When Obama was giving a speech in Miami to promote American manufacturing, a gust of wind blew and unveiled the American flag on the heavy machine behind him, revealing the huge Chinese characters "Zhenhua" inside, making the world watch a joke.
What an embarrassing irony it is to recall that in the 90s of the last century, China was still poor in the port crane industry, and 95% of the global market was monopolized by Japanese, German and South Korean companies.
Just when China was creating embarrassment, a company called "Zhenhua" came into being. In just 6 years, it started from scratch and captured 90% of the market contribution of European and American enterprises in one fell swoop.
So how did Zhenhua surpass step by step and become a sought-after commodity in the world port machinery market today?
An aircraft carrier is a mobile conning tower of the modern navy and a microcosm of national power. But did you know that to build an aircraft carrier, you need another kind of "big power heavy weapon" - that is, the port crane?
Cranes are used to equip and transport thousands of tons of hull structures, which is simply the "heart" for the construction of warships.
However, in the 90s of the 20th century, China's port machinery industry was still facing great challenges.
At that time, this industry was monopolized by Japanese companies Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Samsung of South Korea, and Krupp of Germany, and the quality of domestic equipment was uneven, and it was impossible to obtain competitive qualifications. As a result, even domestic customers are more favored with imported products.
In such an environment, a local enterprise called "Zhenhua" officially opened in this difficult situation. In the face of such a powerful opponent, the company's founder Guan Tongxian showed extraordinary pride and determination.
He told a team of more than a dozen people: "Our goal is that every large container port in the world must use Zhenhua equipment! This "fearless" spirit stems from a firm belief in domestic equipment.
Zhenhua team starts from scratch, fearless of hardships, and creates high-quality products with rigorous craftsmanship. And they did not modify and follow the trend of related machines in a targeted manner, but faced the technical wall and opened up a unique way.
And the first way he thought of was to cut prices.
At that time, Vancouver's seaport intended to choose the next partner by bidding, and although Zhenhua was just starting out, it decided to participate in the competition.
Because it knows that once it wins this order, it is equivalent to getting a ticket to join the international market.
Under strong pressure, Zhenhua successfully won the bid, and Guan Tongxian led the team to fight tirelessly and continuously, and finally handed in a satisfactory answer, so as to successfully enter the US market.
Although it is famous, because it is a Chinese enterprise, Zhenhua was accidentally pitted by the Americans in the subsequent cooperation.
Just when Zhenhua was actively expanding the US market, he was sued by the American company for tightening a loose screw, and the court also sentenced Zhenhua to a fine of 500,000 US dollars for unauthorized work.
What is even more excessive is that when transporting port machinery to the United States, the United States actually let Zhenhua assemble it in the United States, and only a Dutch company could transport port machinery at that time.
The sky-high bills of the Dutch company and various treaties made Zhenhua decide to independently develop large transport ships and transport port machinery, breaking the opponent's transportation monopoly in one fell swoop.
He raised money to buy a second-hand transport ship for two million dollars and called in experts to modify it.
The arduous time passed day by day, and with their unremitting efforts, a brand new giant transport ship was born.
This is a large, modern transport ship, which they studied and modified after the Dutch transport ship, and can load several large port machines at once.
Guan Tongxian personally named it "Zhenhua No. 1", pinning on the hope of lighting up the road ahead.
The emergence of "Zhenhua No. 1" broke the transportation monopoly of European and American enterprises, and also announced that Zhenhua has become the world's first port machinery manufacturer that can manufacture and transport by itself.
Gradually, Zhenhua's technology became more and more skilled, and the more transport ships were created, the business naturally became better and better.
In 2006, in the era when the technology network was not very developed, Zhenhua Port Machinery had occupied 70% of the global market.
From June 2015 to June 2016 alone, Zhenhua Port Machinery has occupied 82% of the global market share.
Up to now, Zhenhua's business scope covers 95 countries around the world, not only maintaining the first place in the market for more than 20 consecutive years, but also having a market share of more than 90% in Europe and the United States.
How can anyone with such a capable opponent not be afraid, especially the United States, which has always regarded China as an adversary.
Otherwise, the relevant enterprises in the United States would not have seized a little fault and chased Zhenhua fiercely.
But for the suppression of the United States, Zhenhua is indifferent, just doing a good job of its own products and hitting the face of the United States again and again with his own actions.
One of the most famous is when Zhenhua built the New Bay Bridge in the United States.
At that time, the New Bay Bridge was damaged in the San Francisco earthquake and could not be used normally. According to common sense, as a developed country, there is naturally a way to repair the bridge.
But after the calculation of the United States, if the international construction itself, the cost is too high, so they decided to let foreign companies build it, just so they can also see the construction strength of other countries.
But what none of them expected was that this job was actually won by China's Zhenhua.
Although they admit that Zhenhua does have a hand in manufacturing port machinery, repairing bridges and manufacturing machinery are two different things after all, so the United States was not optimistic at first, and also secretly poked Zhenhua to make some small means deliberately difficult.
However, all this was solved under Zhenhua's powerful technology, which not only saved costs for the United States, but also improved the quality and life of the bridge, and the construction time was 5 months ahead of the expected time, which really shocked the entire industry.
Up to now, Zhenhua has mastered as many as 20 world-leading major core technologies, and hundreds of patents.
More importantly, in order to gain a firm foothold in the international market, Zhenhua will take out 5% of its revenue every year for product research and development, which is hundreds of millions or even billions of revenues.
Let me ask, if every Chinese enterprise can do something like Zhenhua, what other industry in the international market cannot be won by the mainland?