Wu Xiaobo: From the perspective of corporate history, I don't think Li Xiang He Xiaopeng has done anything worth documenting

Don't fantasize anymore, stop pleasing others, and live the life you like...... My generation doesn't have that opportunity in essence.

Author: Zhang Xiaojun

Producer: Tencent News "Periscope"

Some time ago, Wu Xiaobo was a little angry.

In his spare time, he swiped his mobile phone and saw someone express his opinion that he stayed up until two o'clock every day, and that their generation suffered so that the next generation would not suffer. Wu Xiaobo expressed strong disapproval: "What do you want? It's your business at two o'clock in the morning. If you endure hardship, will your child not suffer hardship?" In order to refute it, he wrote the article "You suffer your suffering, I suffer mine".

"Intergenerational communication is a big problem. The financial writer, busy signing his stacks of new book covers, his second corporate biography and his 20th publication, "The Biography of Moutai," said, "I may be my daughter's suffering...... You see I've written so many books, and she hasn't even read them. I understand my daughter very well. ”

"Daddy does a better job, and it could be a disaster for your daughter. He continued.

We have extended the intergenerational issue from father and daughter to the group of Chinese entrepreneurs. Wu Xiaobo, who has studied Chinese entrepreneurs for the past 30 years, has sought to trace this group for 100 years, weaving scattered facts into a complete narrative. He watched this group turn from the revolutionary era and the obscured history, and after the reform and opening up, it crossed the waves of peasants, urban marginals, and intellectuals to go to the sea, until the two huge waves of PC and mobile Internet, which pushed Chinese entrepreneurs to the center of the world stage. Today, Chinese entrepreneurs are in the sixth generation after the reform and opening up.

However, in the next 30 years, will the story of individual heroes continue to be written? Can the era of big water and big fish come back?

In the eyes of many people, 2023 is the first year of the explosion of artificial intelligence technology driven by large models, but Wu Xiaobo is more pessimistic. "Its opportunities, like PC or mobile Internet entrepreneurship, belong to everyone. ”

Compared with the first five waves of entrepreneurs that Wu Xiaobo wrote about in books such as "The Great Defeat", "One Hundred Years of Falling" and "Thirty Years of Turmoil", he feels that the sixth wave, which is today's wave of entrepreneurs, is "the strangest wave".

It's a peculiar interview experience. We didn't sit upright as usual, the first half of the chat took place in the moving car, and the second half was when he signed the book before the book signing. The hands are busy, but the brain is light. There is a conversation without a match, and the content is unexpectedly jumpy and interesting.

We seem to have stepped into a conservative era. If there is no big business in the future, how can our business civilization continue, and how should young people live a good life?

This wave of young people happened to be the fate of Wu Xiaobo's daughter and his contemporaries, and he had a close relationship with him.

The following is the full text of the interview, and the author has made some text optimizations.

01 A short history of entrepreneurs and 6 key years

Tencent News "Periscope": In your narrative, "entrepreneurs are the pivot of all key events" and "people are the starting point and destination of everything". Throughout the 100 years of modern Chinese business history, what generations can entrepreneurs be divided into in your mind?

Wu Xiaobo: You see that I wrote "One Hundred Years of Decline", if we look at it from the perspective of modernization, before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Chinese entrepreneurs were part of the salvation movement, and after the Opium War, we became the "sick men of East Asia", especially after the First Sino-Japanese War. Zhang Jian, the first champion in China, went to sea after the First Sino-Japanese War. After 1894, the first batch of social elites and intellectuals appeared in China, and they went to the sea on a large scale to build industrial and mining enterprises in order to save the country. For a long time, it was the theme of salvation. Like Zhang Jian, Rong family, Fan Xudong, Lu Zuofu, Yu Qiaqing.

After China's reform and opening up in 1978, there were several waves of entrepreneurship, and each wave represented a group of entrepreneurs.

The first wave was the township enterprises, the peasant generation. Like Wu Renbao, Yu Zuomin, Lu Guanqiu, and Nian Guangjiu. Because it is a township enterprise, Chinese entrepreneurs have been called "grassroots" for a while. You see, the founder of "Fool Guazi" is a "fool" for a long time, and he has no culture. Nian Guangjiu has a lot of symbolism - first, he tells you that an illiterate person can start a business and become a rich person, and second, he tells you that most of those who start a business and make a fortune are probably illiterate.

The second wave was in 1984, when we carried out the reform of the urban economic system, and some people in the city began to go to sea - next year is the 40th anniversary of many enterprises, such as Lenovo, Haier, Vanke, Jianlibao, Kelon, Zhengtai, and Nande. Nabodu is still on the fringes of the city — veterans, petty government officials.

The third wave was in 1992, when China's first group of intellectuals went to sea. Chen Dongsheng (founder, chairman and CEO of Taikang Insurance) is called the "92 faction".

The fourth wave was the PC Internet, which was launched in 1998 and 1999. Like Sina, Sohu, NetEase, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba.

The fifth wave is the mobile Internet, which began in 2012.

These are the five waves of entrepreneurs after the reform and opening up - (the key years are) 78, 84, 92, 98 and 12. Today could be the sixth wave.

Tencent News "Periscope": Is the sixth wave of entrepreneurship AI entrepreneurship?

Wu Xiaobo: No, I don't think it's AI. The sixth wave was the strangest wave.

Tencent News "Periscope": Strange?

Wu Xiaobo: It's a self-pleasing venture. The first five waves are to cater to the market demand. This wave of entrepreneurship, if we talk about the sixth wave, science and technology entrepreneurship still exists, but a big feature of this wave is that the high-speed development is over, the market is fully saturated, and this generation is the children of the propertied class - the previous waves are the children of the proletariat, and Zhang Yiming is the proletariat, sleeping in the basement of Beijing.

Just like my daughter's wave of post-95s, their motivation, path, model, and maybe even the source of capital will change.

Tencent News "Periscope": So, this wave can't be said to be an entrepreneurship driven by the wave of technology - just like the wave of the Internet and mobile Internet back then?

Wu Xiaobo: Yes, I don't think so. It is the entrepreneurship promoted by the national development stage.

Tencent News "Periscope": Let's not talk about the current wave. What are the different characteristics and commonalities of entrepreneurs across the past five generations?

Wu Xiaobo: The strongest desire to get rich is the first wave of people, the peasants.

Those who began to have a sense of public society were the "92 faction", and they were intellectuals and civil servants, and their public consciousness and feelings were particularly great.

This wave of '84 is the beneficiary of the late-mover strategy. They started their business in the 80s, which is China's catch-up model, and the so-called late-mover advantage is the advantage of cost, scale and sinking market, and replace it with these advantages.

Tencent News "Periscope": Wang Shi belongs to this wave.

Wu Xiaobo: Yes, this wave in the 80s was particularly prone to big guys.

In the 1998 wave of the Internet, they were basically undergraduates. Zhang Chaoyang is a Ph.D. student, and Robin Li is a graduate student. Their great characteristic compared to their predecessors is that they are inherently globalized and they are capital-conscious. In the first few waves, it was still a property rights issue, but they didn't have it anymore, because they were originally listed on the NASDAQ, or listed in Hong Kong, and they also had venture capital.

In 2012, the wave of mobile Internet was the most ferocious. The bloodiest is this wave of people, and the most bottomless is also this wave of people. First, the model has been run through, and it is nothing more than a copy of the PC model on the mobile Internet. Second, the urgency of the mobile Internet is very strong, and the war is particularly bloody, with group buying, online car-hailing, and bicycle sharing - "slashing" each other, constantly burning money, and the market is finalized in a short period of time. If this was not the case in previous generations, how could there be so much urgency? It was also the most profitable.

Didi, Meituan, and Byte, a big guy quickly appeared in three or five years, and the rest of the grass did not grow. It couldn't have happened before.

Tencent News "Periscope": Entrepreneurs like Wang Shi's generation are very emotional and idealistic, but Zhang Yiming's generation of entrepreneurs is more rational and even a little indifferent, like robots, why is there such a change? Is it an intergenerational reason, or is it related to their own business?

Wu Xiaobo: I don't think it has anything to do with business. Wang Shi's generation was in a period of transition of institutional change, and to be precise, they went through three periods: the revolutionary period, the planned economy period, and the market economy period. They are more sensitive to changes in the social system and have their own opinions.

02 Chinese entrepreneurs have turned from the obscured historical fate

Tencent News "Periscope": Wang Shi once asked you: "My father is an administrative official, my mother is a Xibe woman, and I have no business training, where did I and my generation of entrepreneurs inherit the genes?" In your opinion, where do the genes of Chinese entrepreneurs come from?

Wu Xiaobo: That generation would have thought about this question, but the current generation should not think about it. This question may not be important to them.

Tencent News "Periscope": Because the entrepreneurial spirit has been inherited. You first described entrepreneurs as a "forgotten group" who were not the protagonists. In recent years, Chinese entrepreneurs have long been the protagonists.

Wu Xiaobo: You're right. In the age of the revolutionary narrative, the entrepreneur is the conservative force, because the revolution wants to destroy everything, and the entrepreneur wants to keep everything. The history of China's salvation is a history of revolution. The reason why I wrote "One Hundred Years of Wandering" is that I have a great responsibility to present this part of the people in the revolutionary period.

I have a special chapter on the May Fourth Movement, how did the May Fourth Movement change from a few college student demonstrations in Beijing to a nationwide wave of school strikes and market strikes? Who will push you without money? Someone has to pay wages to strikes, and who is the driving force? That is, a large number of national capitalists and businessmen, who have political demands, and they are dissatisfied with the Beiyang government, so they express their demands through street movements: I can't rush myself, you rush forward, I will give you bread to eat.

This history is obscured. No one in the revolutionary narrative discusses these issues. What was the role of commerce during the Revolution? What kind of people were the people behind it? None of these people were survivors, all of them were losers. In terms of human memory, flesh, and wealth, they have not been inherited, and they have all fallen into blood mold. I'm just going to make this clear.

Tencent News "Periscope": What is your answer to Wang Shi's question now?

Wu Xiaobo: Two words, one is called "transmission" and the other is "unification", which means "tradition".

The first is inheritance, you have to sort out the history. If the history of the entrepreneur class is intermittent, there is no overall narrative of the class. You don't know who your ancestors, grandfathers, and fathers are, but you are a wild child, and we connect them through texts.

The second is Taoism, what are the values of this stratum? There is no particular difference between Chinese entrepreneurs and the major strata of Chinese society, and they are all products of the times. In every era, the qualities and public demands that you see in scientists, soldiers, politicians, intellectuals, are also presented in entrepreneurs. It is still the same today, it is nothing more than the division of occupations.

Politicians realize their ideals through political ideas and political practice. Intellectuals realize their ideals through education and writing. Entrepreneurs are nothing more than through products.

What we do is not to demonize the entrepreneurial class, let alone monetize or sanctify it. He is part of all walks of life in Chinese society. Hatred of the rich is a populist sentiment that can be easily stirred up, and entrepreneurs are embarrassed.

I can reveal that I have been doing research in the past two years: "Entrepreneurs and Chinese Society", hoping to sort out the question raised by Wang Shi - the relationship between Chinese entrepreneurs and various social strata and different eras. I hope to complete this project in another two or three years, which should be the first time to answer the question of the relationship between entrepreneurs and Chinese society.

03 The collective personality of Chinese and American entrepreneurs

Tencent News "Periscope": In terms of characteristics, what are the significant differences between Chinese entrepreneurs and European and American entrepreneurs?

Wu Xiaobo: The biggest difference between Chinese entrepreneurs from Zhang Jian to today's generation and Europe and the United States is that we are too deeply entangled with politics.

Sometimes it is active entanglement, such as salvation, I am active entanglement, I sink the ship in the Yangtze River to stop the Japanese. Chinese, you see, the original name of foreign fire, foreign cloth, foreign car, foreign clothes, foreign machine, now all have become Chinese things, this is with a great initiative to embrace politics (color). There are also many times when it is passive. Maybe in Europe and the United States, business and politics are not so entangled.

Tencent News "Periscope": In addition to the relationship with politics, what are the personality characteristics of Chinese entrepreneurs as a group?

Wu Xiaobo: American entrepreneurs first have an American spirit, and the bottom layer is Christianity and Protestant ethics, which is Musk Webb's set of things. Gain wealth through your own efforts, and then return it to God's people.

The second is the wave that appeared in Silicon Valley after 1968, starting from Bill Gates, to Steve Jobs, to today's Musk and Zuckerberg, this wave is to use business to embody the spirit of revolution. These people are very revolutionary.

American business is two traditions. One tradition comes from religion, the Protestant ethic, and the other comes from the Red May Movement in 1968. The "Red May" is precipitated in two places: part in Hollywood, where Hollywood movies are anti-wealth and anti-political, and part in Silicon Valley, in the western part of the United States, and the eastern part of the United States is conservative -- the United States is actually two Americas.

The biggest difference between China and the West is that we don't have a religion. Chinese entrepreneurs have a few unique things:

First, the Confucian tradition has a particularly great impact on Chinese enterprises, that is, family, country, self-cultivation, family, governance, and peace. The Confucian tradition replaced part of the American Protestant ethic. You see, Tu Weiming (a famous scholar and representative of modern Neo-Confucianism) has always wanted to do one thing, to combine Neo-Confucianism with Protestantism. This is not necessarily well combined, and Chinese people have their own understanding of family and wealth in the world.

Second, Chinese entrepreneurs are progressives in a similar way to American entrepreneurs. The Great European system is not progressive, a little more conservative.

Tencent News "Periscope": What key moments have played a decisive role in shaping China's entrepreneurial spirit?

Wu Xiaobo: It's still about national stability. If we are in an enlightened period, the economy will definitely develop at a high speed, and outstanding entrepreneurs will definitely appear. Like the Golden History of the Republic of China from 1927 to 1937. China has also been in the past thirty or forty years.

The second is technological change, but technological change is the same all over the world. China is particularly responsive to technological change, and any technological change needs application scenarios. Why is it that other countries are not so lively, but we are so lively?

Tencent News "Periscope": You once described that Chinese entrepreneurs have special anxieties, strong feelings for family and country, thirst for super-fast growth, hidden insecurity, as well as worship of official and business culture, and obsession with wolf culture.

Wu Xiaobo: There have been very big changes, and it should start with the fourth generation of Internet entrepreneurship in 1998, which is a huge node.

This problem did not arise after 1949. Fairbank has already mentioned in "The United States and China": Why do Chinese entrepreneurs not catch rats and always compete for the power of mousetraps? The Republic of China also has official and business problems. Earlier, merchants like the Salt Merchants, the Merchants of the Thirteen Lines, the Huai Merchants and the Jin Merchants were basically the result of collusion between officials and businessmen. After the reform and opening up, there is still no way to solve the dual-track price system, and it is necessary to collude with the government for resources.

The generation of the Internet is revolutionary. Their own wealth creation, model creation, and access to resources are no longer obtained from the government. The Internet has changed China a lot.

In today's China, there are no more entrepreneurs like the Jin Merchants or the property rights reform of the 90s. First, the resource soil has disappeared. Second, there is no such opportunity. Such an opportunity is completely over.

Tencent News "Periscope": You have interviewed so many entrepreneurs of different generations, which generation has the most spiritual resonance?—— do you think you are most similar to them?

Wu Xiaobo: It's still the Internet. I am also familiar with Lao Liu (Liu Chuanzhi, honorary chairman of Legend Holdings) and Zhang Ruimin (honorary chairman of Haier Group). Compared with the older generation, the Internet wave of people has more imagination about business than the previous generation.

The old wave of entrepreneurs lived in an era with benchmarks, and some of them stood in front of them, Toyota, Mitsubishi, GE, and Sony. Their goal in life is to surpass them and get closer to them. At the beginning, there was a wave of the Internet, such as Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon, but it soon became clear that doing Internet in China was not the same as in the United States, so it began to innovate itself.

We are all products of this era.

04 Commercial civilization in the period of conservatism

Tencent News "Periscope": When you see entrepreneurs like Ma Huateng, Robin Li or Zhang Yiming, and entrepreneurs like Mr. Ji Keliang, the former chairman of Moutai, do you feel in a trance?

Wu Xiaobo: Yes, the age difference with the (Internet) people is not too big. I'm also a person who has grown up in the fast past, and I have a stronger sense of intimacy. Moutai's logic is quite unfamiliar. However, in the future, it may be very difficult for China to learn from Tencent, and it is relatively easy to learn from Moutai.

Tencent News "Periscope": Why do you say that?

Wu Xiaobo: Actually, we have also entered a period of conservatism, and the period of rapid development of the whole country has ended. Gone are the cycles in which a story is told, a business model innovation, or a small technology can be used to gain wealth.

Tencent News "Periscope": Is the era of your so-called big water and big fish over?

Wu Xiaobo: It's over. Now is the time for you to do one thing very quietly, to acquire your users, to establish your own rules and capabilities and resource barriers in a particularly segmented industry. This is what Moutai has been doing for more than half a century.

Tencent News "Periscope": Is Moutai the company with the longest history of breaking up and crushing in-depth research? You explored it earlier than it was actually founded in 1951.

Wu Xiaobo: Yes, (back to) 1704. From a book perspective, it is.

In the past, I wrote "One Hundred Years of Falling", a case study of entrepreneurs in the Republic of China, and I did a very deep job. For example, the case of the Rong family, Zhang Jian, I have read Zhang Jian's diary, and Zhang Jian's grandson Zhang Xuwu has talked to me. At the beginning of Mu Rongchu, who was the largest cotton textile manufacturer in Shanghai, his son came from Hong Kong to talk to me, as well as Fan Xudong and Lu Zuofu, and that wave was about 100 years. It is a modern industry, such as the textile industry, the shipbuilding industry, the textile machinery, and the chemical industry. Moutai is the longest single enterprise (research).

Tencent News "Periscope": Contacting their previous leaders, has it subverted your perception of this special traditional corporate leader, and what has had a strong impact on you?

Wu Xiaobo: I'm not writing this book with a given answer, I'm open-ended. When I wrote it, it was worth writing because I said: First, the first place in China's market capitalization is Tencent, the second place is Moutai, I wrote about Tencent, and the second place Moutai has a lot of controversy.

Everyone says that the No. 1 market value of the A-share market is actually a bottle of wine, why is it not an Internet company? Why is it not an IT company? I feel very ashamed. Then, how can a bottle of wine have a market value of 20,000 to 3 trillion yuan?

After I went in, the Moutai I saw was very different from the Moutai I understood before I went in. It has a lot of modernity, and it's not a miracle that is bound to become. Everyone thinks that Moutai can't be learned, or God appreciates food. When I went inside, I found that it was a series of accidents. The reason why we have come to this day behind the accident is that there is an entrepreneurial spirit.

Among the older generation, I dedicate a chapter to Lai Yongchu and Lai Mao for 13 years. In (the earliest founders) Wang Mao, Hua Mao, and Lai Mao, Lai Mao is the most entrepreneurial. He can do marketing, hire lawyers to talk about intellectual property, and the output is also large, and he has brand awareness and trademark awareness in the forties of the last century.

In the later period, I also wrote a lot of people. I am particularly fortunate that the presence of Ji Kelian made the creation of this book possible. Because it has a long history, fifty years. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to write about state-owned enterprises. State-owned enterprises will involve the issue of property rights and the rotation of managers.

Tencent News "Periscope": It has less personal heroism.

Wu Xiaobo: There can be no individual heroism.

He (Ji Keliang) settled accounts with me and said, "I am an ancient person who has never come before or since. "I have been the director of the factory for 32 years," he said. ”

There must be no longer than him in front, Zou Kailiang (former director of Moutai Distillery) is about 17 years. Later, he believes that it is unlikely that the future chairman or president of Moutai Distillery will work for 32 years. This creates his peculiarities.

Mr. Tikrian looked particularly unentrepreneurial. We generally think of entrepreneurs as visionary, strategic, determined, and charismatic. Ji Kelian is a little old man. He's unassuming, stubborn, and actually a technician. He became the position he is today, and he was also forced, arching one arch after another, and he didn't really want to do it. Or do it or not, he doesn't care.

But if you look at it upside down, he is very much like Lee Kun-hee's "wooden chicken", "stunned like a wooden chicken". Perhaps only someone of his character can figure out a product for a very long time and take it to the right path. Many companies are on the right path, but they will still be shaken by cycles, policy changes, or market turbulence. And he will not waver. It's just stupid.

His spirit was not respected in the previous Chinese market. People think you don't have innovation, there's no globalization, there's no change in technology. He actually has a change, a change in the process, including the temperature of the wine. Sake is not the same as 43 degrees Celsius and 27 degrees. Whether the koji is stepped on with your feet or with a koji-making machine is two different things. 165 processes, 30 links, each link has changes - he is more like a craftsman type entrepreneur.

Tencent News "Periscope": Craftsman entrepreneur?

Wu Xiaobo: That's right. They will discuss internally, whether this water should be clean or reclaimed water, and they will discuss it for 10 years. Strip stone or gravel? There will be a huge debate. Is the first part of the wine 3% or 7%?These details come from the quantitative data of the foundation and experience, which is the difference from the ancients.

After writing Moutai, it will help me run my company - you don't have to be in a hurry, and you don't have to go to a lot of users. Carefully calculated, Moutai, an enterprise with a market value of two trillion yuan and a profit of five or six billion yuan a year, only sells 60 million bottles a year. What does 60 million bottles mean? If one person drinks one bottle a month, you can find 6 million people.

Tencent News "Periscope": Does Moutai have more reference value for today's Chinese enterprises?

Wu Xiaobo: Moutai presents a certain way of being an entrepreneur. The point of this way of being is that ten years ago it wasn't in the mainstream, or people didn't think of it as a sexy way of evolving, but in the future it might be an option for doing business.

The premise of this option is that China's high economic growth has entered a medium-low growth rate due to various external changes.

Moutai does not need to be liked by all Chinese, and it can be sold for a few million a year to have a market value of two trillion. Also, Chinese can afford to drink more than 2,000 yuan and $400 a bottle of wine. Even for a $400 bottle of whiskey, wine and liquor, he would choose Chinese baijiu. It has come to this day because the development of the times has created such a company.

The entrepreneurial spirit embodied in Ji Keliang's generation, represented by stupid strategy and slow kung fu, does not represent all, but only one aspect. As long as you want to do a steady business, such as opening a noodle restaurant in Beijing, you learn Moutai. Its master-apprentice system, rules, six methods and twelve styles, you learn a few, you may be able to open a particularly good noodle restaurant.

But if you use Tencent to open a noodle restaurant, you can't open it. It is possible for Tencent to open a chain and open a honey snow ice city.

Tencent News "Periscope": Under the external changes, do you see any new entrepreneurial directions?

Wu Xiaobo: At least in China, there are two core competencies of future enterprises: the first is technological change, your ability to control technology, and the second is your ability to control culture, aesthetics, and history. (Both) can live, and the one on the right will produce cultural products, high-end goods, and luxury goods.

In the future, Chinese entrepreneurs are two paths, so if you can combine them, you will be a good person.

05 What should young people do if there is no big business in the future?

Tencent News "Periscope": When we were talking about the entrepreneur group just now, there is one type of person that we didn't talk about, that is, this wave of entrepreneurs who are promoting the transformation of the new energy industry - Musk in the United States, Li Bin, Li Xiang, He Xiaopeng and so on in China, which type of entrepreneur would you classify them into? Compared with Internet and mobile Internet entrepreneurs, do they have their own characteristics?

Wu Xiaobo: From the perspective of the writers of corporate history, it doesn't make me feel that they have done anything worth documenting.

Musk is still different from them. It's actually a mental ability, a kind of imagination, a kind of imagination about business, human civilization, and social order. This kind of person is quite rare.

Tencent News "Periscope": But these new energy vehicle entrepreneurs may lead China's auto industry to the world's No. 1 industrial status, surpassing Japan, which is a glory that Chinese cars have never reached.

Wu Xiaobo: From the perspective of output, Liu Chuanzhi and Zhang Ruimin have already done it again. One is in 3C products, the other is in white and black electricity, and now it is just a car.

A truly great entrepreneur or group of entrepreneurs must have several things happening: first, he has mastered revolutionary technology, and the technology was originally invented by them; second, he has an unprecedented business model, like Bezos; third, he has put forward some common propositions at the spiritual level, Jobs, Musk have put forward some propositions, and the older generation like Henry Ford is of epoch-making significance.

Tencent News "Periscope": Hearing you say that, they are going to be sad. We've been talking about entrepreneurship for a long time, but what exactly is entrepreneurship? Is it too old-fashioned to talk about entrepreneurship today?

Wu Xiaobo: No. Drucker's preface to Innovation and Entrepreneurship talks about the "entrepreneurial economy". There is a very important assertion in the entrepreneurial economy, after World War II and into the mid-1980s, the way entrepreneurs manage their businesses was derived beyond corporate organizations, such as governments, NGOs, and religious organizations. This is called the "entrepreneurial economy".

The entrepreneurial spirit is also being used in China today, and it is slowly beginning to spread. A government official who has an entrepreneurial spirit will become a passionate government official.

Without entrepreneurship, the country will not progress. The most promising progress we can count on now is commercial progress.

Tencent News "Periscope": Let's talk back to the current generation of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs we mentioned at the beginning. Why don't you define this generation as entrepreneurs who are driven by AI innovation and born because of technological change? In the eyes of many people, 2023 is the first year of AI and the first year of large models.

Wu Xiaobo: AI is a tool, and this tool has not produced ideological change in the current business world, it is still a substitute. For example, writing a file can be written by a machine.

AI is, of course, very critical. AI is the possibility of applying innovation in particularly large scenarios where it is happening as a tool, but its opportunities, unlike the original PC or mobile Internet entrepreneurship, belong to everyone. This tool is very platform and all-encompassing. Therefore, in the future Chinese market, it is unlikely that AI innovation will bring about an endless stream of start-ups, but it may eat everything.

A company in Hangzhou uses ChatGPT for clothing design. If it is strong, it will eat up the clothing industry. It's not that I'm going to learn it and make one in Foshan. It can take it all. In the future, all Chinese fashion designers will end up with one or two tools.

Tencent News "Periscope": It didn't bring entrepreneurial opportunities everywhere?

Wu Xiaobo: It won't be brought, and it may be a winner-take-all in the subdivision. In the future, those who have entrepreneurial opportunities may still use AI tools to do something related to people's needs - maybe a teacup, a song, and people's applications.

Therefore, in the future, most of the entrepreneurship will be small entrepreneurship, which is related to small luck, and we talk about "pleasing oneself" entrepreneurship.

Tencent News "Periscope": How big can this kind of entrepreneurship be?

Wu Xiaobo: Big deal. For business, it's certainly not big business. There may be no big business in the future, and a large number of people are content to do a small business.

Tencent News "Periscope": How small is small, how big is big?

Wu Xiaobo: Now my daughter and son-in-law are doing a business, a tavern, just such a big room, just such a tavern.

06 A little advice for my daughter and her contemporaries

Tencent News "Periscope": Some time ago, you wrote an article called "You Suffer Your Suffering, I Suffer Mine". The post-90s and post-00s generations actually didn't suffer so much on the way to growth, are this generation more fragile?

Wu Xiaobo: I didn't expect this article to have such a big impact, which shows that intergenerational communication is a big problem.

The premise of this article is that I think there is a saying that is wrong, in order to correct this sentence - "We suffer so that the next generation will not suffer". Every generation has its own suffering, and I may be my daughter's suffering.

Tencent News "Periscope": You are your daughter's suffering, why?

Wu Xiaobo: My daughter graduated from the same high school as me, the High School Affiliated to Zhejiang University. I was the first in the liberal arts in the history of the school, and the second in the Hangzhou exam, and my picture is hung on the school wall. After graduating from high school, my classmates asked me to give an alumni speech, and after the lecture, their classmates came to me and asked seriously, "Are you Wu XX's father?" He said that Wu XX said that her father was the store manager of Xishiduo for three years.

When a dad hangs on the wall, I can't get bad grades, right? If I don't have a dad like that, I'm doing well. Saying that your father is the second place in Hangzhou, do you want to get better grades? So I said that I am my daughter's suffering.

Tencent News "Periscope": Did you go back and discuss this issue with your daughter?

Wu Xiaobo: Yes, she knows. My daughter still doesn't read my books. You see I've written so many books, and she hasn't even read them. I understand my daughter very well. Dad does better, and it could be a disaster for your daughter.

So, sometimes parents may work hard and think that I am doing something for you, and in the eyes of the child, you are just a pressure on her.

Tencent News "Periscope": This is the starting point for you to write this article?

Wu Xiaobo: No, the starting point is an academician, let me show you. (Take out your phone to find a screenshot)

I had nothing to do at home to swipe my mobile phone, and I swiped an academician to say - you see - 82-year-old academician revealed that he stayed up late until two o'clock every day, and Grandpa Liu said: "Our generation suffers hardships just so that the next generation does not suffer hardships." ”

What do you think? It's up to you at two o'clock in the morning. If you endure hardship, your children will not endure hardship? Impossible. If you solve a problem, you'll be fine? The new one is more difficult than that.

Tencent News "Periscope": You just used your daughter's example to say that this generation has suffered. More precisely, what exactly has this generation suffered?

Wu Xiaobo: They will endure the hardships we have endured. Will you suffer the pain of marriage? Will you still suffer the pain of love? Will you suffer the pain of your understanding of wealth? Will you suffer the pain of social change? I said in the article that we have encountered the pain of the problems we have encountered together for thousands of years, the pain of the relationship between generations and my father, the pain of you and your husband, and the pain of your entrepreneurial setbacks. This is suffering at the public level.

There is also a kind of suffering, which our generation has never seen before, and they have to suffer even more. We suffered like our parents had never seen before – my parents weren't anxious about the house, I was anxious about the house. It's the same with entrepreneurship.

Tencent News "Periscope": This generation is facing a world with more rigid classes.

Wu Xiaobo: That's right.

Tencent News "Periscope": There is a particularly interesting news recently, Zhang Zetian's net worth of 60 billion rushed to the first place in the hot search, ranking third among outstanding alumni of Tsinghua University. The post-90s generation does not seem to have such a big worth of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, but there is a rich wife on the rich list.

Wu Xiaobo: Zhang Zetian is Liu Qiangdong's wife, right?

Tens of billions of post-90s entrepreneurial entrepreneurs, no?

Tencent News "Periscope": Have you thought of anyone?

Wu Xiaobo: The post-90s generation may not have tens of billions. Zhang Yiming is 83 years old, right? It's the end of the big era.

Tencent News "Periscope": Can you give some advice to the post-90s and younger post-00s?

Wu Xiaobo: As I told my daughter: find something you like, like Moutai, and do it for a long time.

Don't fantasize anymore, stop pleasing others, and live the life you like...... We don't have the opportunity to live the life we love.

Tencent News "Periscope": This is not the life you like?

Wu Xiaobo: I'm pretty lucky, and there's more. But our generation doesn't have that opportunity in essence.

Tencent News "Periscope": Do today's young people know what kind of life they like?

Wu Xiaobo: This question in itself is a good answer. For young people, no senior can give an answer to life. Socrates said that an unthought life is not worth living. Kazuo Inamori said, "What is right as a human being?" Therefore, thinking itself is more important than answering.

When problems arise, roads arise.

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