Liu Guojun: From being born for gold to walking for the country

What depicts Liu Guojun more appropriately is the three words "technical control". Liu Guojun is not like a boss or an entrepreneur in the usual sense, but more like a textile technology expert - his spirit of study in technology is difficult for many entrepreneurs to match. The core secret of the growth and development of the enterprise founded and led by Liu Guojun is continuous technology research and development, continuous technology iteration, and it is the boss who takes the lead in leading technology research and development. There are "technology control" industrialists such as Liu Guojun, in their own and enterprise development at the same time, but also promote and drive the overall innovation, catch-up and development of China's textile technology.

In the process of developing domestic products, developing national industries, and competing for the Chinese market, most industrialists focus on discovering and occupying the market, while Liu Guojun focuses on keeping up with Japan and surpassing Japan in technology and management. Liu Guojun believes that whether there is hope for China's gauze industry or not, the decision is in his own hands. In 1935, at a lecture meeting after returning from a visit to Japan, Liu Guojun tortured himself and his peers: "The japanese people's bodies are made of meat, not steel, and like ours, they have reduced the cost of opening a factory in China lightly, and we can't even learn this little thing. In the process of developing national industries, although Liu Guojun was only an apprentice, he never deviated from the track of technological innovation and scientific management; his deeds have thus become a good story in China's modern industrial history.

(i)

Compared with Zhang Xiao, Rong Brothers, Mu Rongchu and others who are also engaged in the textile industry, Liu Guojun, as the founder and leader of the enterprise, attaches special importance to the innovation of textile technology, or related to his apprenticeship experience. When he co-founded the first machine-powered weaving factory in Changzhou, Liu Guojun was in charge of factory production, although the machine was imported from Japan, but the quality problem of the oblique gauze has always plagued him, and after hard work, he finally solved the fault that the yarn machine could not dry the yarn.

Liu Guojun can always find pain points in the operation of the factory and innovate in time. For example, in 1923, Liu Guojun hired Chen Qingjian of Shanghai Jinchang Iron Factory to change the hand loom of Guangyi Dyeing and Weaving Factory into a pedal loom, and the production efficiency increased by 20%. In the spring of 1934, Liu Guojun hired Japanese wool cutters to come to China to teach wool cutting and sharpening knives. In the past two or three years, he has set a precedent for the earliest successful production of velvet and corduroy in China's national textile industry.

Relying on continuous technological innovation, Liu Guojun developed Dacheng Company from 1 factory to 4 factories, yarn ingots from 10,000 to 80,000 pieces, and funds from 500,000 yuan to 4 million yuan, which was a miracle at that time. In August 1945, when the news of Japan's unconditional surrender came, Liu Guojun was ecstatic and immediately rushed back to Shanghai to quickly raise the materials needed for Dacheng to resume the factory, so that the three factories in Changzhou resumed production in a short period of time; after 2 years of hard work, the inventory of raw cotton, machine materials, finished products, and working capital exceeded the pre-war level. These miracles would be difficult to happen if it were not for the entrepreneur's skillful understanding of the textile industry and technology.

(ii)

Because of his interest in technological research and innovation, Liu Guojun has visited Europe and the United States many times, four to Japan, eight to Hong Kong, and three to Taiwan; there are not many industrialists like him who tirelessly run technology around the world.

Liu Guojun first crossed the Orient and went to Japan to investigate the weaving industry. He pays attention to absorbing the management experience of Japanese enterprises, solving the reasons for the low cost of Japanese goods, and summarizing it as paying attention to scientific management, focusing on practical results, streamlining processes, and saving materials.

When Liu Guojun opened Guangfeng and Guangyi cloth factories, he creatively adopted the mode of entrustment of peasant households, and organized farmers to spin and weave on behalf of the hutang bridge, producing strip drifting and strip oblique, while the cloth factory grasped the key quality links, realized faster start-up, less investment, more weaving, and made a lot of money, and achieved success and obtained rich profits.

Liu Guojun established the management system of Dacheng Textile dyeing Company and put forward the enterprise goal of "autonomy of industrial pipe workers, mutual assistance between workers and teachers, wage grading, Daily factory of Huachang, and Japanese production of products". Liu Guojun hired textile expert Lu Shaoyun as the chief engineer with heavy money, and appointed educator Gu Yaoruo as the director of training; the production and operation of the enterprise was booming, and the net profit was 500,000 yuan at the end of the year. Later, Liu Guojun visited Japan again to examine the management and technical experience of Japanese companies. He deeply felt that in order to compete with Japanese goods, it was necessary to form a joint enterprise integrating textile dyeing. After returning to China, Liu Guojun resolutely merged the very prosperous and developed Guangyi Dyeing and Weaving Factory with assets of 240,000 yuan into The Dentons Textile Dyeing Company, and renamed the former Dacheng Textile Dyeing Company as Dacheng First Factory and Guangyi Dyeing and Weaving Factory as Dacheng Second Factory.

(iii)

Liu Guojun's father was a rural school teacher, and he himself received a Mongolian education when he was young, but when he was 7 years old, his father suffered from mental illness due to the frustration of the imperial examination and the fall of sun mountains, and his family was in a dilapidated situation, and Liu Guojun had to work hard for the family's livelihood when he was young. "Ask me if I was miserable when I was young, and I spent eight hundred dollars on tuition in my lifetime." Liu Guojun's real name is Jinsheng, but after becoming the richest man in Benniu Town, he has more ambitions, tired of his real name "Liu Jinsheng", and tells his father: He can no longer be born for Jin, but he wants to walk for the country and change his name. His father repeatedly deliberated, taking Bai Juyi's poem "In order to ask the three ministers, how to uphold the country jun", he changed his name to Liu Guojun.

After Japan occupied northeast China, Liu Guojun drafted the "Plan for saving the country with soil yarn", proposing to promote and develop the soil yarn cause throughout the country in order to prevent the renunciation of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, and Japan sanctioned China with cotton yarn; at the same time, he launched disaster relief donations within the company and donated money to support the anti-Japanese troops, advocating never purchasing Japanese goods, implementing Sino-Japanese economic severance, striving for production, and industrial salvation of the country. Liu Guojun advocated domestic products and resolutely boycotted Japanese goods. In 1933, the Nantong Education Bureau asked Liu Guojun to introduce the experience of Dacheng Company in implementing "work and teaching workers and industrial pipe workers", and Liu Guojun was able to visit Nantong Dasheng No.1 Factory on this trip, and was deeply infected by Zhang Xiao's feelings and practices of saving the country and rejuvenating the country through education. In 1944, Liu Guojun wrote the "Discussion on the Expansion of the Yarn Ingot Plan", which examined the rise and fall of the British, Indian and Japanese cotton textile industries, and proposed the establishment of a strong National Textile Federation, formulated a detailed plan, and made every effort to develop the textile industry.

In 1937, after the Japanese launched an all-out war of aggression against China, three factories of Dacheng Company in Changzhou were bombed one after another, and the material losses after the fall were very heavy. After Changzhou was occupied by Japan, the Dacheng No. 1 Factory was bombed, the Dacheng No. 2 Factory was burned down, and the Dacheng No. 3 Factory became a Japanese horse farm. Liu Guojun was still scrupulously trustworthy at this time, and in 1939 he returned the pre-war loan of the Shanghai Commercial savings bank in full under very difficult circumstances, which was deeply appreciated by the banker Chen Guangfu and became a close friend.

(iv)

In the spring of 1950, Liu Guojun resolutely handed over the Hong Kong Southeast Textile Co., Ltd. to Liu Hankun and Liu Handong, and returned to the mainland with his wife. In the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, Dacheng Company donated a total of 5 billion yuan, and Liu Guojun personally donated more than 200 million yuan, and took the initiative to donate the wool spinning industry left in Shanghai and Hong Kong to the country. Later, it took the lead in implementing public-private partnership in the private cotton spinning industry in Jiangsu Province.

The chaotic social and political environment made Liu Guojun very eager for a peaceful and stable business environment. In 1914, because he could not stand the extortion of local forces, Liu Guojun sold all 2 shops in Benniu Town and moved to Changzhou to develop his career. During the Japanese occupation period, Liu Guojun's Dacheng spinning mill suffered heavy losses. Before the founding of New China, Liu Guojun's family property had been widely distributed and based abroad, but after the founding of New China, he resolutely moved the industry back to the mainland of the motherland, and his third son Liu Hanliang also returned to the mainland of the motherland from the Americas. Although they have foreign foundations and experience, Liu Guojun and Liu Hanliang have a common feeling: "Leaving their motherland, sending people to the fence, being manipulated by others, and being slaughtered by others, even if he is a 'millionaire', the mood is also very bitter." ”

Liu Guojun summed up his life: "Three meals of wheat paste at night, a bamboo bed at night. Half a life's career is ten thousand achievements, and if you are rich, you will not forget the poor. As a giant, Liu Guojun is still diligent and thrifty, and he believes that his career is the credit of everyone. Liu Guojun earned the first pot of gold in his life during the Xinhai Revolution, did not yield and did not rebel in the War of Resistance, and after the founding of New China, he made the most important political choice - firmly standing with the Chinese Communist Party, which eventually made him an indispensable figure in modern industrialists.