Author: Nakayama
Source: Zhenghe Island
On August 2, Fortune magazine released its 2021 Fortune Global 500 list.
The number of Chinese companies in the world's top 500 this year has reached 143, and the number of chinese companies on the list has led the United States for three consecutive years and continues to rank first in the world.
The strength of an enterprise is a barometer of a country's economy. The strength of the United States lies in a number of world-class enterprises such as Qualcomm, Intel, General Motors, IBM, and Coca-Cola; Japan's strength lies in a large number of world-class industrial giants such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba, Panasonic, and Fanuc; South Korea is the same, Samsung, Hyundai, is a few business cards handed to the world by South Korea.
With China's strong national strength and economic prosperity, Chinese enterprises continue to grow bigger and stronger, which is an inevitable logic.
The Fortune Global 500 list is the most famous and authoritative list of large companies in the world.
This year's eye-catching data also reflects the tension of China's economy. In 1997, only 4 companies in Chinese mainland made it to the list. In 2001, When China joined the WTO, the number of enterprises on the list that year was only 12, and it has increased rapidly year by year since then.
Since 2008, the number of Chinese companies in the ranking has accelerated, and since 2019, the number of Chinese companies on the list has surpassed that of the United States, and the number of companies on the list has ranked first in the list for three consecutive years.
The rise of enterprises reflects the progress of China's economy. There are many excellent representatives in private enterprises, and Country Garden is one of them.
This year, Country Garden ranked 139th with revenue of US$67.08 billion and profit of US$5.075 billion. In 2017, When Country Garden first listed on the World's Top 500, it only ranked 467th, and its ranking rose by 328 places in five years, and this "report card" shows Country Garden's continuous improvement of its business strength.
From the township enterprises that used to be in a corner of Guangdong to the world's top 500 leading housing enterprises, Country Garden has changed from small to large and from weak to strong, which can be called a colorful stroke in China's magnificent urbanization process.
Such achievements are inseparable from the planning of Yang Guoqiang, the helmsman behind him. Behind the rapid growth of Country Garden, it is Yang Guoqiang's "three beliefs":
1. Firmly believe that China's economy will improve for a long time and continue to deepen the new urbanization;
2. Believe in the long-term line;
3. Believe that science and technology is the general direction of the future.
01. Firmly believe that China's economy will improve in the long run
Country Garden Chairman Yang Guoqiang's entrepreneurial experience is very inspiring, and it can also be called a microcosm of China's reform and opening up.
Yang Guoqiang, a native of Foshan, Guangdong Province, was born in the 1960s, his family was very poor, he was poor until he was 17 years old, he did not wear shoes, clothes and pants were worn by his brother and relatives wore old clothes.
To make a living, he farmed the fields in the countryside, herded cattle, and later learned techniques and began working as a construction worker.
In his 20s, he walked into a construction company, started from the bottom, and slowly reached the position of general manager by relying on hard-working perseverance.
Yang Guoqiang never hides that he is from the grassroots, often calling himself "I am a farmer". But it is such a person, the country garden created, for many years in the Fortune World 500 list.
"Time, place, people", personal success has never been inseparable from the background of the times. The entrepreneurial direction chosen by Yang Guoqiang is real estate, which is a judgment of the general direction.
In any country in the world, after economic progress and development, there will be a process of urbanization and the pursuit of a better life. Chinese is the same, the course of China's reform and opening up is the history of the hard work of a generation, when there are economic conditions, it is natural to consider living better.
Due to the large number of Chinese, China's urbanization process can be described as "vigorous" compared with other countries.
Since 1978, the first stage of urbanization in China has been the reform of the rural economic system, which is characterized by "building a city after the advanced city", when 20 million young people who went to the mountains and went to the countryside returned to the city for employment, and the comprehensive opening of the college entrance examination accelerated the entry of rural students into the city, and later the city gradually opened the bazaar, and a large number of farmers also went to the city to live temporarily.
The second phase of urbanization is driven by urbanization.
In October 2000, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed in the Tenth Five-Year Plan: "With the improvement of the level of agricultural productivity and the acceleration of the industrialization process, China's conditions for promoting urbanization have gradually matured, and it is necessary to lose no time in implementing the urbanization strategy." ”
During this period, many township enterprises were born, and various garment factories, foundries, and home power plants rose, and today's well-known Haier Group was a collective enterprise at that time.
At that time, there was a TV series called "Migrant Girl", which told the story of some girls in remote areas who went to the city to work under the wave of reform and opening up.
Zhang Tonghe, an American, has been observing China for several years and has written a book called "Working Girl". On the back of the book there is a very wonderful description of China's urbanization migration and process:
When a new generation of migrant workers emerged, most people believed that migration was a path to a better life. They are younger, better educated than their predecessors, and motivated to go out more because of the pursuit of urban opportunities than by rural poverty.
It's self-esteem, not fear, that keeps them in the city. Get out of town and stay outside – go out just to change your destiny.
The urbanization of a generation is to change the fate and pursue a better life.
From this point of view, Yang Guoqiang's Country Garden can be said to have stepped on the dividends of the times.
Until now, China's urbanization process has not ended, but has opened a new round of urbanization.
The 2021 National Government Work Report states:
During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, we will further promote the new urbanization strategy with people as the core, accelerate the urbanization of the agricultural transfer population, increase the urbanization rate of the permanent population to 65%, develop and expand urban agglomerations and metropolitan circles, promote the urbanization construction with the county as an important carrier, implement urban renewal actions, improve the housing market system and housing security system, and improve the quality of urbanization development.
According to Kerry's analysis, the new urbanization is still the biggest institutional dividend in the real estate industry. In the next five years, the urbanization rate of the permanent population will increase by about 4 percentage points, and about 56 million people will move from rural areas to cities and towns.
Yang Guoqiang once said: "Country Garden adheres to the long-term optimism about the prospects of China's new urbanization, and has firm confidence in the stable growth and long-term improvement of China's economy. ”
This kind of analysis and judgment is a judgment of macroeconomic trends from a high dimension. It is also a firm belief in China's future development.
According to the data, at present, Country Garden in 31 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) and 289 prefecture-level cities, accumulatively serving 4.5 million families and more than 10 million people, on this basis, Country Garden has set itself the goal for the future, "continue to be the leader in the urbanization journey, provide good houses for the people, contribute to social progress and modernization, and continue to do it for one hundred years and one hundred years." ”
02, believe in the "long-term" line
Yang Guoqiang's second and most powerful point is his firm belief in the "long-term doctrine" line.
With the slowdown of Chinese growth and the advent of consumption upgrading trends, China's real estate industry has entered the era of management dividends.
In 2018, Yang Guoqiang, with his keen intuition, set a strategic overall plan for Country Garden to "move steadily and farther", opening an era of high-quality development.
The so-called high-quality development is to adhere to the supremacy of the owner's reputation and adhere to long-termism. Country Garden, for example, insists on creating high-quality products. At the beginning of 2021, Country Garden tracked and investigated the demands of 4.5 million owners and launched four major product series of "Star, House, Cloud and Sky". This is a product debut after adapting to market changes and insight into residential demands.
This kind of "long-termism" is based on the judgment of the main line of China's development, "housing is not speculation" is the main tone, new urbanization will continue to advance, and China's real estate market will become healthier and healthier.
Hillhouse Group Zhang Lei has a very wonderful exposition on "long-termism":
For enterprises and entrepreneurs, long-termism is a pattern that helps enterprises reject the zero-sum game of confinement and reshape the dynamic moat of enterprises in the process of continuous innovation and value creation. The precipitation of entrepreneurship in the time dimension is not the anchor of the big waves and sand, but the sail that sets sail with the wind.
Therefore, in 2021, Country Garden will continue to pay close attention to "one rate and five forces", that is, under the premise of legal compliance and ensuring safety and quality, it will do a good job in high efficiency, product strength, marketing power, service power, scientific and technological power and cost power.
It is precisely because of Yang Guoqiang's "long-term" route that from 2016 to 2020, Country Garden's revenue increased from 153.09 billion yuan to 462.9 billion yuan, an increase of 202.4%.
Since Country Garden first appeared on the "Fortune Global 500" list in 2017, the ranking has risen by 328 places in 5 years, and the past list also shows that In 2019, Country Garden is the fastest rising enterprise in the list, 2020 is the first place in the world's listed real estate enterprises, and the ranking in 2021 is a new high, which shows its growth.
Source: Fortune Global 500 List
As Zhang Lei said: "Whether it is an individual, an enterprise or a society, as long as you see things clearly and thoroughly in the long-term dimension, and create value, you can walk on a healthy road." ”
03, I believe that science and technology is the general direction of the future
Many people think that the real estate industry is a labor-intensive enterprise and does not require any high technology. Yang Guoqiang does not think so, he has been committed to building Country Garden into a high-tech enterprise.
This may be related to Yang Guoqiang's experience, when the Yang family was very poor, really did not have money to study, the teacher found a home, the Yang family could not do anything, and later the state waived 7 yuan tuition fee and gave 2 yuan of bursaries, Yang Guoqiang was able to return to the school and completed high school.
Due to the limitations of the times, Yang Guoqiang did not continue to receive higher education. However, the belief in knowledge and technology has left a deep imprint on Yang Guoqiang's heart, and he is convinced that "knowledge is the best weapon to overcome poverty, and only with knowledge can the fate of a person and even a country be rewritten."
After starting a business, Yang Guoqiang attaches great importance to the application of science and technology in enterprises. Country Garden set up a robot company called BoZhilin in 2018.
This is another accurate judgment of Yang Guoqiang on the overall situation, one is the reduction of Chinese dividends, so that manpower-intensive enterprises have to transform early; second, science and technology is the country's future strategic trend.
Country Garden's robot business has a deep integration in new infrastructure fields such as artificial intelligence and internet of things, and the construction industry has seen subversive and innovative technologies under the guidance of intelligence.
The most direct is the change in the way production is done – from relying on labor to applying robots to replace the "dangerous and dirty" people's work.
According to a recent report from market research and consultancy Tractica, more and more construction companies around the world are integrating robots to address labor shortages and benefit from dramatically optimized production speeds, efficiencies, safety and profits.
Country Garden's Bo Zhilin has taken the lead in taking a step. At present, the company is researching 46 models of construction robots, the vast majority of which are common to cast-in-place concrete process and prefabricated building construction, and have formed 12 construction robot product lines such as concrete construction, concrete trimming, brick plastering, and interior wall decoration.
According to the data, as of July 2021, Primuslin has put 18 construction robots into commercial applications, covering nearly 70 projects in 14 provinces, with a cumulative application construction of more than one million square meters.
It should be emphasized here that scientific and technological capabilities are the very core competitiveness of an enterprise. Among the world's top 500 companies, Chinese companies are not as profitable as the United States, and one of the most important reasons is the lack of scientific and technological capabilities. More companies in China are resource-intensive than tech-led.
We are also aware of this problem, so the 14th Five-Year Plan proposes to lead and create new demand with innovation-driven and high-quality supply, and promote domestic and international dual circulation. At the same time, it is also mentioned that it is necessary to strengthen the status of enterprise innovation as the main body, promote the agglomeration of various innovative elements to enterprises, and form a technological innovation system with enterprises as the main body, market as the guide, and deep integration of production, education and research.
We often talk about improving the country's scientific and technological competitiveness, and enterprises, as a member of the country, are actually improving the scientific and technological competitiveness of enterprises.
In fact, future scientific and technological competition is a key point in the great power game.
Therefore, among entrepreneurs in the same industry, Yang Guoqiang is "prescient".
At present, Bozhilin's construction robots have achieved independent research and development on 5 core systems such as servo and sensors, among which navigation, vision and other technologies have filled the gap in the field of construction robots. In addition, it has also achieved breakthroughs from 0 to 1 in the field of construction big data governance and smart site supervision.
Country Garden itself, closely following the direction of national policies, has formed a layout of the whole industrial chain:
In terms of real estate development, intelligent construction is carried out through Primus Lin robots to create an intelligent construction system;
In terms of catering and retail, relying on the resources of the owners of the real estate, agricultural products are produced through modern agriculture, and raw materials are provided for the central kitchen, which are sold by the robot restaurant;
Country Garden also vertically integrates planning and design, material supply, construction, gardening, decoration, marketing, property, hotel, school, business, medical and other links...
This layout advantage of the whole industry chain has been further strengthened and has become the core competitiveness of enterprises that cannot be copied.
04, there is only one moat in this world
"There's only one moat in this world, and that's whether you can keep creating long-term value like crazy." From this point of view, Yang Guoqiang can be described as a model of value creation and long-termism.
Yang Guoqiang has "three beliefs", and these "three beliefs" come down to looking at China's development from a higher dimension.
These "three beliefs" are judgments of trends and confidence in the future. The higher the position, the farther you can see, the longer the enterprise can go.
From this point of view, Yang Guoqiang's "three beliefs" are worth thinking about by Chinese entrepreneurs.