Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 274 The King Who Makes People Doubt Life (Third update, please subscribe)

The cool breeze blew out from the vent on the door and dispersed in the air. Despite the blazing sun, the room felt cool and pleasant.

Li Yian was looking through a report, but saw that it was full of dense numbers and charts. The report of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry is just like this. Although there is a lot of text, there are more numbers and charts.

While he was looking through the report, Liu Chengyu, who was sitting on the chair in front of his desk, said.

"...Not everyone can understand why trading companies should be given so much power. Trading companies should be a platform that provides business information services, and should not be directly involved in operations, especially the constraints on production companies. If it is lower than the guide price, it will be regarded as a breach of contract and a penalty will be imposed. Who would sell their goods at a bargain?"

Li Yian just said "hmm" and then continued to look at the numbers in front of him. What are these numbers? It is about the products, production capacity, profits and other related information of hundreds of factories of varying sizes. None of them are companies invested by the company. They include old companies in North Borneo and new companies invested in.

Although small in scale, these businesses are an important part of Borneo's economy.

When Li Nian was carrying out large-scale investment and construction in the name of his company, investors from the Philippines, Siam and Tangshan also began to invest in Borneo, and some even escaped from Java, Singapore and other places under Japanese occupation.

I have to lament that the business sense of these overseas Chinese businessmen who were able to gain a foothold in Nanyang was extremely keen, and they were able to see opportunities even when the war had not subsided.

Turning to the end, I saw a paragraph written on the last page: In summary, there is reason to believe that Borneo has now become the preferred investment location for overseas Chinese businessmen in Southeast Asia. Since January this year, more than 10000 million yuan has been invested. Flooding into Sandakan, Kuching and other places, 70% of the capital comes from Siam.

After closing the report, Li Yian spoke.

"Who won't cut prices? Those businessmen?"

With a cold smile, Li Yian did not continue speaking. He slowly pushed the report away from his eyes, stood up from the desk slowly, and walked around the office. He stood in front of the window and stared at the garden of the office outside the window. The lush lawn stretched for hundreds of meters like a carpet.

"Involution!"

Li Yian, who was staring out the window, spit out this term that did not belong to this era.

"For businessmen, the most important thing is to make profits, but shopping malls are like battlefields. Competition is the survival instinct of businessmen. In order to sell more goods, they will use various methods to compete with each other, and the simplest The solution is not to improve quality, but to lower each other's prices, or even viciously lower prices. They don't care about overall profits, only individual profits, and they only need to sell goods to foreign countries when there is a profit."

In another world, as a wage earner, Li Yi'an once worked in a foreign trade company for a period of time. He had heard and witnessed how far domestic manufacturers could get involved, and how they could lower each other's prices to the point of breaking bones.

Finally, the price can be lowered to the point where the profit on a one-dollar item is only a few cents.

This is not the most terrifying thing. He once heard an old foreign trader talk about another group of "Volume Kings". From the 80s to the early 90s, due to the shortage of foreign exchange, all provinces adopted a "foreign exchange only theory". To evaluate whether a company's top leader is capable does not depend on its operations, but on how much foreign exchange it earns for the country.

In order to earn foreign exchange, provinces are resorting to all possible means.

The most famous battlefield is the Canton Fair. Once a best-selling product appears at the Canton Fair and the product shines, companies across the country will swarm to copy it. Everyone thinks that since they are all their own, the wealth will not flow to outsiders. They are all their own companies. It is a good thing to be able to produce more and earn foreign exchange through exports. They have never stopped this.

However, swarming production will inevitably lead to oversupply. In order to sell goods, various exhibitors have started a price war. Some manufacturers even sell at prices below the cost price.

why?

Because of foreign exchange!

As long as they can bring back foreign exchange from the Canton Fair, they will be great contributors and can add a lot to their resume.

Why can we do loss-making business?

Because those companies could maintain production through loans at that time.

As for the profits of the company, no one cares about it, and in the end the snowball gets bigger and bigger...

Later, after entering the new century, domestic manufacturers fully inherited the "advantages" of lowering each other's prices and squeezing others before squeezing themselves. They lowered each other's prices and swamped their opponents, trying to win the market based on this. In order to get orders, we often compete to death, making foreign companies laugh to death, and they are also very cheap to foreign companies.

That's not even the most awesome. The most awesome overseas companies are really fierce when they develop overseas markets. After using low prices to win over foreign companies, their own losses are even more powerful, and they can even win. You can turn a business worth 1000 million into million. Although these are all legends in the world. But when these scroll kings roll up, they will definitely make everyone doubt their life.

Well, shouting at a loss can make you doubt your whole life. Chinese businessmen also have a tradition of raising each other's prices overseas. As long as the goods imported from abroad are very popular in China, in order to obtain more supply, they will also raise each other's prices, and even charge sky-high prices. In the 00s, the iron industry Ore rolled into the sky, and later cherries and avocados were rolled in. The prices were so high that drug dealers switched to growing avocados. Selling avocados was even more profitable than selling drugs. From this you can imagine how ruthless these "Volume Kings" are.

As for the freedom of cherries and freedom of durians. who cares. They just need to bring the supply to China.

If you can't afford it or have freedom, it's probably because you haven't worked hard. Find the reason in yourself.

Because of this, Li Yian is really afraid of those "Volume Kings". After all, you absolutely cannot use common sense to speculate on what these guys can do.

They are all famous for their rolls.

It can easily make you doubt your life.

After turning around, Li Yian looked at the person in charge of the Department of International Trade and Industry in front of him and smoked several cigars in succession. A month ago, after Heidi became pregnant, he picked up cigarettes again. There was nothing he could do about it. There were too many things. .

"In order to compete with their competitors, they will continue to lower prices without any bottom line. So, where do their profits come from?"

Li Yian's rhetorical question made Liu Chengyu think for a moment and then answered.

“Jidding corners and squeezing workers is the easiest way to reduce costs.”

"Yes, this is the simplest way. For a group of guys who only rely on lowering prices to engage in vicious competition, you can't expect them to think of other ways."

Li Yian sneered, took another puff of cigar, and said.

"What is lost by cutting corners? It's the reputation of the Borneo system. One mouse spoils the soup. Once the reputation is damaged, it may not be restored in ten or twenty years. And what about the workers? They squeeze more than just The wages of workers are the future of a country. If those workers only get barely enough wages, where will there be money for consumption? If there is no consumption, then companies will not have enough demand to produce products and services, which will lead to Bankruptcy and rising unemployment. In the end, it is a vicious cycle, and the country is bound to fall into recession. As for the factories? They are just sweatshops at best..."

Of course Liu Chengyu, who was born in a family of tea merchants, has witnessed the mutual price-cutting among merchants, and naturally knows the disadvantages. After all, every year when tea is on the market, tea merchants will compete to lower the price, but he has never thought of this kind of thing. Lowering prices will affect the rise or fall of a country.

Walking to the table, nodding towards the report, Li Yian said:

"Well, these people, if you don't control them with some skills, they will drag you into doubting your life in business. What are they taking away? It is the future of Borneo! We need them, but we need them as the country of Borneo. The secondary guns and small guns on each battleship can win future commercial wars under unified command, instead of letting them fight independently on the battlefield or even kill each other!"

At this point, Li Yian admires Japanese businessmen very much. No matter how Japanese trading companies and businessmen compete domestically, in the international market, they cooperate fully and put profits first. Businessmen from other countries should never count on them. They will lower each other's prices.

In fact, this is not because Japanese businessmen are very self-disciplined, but because there is an organization that restricts competition among them - the Federation of Industry and Commerce, which is composed of large Japanese companies holding shares in each other, and the large companies among them are the backbone companies in Japan. They formulate corresponding basic rules for overseas operations and require all companies to abide by them.

If any company uses price-cutting methods to kill each other in overseas markets, it will inevitably be hit by the entire Federation of Industry and Economics, that is, all large companies, or even completely blocked.

Under such circumstances, naturally no company would dare to do nothing and compete for the market by cutting prices at the cost of killing one thousand enemies and losing eight hundred to itself.

What has this overbearing management approach achieved?

Although benevolent people have different opinions, one thing that is certain is that Li Nian will never allow Borneo companies to use up the precious wealth of the country's industrial upgrading in vicious competition - this wealth belongs to the whole society.

Although he can completely intervene in all this through the Borneo Company, it is not impossible to promote it a little bit through the trading company. After all, the current companies have not left Borneo. Before that, we set rules for them and used various means to force them to abide by them, and then they developed a habit.

He pulled the report in front of him and Li Yian said:

"So, we need some means to prevent them from getting involved with each other in order to get orders, and end up getting advantage of the gringos. This is for the future of Borneo."

(End of this chapter)