IPD (integrated product development), CMMI (capability maturity model integration) and TMMi (test maturity model integration) and other advanced process specifications in the industry.
On the surface, Chu Qing's reforms in ZhanRui are advancing in an orderly manner. However, the old man of the ZhanRui Sect and chu qing's reforms of "from the dragon minister" were not in the same heart from beginning to end, and they had another view of Chu Qing's bold axe. In full swing, the seeds of chaos have quietly taken root.
Wei Weiyou is the old man of zhan ruili's business development, the cottage machine era has made great contributions to zhanxun, Chu Qing has been constantly checked after entering the bureau, many times asked to account for whether there is a cat in the business development, after being rejected, he was guided to report others as a quid pro quo for no longer being traced, and then angrily left his job.
Another scientist, Tao Hua, had his own patented technology when he joined Zhan Rui, and was ordered to turn it into a patent for the company, and the anxiety under the skin was not happy several times.
In Chu Qing's reform, it seems that the feelings of the "old zhanrui" did not take into account. Many veteran employees who joined before 2019 did not get a raise for several years.
An old employee revealed that the fresh graduates who joined in 2020 were inverted and the old employees who joined in 2016 only got a salary increase once in four years, and the monthly salary increased by 500 yuan.
The old employees who are not promoted either voluntarily leave their jobs or are poached by other companies, and there are few old Zhanrui people left. OPPO, which is eager to make cores, even dug people at the gate of Zhan Rui.
An employee who has been employed in Zhan Rui for a year revealed that Zhan Rui recruited many fresh graduates, but many technical backbones have gone, new fresh graduates have not been brought, and many new projects have been suspended at the beginning.
What makes the old employees even more chilling is that Chu Qing also specially emphasized that after having a system and process, he is not afraid of personnel changes, and if someone mentions resignation, he will approve it immediately and will not stay.
This statement, which almost regards the old employees as a burden on the company, makes the veterans feel that they are becoming the pity of the tasteless abandonment of the sharp food under Chu Qing's rule. And Chu Qing did not think that discarding them would make his cooking lack many flavors. They believe that Chu Qing's indigestible application of another company's model to Zhan Rui is quite critical, without taking into account the actual situation of Zhan Rui. In particular, these "nobles" have worked hard.
In the face of Chu Qing's reform, the old Zhanrui people could not help but have the sadness of "rabbits dead dogs cooking, birds hiding bows".
The faster Chu Qing's reforms advanced, the more intense the contradictions became.
This made Chu Qing's reformists and Zhan Rui's old ministers always deviate from Germany.
At the end of the story, Chu Qing finally reenacted the fate of Shang Jun a thousand years ago. After Chu Qing left in disgrace, many old ZhanRui even took a taxi to set off fireworks around Shanghai dozens of kilometers away in order to celebrate the incident.
4
Purple light changes hands
If Chu Qingshang can forcibly suppress the resentment of old employees with his dazzling "savior" aura, then Zhao Weiguo's loss of power is the last straw that overwhelms Chu Qing. Of course, there are also rumors that Chu Qing also has a company of his own during his tenure as CEO of Zhan Rui, which may also be directly related to his eventual departure.
In the past few years, under the impetus of Zhao Weiguo, Tsinghua Unigroup has attacked the city and acquired two major groups, Spreadtrum and Redico, respectively. But in the process of acquisition, the loan of Tianli finally made Tsinghua Unigroup swallow the bad consequences after a few years.
In July 2021, Tsinghua Unigroup, the parent company of Tsinghua Unigroup, which is still gaining momentum, received an official document from the court and applied for bankruptcy reorganization of Tsinghua Unigroup on the grounds that it obviously lacked the ability to pay off its debts.
After the bankruptcy reorganization was launched, it was reported that 7 institutions intended to participate in the bidding. Among them, the Zhilu Jianguang Consortium will be the most likely candidate to win the Tsinghua Unigroup.
Behind the Zhilu Jianguang Consortium is Zhao Weiguo's old rival Li Bin.
Li Bin
In 2017, Zhilu Capital, together with Jianguang Assets, Qualcomm and Datang Telecom, invested 3 billion yuan to establish a joint venture company, Wansheng Technology, the main technology comes from Qualcomm's low-end processor authorization, and its domestic competitor is Spreadtrum, which is Tsinghua Unigroup.
This move angered Zhao Weiguo, who scolded Datang Telecom in the circle of friends for being Wang Jingwei's investment day, and Qualcomm Fang's representative Meng Pu was a comprador, questioning the true identity of the major shareholder Li Bin.
Now, when Li Bin wanted to buy the entire Tsinghua Group as the Zhilu Jianguang Consortium, Zhao Weiguo casually declared to the outside world that "businessmen do not remember revenge."
But in fact, Zhao Weiguo not only "remembered his revenge," but also had an old vendetta with Li Bin and had not repaid it, and he had added a new grudge.
Just when the industry thought that the Zhilu Jianguang Consortium would successfully take over the Tsinghua Unigroup, the Beijing Jiankun Group controlled by Zhao Weiguo reported that the reorganization plan of the Tsinghua Unigroup would directly cause the loss of more than 70 billion yuan of state-owned assets, and then the Tsinghua Unigroup responded that Zhao Weiguo spread false information in an attempt to interfere with the judicial reorganization work.
After two fights, Zhao Weiguo was defeated. Nowadays, the reorganization of the Tsinghua Unigroup has become a foregone conclusion, and Zhao Weiguo has also lost his identity as the actual controller of Unigroup.
The Shang Fang Sword in Chu Qing's hand, which was first slashed and played later, suddenly became the "Former Imperial Gift" overnight.
From that moment on, Chu Qing's end today was already doomed. But the question is, after Chu Qing, who can take over the Purple Light ZhanRui?
5
Chen Datong may return
After Chu Qing left, Zhan Rui's future was again caught in the chaos and fog.
Ren Qiwei acted as CEO after Chu Qing left. Ren Qiwei graduated from Tsinghua University, has a background in Studying in Europe, joined the Xi'an R&D Center of The German Qimonda Company after returning to China in 2006, and entered the Tsinghua Unigroup Department in 2015, serving as an executive of 6 Tsinghua unigroup companies, with a rich resume. However, Ren Qiwei's technical background is memory, which is not very suitable for the communication technology that Zhan Rui is mainly engaged in.
Therefore, one voice believes that Chen Datong, one of the founders of Spreadtrum, is likely to return.
Through a lot of information, Lei Feng network cross-confirmed that Chen Datong is indeed the best potential candidate to serve as CEO after Tsinghua Tsinghua Group was taken over by Zhilu Jianguang.
Chen Datong
Who is Chen Datong? Before the establishment of Spreadtrum, Howey Technology, founded by Chen Datong, was successfully listed; when spreadtrum was founded, it debuted the world's first 2.5G baseband single chip, leading Spreadtrum to rise in the era of copycat machines; after the launch of News, it was active in the capital market and invested in many successful semiconductor projects.
More importantly, Chen Datong and Li Bin, the current helmsman of Tsinghua, are not only Tsinghua alumni, but also have many intersections in their work.
In 2010, Chen Datong and Yang Lei founded Huashan Capital and served as the chairman, while Li Bin was a partner of Huashan Capital.
In 2011, Li Bin went to SMIC as vice president, and in the same year, Chen Datong participated as a consultant in CIC's $250 million investment in SMIC, and later, Chen Datong publicly stated that this investment was invested in SMIC at its most difficult time. The two not only have the friendship of colleagues, but also have friends of hardship.
In 2014, Chen Datong's Huashan Capital cooperated with part of the management team of Huadeng Capital and Tsinghua Holdings to found Qingxin Huachuang, later Yuanhe Puhua, and at the same time, Jianguang Asset, a private equity fund management company focusing on the investment and merger of integrated circuit industries and strategic emerging industries, was also established.
Industry insiders estimate that if Chen Datong really returns to Unigroup, his old comrades-in-arms Yin Botao and Cao Qiang will also return.
Perhaps, Li Bin was already planning this move when he decided to take over the Tsinghua Unigroup.
At present, we still have no way of knowing who will eventually become ceo of the leaderless Zhan Rui. There is no way to know where Zhan Rui's future will go.
But Chu Qing's comrades-in-arms were only afraid that they would have to find another way out.
END