1980: Farewell to the romantic era

Chen Chunxian died on August 9, 2004, just two days after his 70th birthday. Even few people in Zhongguancun remember his name, and "forgetting" is one of the most important features of this history of Chinese enterprises.

In October 1980, Chen Chunxian, China's top nuclear fusion expert and a 46-year-old researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, returned from a visit to the United States, which was his third visit to the United States in two years. He goes to two places at a time, Silicon Valley in the west and Route 128 in Boston in the east. Walking along the narrow strip of low, bushy greenery of the two houses, he suddenly had a passion that he had never had before. Chen Chunxian was the most promising new generation of scientists in China at that time, in 1978, the Chinese Academy of Sciences evaluated the first batch of professor-level researchers after the reform and opening up, a total of only 10 people, Chen Chunxian and Chen Jingrun, a mathematician who later became an "idol of the times", were on the list. But this trip to Silicon Valley completely changed his life.

After returning to China, he wrote a report to his superiors that China should build its own "Silicon Valley", he wrote, "The reason for the high-speed development of the United States is that technology is transformed into products very quickly, and scientists and engineers have a strong entrepreneurial spirit, always eager to turn their inventions, know-how and knowledge into products, borrow money and open factories together." In his plan, he has even circled the location of "China's Silicon Valley", that is, Zhongguancun, where he works.

Zhongguancun is really the name of a small village on the north side of Beijing. Before 1949, it was a natural village of 70 families and 276 people, and the surrounding cemetery accounted for more than 30% of the land. In 1952, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was located here, and another year, Yenching University merged with Peking University, forming a teaching and research institute in the north of this small village. In the future, several key research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and large-scale staff dormitories have been built in the area around Zhongguancun, which has become an area with a high concentration of scientific researchers. Chen Chunxian said in the report, "We have worked in Zhongguancun for more than 20 years, the density of talents here is by no means lower than that of San Francisco and Boston, and the quality is not bad, I always feel that there is a lot of potential that has not been tapped." ”

If he had only written a report and made a speech in this way, it would have been enough, but Chen Chunxian wanted to really throw himself into it as a test subject. In the two months after returning to China, he enthusiastically appealed around and wrote reports to various departments to make suggestions, and finally, the Beijing Municipal Association for Science and Technology approved of his idea, agreed to lend him 200 yuan, and issued a certificate to allow him to open an account in the bank. On December 23, inspired by the legend of Silicon Valley in the United States, Chen Chunxian set up the first private science and technology entity in China in a corner of a warehouse in Zhongguancun: "Beijing Plasma Society Advanced Technology Development Service Department". Along with Chen Chunxian, 14 researchers from the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Electronics, and the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jumped into the commercial sea. In the future, Zhongguancun became the most important distribution center for scientific research products in China, and Chen Chunxian was undoubtedly the first pioneer. The winter in Beijing in 1980 was very cold, with six heavy snowfalls throughout December, and it was reported that the amount of snow in this winter was the largest in nearly two decades. Chen Chunxian rode a bicycle to run the business every day, and his service department finally received the first order of business two months after opening, and the director of a small factory in Haidian District asked Chen Chunxian, a nuclear fusion scientist who came to sell business: "Can you help us solve the problem on the power supply?" Chen Chun was stunned for a moment, and then said, "Of course, how much money can you give?" ”

Zhongguancun will have to wait three to four years for it to really come alive. At the time when Chen Chunxian was running the service department, it caused a great shock inside and outside the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and almost all people thought that he was not doing his job. At this time, Chen Chunxian, who was born in Bashu, showed the stubbornness characteristic of the Sichuan people, and he went around running business like crazy, and the scientist who studied the difficult fusion technology had to do a "rice sorghum plot" for the survival of 15 people. In the first year of entrepreneurship, his service department had an income of more than 20,000 yuan, which was not a small amount at that time, So Chen Chunxian gave everyone a monthly allowance of 15 yuan, which caused an uproar in the poor Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the complainants said indignantly that Chen Chunxian engaged in crooked ways and actually gave himself two levels of salary. By 1983, Chen Chunxian had signed 27 contracts, established technical cooperation with 4 small factories under collective ownership in Haidian District, and helped Haidian District to create the Haidian New Technology Experimental Factory and 3 technical service institutions. The operating principles set by Chen Chunxian for the Ministry of Service later became the common law founded by China's private high-tech companies, that is, scientific and technological personnel went out of the research institute, followed the law of scientific and technological transformation, the law of market economy, did not want state appropriations, did not account for the state establishment, self-financing, self-financing, self-financing, self-management, and independent decision-making according to law. Behind his suspicions, insults, and ridicule, gradually, small technology companies appeared in the Zhongguancun area. Under the media reports, Chen Chunxian's practice attracted the attention of the upper echelons, and Hu Qili and Fang Yi, who were in charge of economic work at that time, gave instructions and praised him greatly.

Touched by these measures, Haidian District relaxed the policy of running a company in Zhongguancun. In 1984, Sitong, Xintong, Kehai, Jinghai and later the very famous Lenovo company were born, and the "Zhongguancun Electronic Street" began to take shape, and by 1992, the number of private technology companies here had reached 5180.

Chen Chunxian's research direction is advanced nuclear fusion, he participated in the creation of China's first nuclear fusion base, and established the first tokamak device in China at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In Zhongguancun, these majors of his are almost useless. After 1980, Chen Chunxian basically gave up academic research. He reorganized the service department into a Chinese Silicon Valley company, as long as there is business to come to the door he is happy to negotiate, the biggest business his company has done is to help an American company to do data entry, he hired more than 100 college students, 1,000 characters earn 0.4 yuan, if it goes well, you can get $300,000 a year in income, but this business was later aborted.

Chen Chunxian is obviously not an excellent operator, under his initiative, Zhongguancun is increasingly expanding in scale, while his company has always been small, and it is not the same as Lenovo, Founder, Tongfang and other rising stars. For more than a decade, he has been embroiled in economic disputes and has even been kidnapped twice. He sighed and said: "Whether the mind is active or can understand the potential value-added places, it is not the same as being able to run a good company." On the contrary, most of the entrepreneurs who run a good company are people who are engaged in marketing and finance, and have strong management skills, rather than real scientists. I'm not a successful entrepreneur, and there's nothing to shy away from. ”

Chen Chunxian became a "historical figure" in his later years, and no one remembers it on weekdays, but on some anniversaries, the media came to interview him. Many people thought that if he had been working in the laboratory, he would have become a great scientist. And he himself said this: "I think each generation can only do what he thought was most important at the time." People always have to do something in life, and when they do this, they may have to give up that one. I never regret doing things, even if I do something stupid, I don't regret it, because time is always moving forward. ”

Chen Chunxian was a stubborn native of Chengdu, Sichuan. He deserves to be remembered for a long time. There is a dedicated Chen Chunxian memorial website on the Internet (http://www.chenchunxian.com). Aside from a few insiders, it was an almost completely forgotten site.