PATEO, Germany.

Chairman Wordenberg held a report, frowned, and asked several subordinates in the office: "Do you think the Chinese's actions this time are true or a new deception?"

"I feel like it's real. "Our move this time has greatly angered the Chinese side, and they have already let out the wind and said that they will no longer negotiate with us, and they will steam their own steamed buns." ”

"What do you mean by steamed buns?" asked Technical Director Lawther curiously.

"I guess it means that you have to work your own. Scholt replied perfunctorily. Foreigners can't understand the Chinese homophonic stalk of not steaming steamed buns and fighting for breath, but he is not wrong about the basic meaning.

"Several major media outlets in China have published blockbuster articles. They claim that this time PATEO first promised to sell special precision milling machines to China, and then canceled this promise, reflecting that China's equipment industry is controlled by others. China's State Commission of Science, Technology and Industry has signed a contract totaling nearly 200 million euros with Tengji, which previously claimed to have developed precision milling machines, requiring Tengji to develop seven key pieces of equipment in the next three years. Coincidentally, these 7 devices are our main products. Scholt reported.

Wordenberg asked, "How credible is this news?"

"I think it's more credible," Scholt said. In recent years, China has increased its investment in defense equipment, and 200 million euros is not a large number for the Chinese military. The 7 kinds of equipment they listed are currently dependent on foreign countries, to be precise, on our PATEO.

"If we interrupt the supply of spare parts for these devices to China, then the production will not be able to continue if the Chinese cannot get replacement equipment." In order to avoid such a dilemma, it is entirely possible that the Chinese military will go to great lengths to ask their local companies to break through these technical barriers. ”

"With 200 million euros, can the Chinese develop these seven kinds of equipment?" Wodenberg turned his head to Rausser.

"It's possible. "The Chinese are very hardworking, they are also very smart, if the financial side can be guaranteed, they should be able to solve the key problems in the design of these seven machine tools, come up with a design plan." ”

"But how can you explain that your technical department spent more than 200 million euros on a machine tool alone?" asked Wodenberg.

"It's completely incomparable. "The labor costs of the Chinese are much lower than ours, their engineers are only paid 500 euros a month, while in ours, a cleaner is paid more than 500 euros a week." Also, they don't need to start from scratch for their research, they can borrow from the machine tools they bought from us, as long as they carefully bypass the patent barriers. ”

"If it's used by the military industry, they don't even need to bypass patent barriers. Scholt said gloomily.

Patents are related to the market. If a company produces a product that is not sold on the market, no one knows whether it is infringing. Military enterprises are highly secretive, and even if there is a batch of equipment in their production workshop that infringes on the patents of other enterprises, the infringed party has nothing to do, because you simply cannot provide evidence.

China is a country with machine tool manufacturing capabilities, and the manufacturing level has risen rapidly in recent years, and it is no longer a problem to imitate a foreign precision machine tool. What stands in front of the Chinese is nothing more than material and process problems, because these two cannot be solved by imitation methods.

My family knows about my family, and the materials and know-how that PATEO has in his hands sound mysterious, but in fact there are no insurmountable obstacles. If the Chinese are ruthless and invest enough money in experimentation, it is entirely possible that they will find the right way so that materials and processes are no longer a bottleneck.

At that time, Chinese will really not need to buy PATEO equipment.

If it is only the loss of those orders from China's military enterprises, PATEO can still afford it, although it is also a lot of income. What PATEO needs to worry about is that in the process of solving various technical obstacles, Chinese machine tool enterprises will form technologies with independent intellectual property rights, and then produce machine tool products comparable to PATEO and carve up the international market of PATEO.

PATEO produces equipment with superior performance and quality, and the only drawback is that it is too expensive. In the absence of competitors, PATEO equipment can be sold as expensive as you want, if it is too expensive, you can buy Chinese cabbage, 100 euros can buy a large car, but it can't be used to produce parts, right?

Once the Chinese master the same technology and produce the same kind of machine tools, even if the quality is slightly inferior to PATEO, the market impact on PATEO is incalculable. The ability of Chinese to control costs is really terrible, as long as any product can be made by Chinese, the production enterprises of other countries can only close down, and the sales price of others can be half lower than your cost, how do you compare with them?

"Is there any way to get the Chinese to give up this unnecessary effort?" Wordenberg asked. His question is also quite interesting, directly saying that the efforts of the Chinese are unnecessary, which is actually hinting at the answer.

"Sales of milling machines to China must be resumed immediately. Scholt said without thinking.

"In this way, are we falling into the trap of the Chinese?" Rausser reminded.

"Yes, there's a risk," Wardenberg said. If the Chinese are just bluffing with the aim of tricking us into lifting the embargo, then aren't we fooled?"

"However, if we don't lift the embargo, the Chinese will probably do it in a fake way." "The production of their new missiles requires the use of our precision milling machines, and if they can't get them from us, they'll have to develop them themselves, and then the fake will become real." ”

"Damn!" Wordenberg scolded, but couldn't tell who he was scolding. He thought for a moment and said, "That's it, Scholte, you go to China in person and take Merce, who has connections with the Chinese military-industrial system." You try to meet with people in the Chinese military-industrial complex and get to the bottom of them to decide on our strategy.

"By the way, that Professor Qi Muden, you can also go and meet for a while, as a dissident in China, he might be able to give us some different information. ”

With Wordenberg's authorization, Scholt and Merce, the sales representative, hurriedly bought a plane ticket and rushed to China. They were greeted at the airport by Baboka, a staff member of PATEO's Asia-Pacific Service Center. In the taxi to the hotel, Scholt eagerly asked Baboca about this:

"Is it true that the Chinese are ready to invest 200 million euros in the development of seven machine tools, Barboca, the newspaper said?"

Baboka nodded and said: "Yes, I have inquired with the purchasing department of Factory 82, and they said that this time the change of mind of PATEO Company made their senior management very annoyed, and decided to invest a large amount of money in the development of products to replace PATEO machine tools." By the way, the purchasing department of Factory 82 was also severely criticized by their superiors, and the original head of the purchasing department was removed and replaced with a person named Han Weichang.

"This Han Weichang is a very slippery businessman, completely different from the procurement personnel of the Chinese military industry that we have dealt with in the past. On the one hand, he told me that there was no way to turn back, and on the other hand, he hinted to me that he personally liked PATEO products. ”

"What does that mean?" said Merce, surprised.

"I had private discussions with some technicians in China's military industry and found that there was a big difference in their attitudes towards the rejection of PATEO products," Baboca said. Some of the technicians were very tough, believing that PATEO's actions had hurt their self-esteem, and that they would not accept PATEO's products again anyway. Another part of the people, said that they lack confidence in China's own machine tools, they are more concerned about whether they can make performance, as for which country machine tools are used, they do not care. ”

"This is a reasonable phenomenon. "Not everybody cares about the conflict between China and us, and for the average engineer, they just want to get the best machine tools, and only officials care about autonomy." ”

"I think it's not so much a question of autonomy as a matter of face," Baboca said. This time, our company first promised to export precision milling machines to China, and then quickly canceled this commitment, which caused many Chinese officials to lose face, which is the crux of the matter. ”

"But are they willing to invest 200 million euros just to save face?" asked Merce.

"It's the senior officials who can decide where to invest the 200 million euros, but their decisions are also based on reports from the bottom officials," Baboca said. This time, some low-level officials in China's military industry have lost face, and it is said that it may affect their career development, so they will send some exaggerated information to their superiors to reduce their responsibility in this matter. ”

"Your analysis makes a lot of sense. Scholt praised Baboca, and then complained: "There are some people on the board of directors who don't know how to deal with the Chinese at all, and they still have the mentality of the Cold War, and they don't know how to be flexible." This time, it would not have happened, or even if it had to be done, it was entirely possible to take some milder measures, and it was a big mistake to hurt the self-esteem of the Chinese. ”

"So, Mr. Scholt, did you come to China this time to make peace with the Chinese?" asked Baboca.

"You can understand it that way, but I think what I'm going to do is much more than just making peace," Scholt said. ”