"I've always known that there is a big gap between Hua Guo and Ameriken, and I had a very intuitive feeling when I was exchanging in Santa Barbara.

But before that, I compared people around me, when I was studying at Yan University, those who were able to come to Yan University to study were able to stay above a certain level, and after graduation, they were able to get a good job in China. And then not to mention the hair boys who grew up together.

Their economic level, if used in probability terms, is underestimated in terms of the first 1/10,000.

After going to the Yangtze River Delta and going deep into the front line of the manufacturing industry, I intuitively felt how hard the vast number of labor forces lived.

For example, the agreed unit price of parts is two cents a piece, and the workers work hard, can exceed 30,000 a month, and work more than 12 hours a day, which means that their highest monthly salary is more than 6,000 yuan.

Then the factory will reduce the unit price for various reasons, and reduce the unit price to a dime a dime in the second month, or even lower. I talked to the heads of the joint venture factories in China in the Wanwan, Goryeo and Neon regions, and they generally responded that they should keep the wage cost below 2,000 yuan.

When I was in the Yangtze River Delta region, I used a different identity, which was roughly the relationship of a local business administration leader, who used to be my grandfather's guard, and later transferred to the local government.

Therefore, the heads of local private enterprises are polite to me and will answer almost my questions truthfully.

That is to say, if the worker's salary exceeds 2,000 yuan, then the rules can be changed flexibly.

Even so, the workers lacked the means to resist. Therefore, companies like Yongxin that can follow the rules and do not set a salary cap are particularly scarce.

Also in the Yangtze River Delta, I went around the West Lake, and the unit price per square meter of the lake-view house in the West Lake has exceeded 4,000 US dollars, and many foreign businessmen or executives of foreign companies in China go there to buy a house and then go on vacation on the weekend. ”

In 2000, the unit price of houses with a view of the lake, such as Hyatt Apartment and Yuanhua Apartment, was about 4,000 US dollars per square meter.

Cao Yongluo sighed: "What I want to say is, can we really change the status quo and let the Chinese people live the life of the Americans?" ”

Zhou Xin said: "There will be that day.

Do you know where China will be affected the fastest after its accession to the WTO? ”

Cao Yongluo said without thinking: "It must be Xiangjiang, and Xiangjiang is definitely the first area to be affected." In the past, many of the goods manufactured in China needed to go to Xiangjiang for transit, and then be stamped with the logo of Xiangjiang and exported to Europe and the United States.

In order to avoid the risk of cargo transit, and also to reduce the tax on the circulation of goods between the mainland and Xiangjiang, manufacturing enterprises in China will transport parts to Xiangjiang and complete the final assembly in Xiangjiang.

After China's accession to the WTO, there is no need for Xiangjiang, which has no advantages except tariffs, will be swallowed up by the mainland in terms of manufacturing, and the siphoning effect of the Yangtze River Delta region will soon destroy Xiangjiang's manufacturing industry. ”

After listening to this, Zhou Xin knew that Cao Yongluo did know a lot about the manufacturing industry, because in his understanding, it was indeed Xiangjiang that was the first to be affected.

When Zhou Xin was studying at Berkeley, he had a chat with a classmate from Xiangjiang, who was originally engaged in manufacturing, but after 2001, his family's business fell off a cliff, and later changed to rent collection.

According to official statistics, at the end of 2001, when China joined the WTO, by March 2002, Xiangjiang's foreign trade orders fell by more than 15 percent, from the metal manufacturing industry, electronics industry, and machinery industry to the most serious decline, as high as 30 percent.

This is why Heung Kong later focused on the financial, service and real estate industries, because they had no choice.

Zhou Xin said: "That's right, after China joins the WTO, it will slowly eat up the share of other countries' manufacturing industry." ”

Because he was worried that his home was also equipped with equipment, Zhou Xin could not say some things too directly, so he could only start from the perspective of manufacturing development.

"So for Huaguo, I can put some more valuable industrial chains in Huaguo, such as the current Internet mobile phone, I put the production in Huaguo, and under the driving role of Matrix, other mobile phone brands will also put part of the production links in Huaguo.

Even if there is no matrix, there will be a gradual process, because China's manufacturing industry has unique advantages in many aspects, and joining the WTO has completely released its advantages in the manufacturing industry for China. Matrix is just able to speed up the process.

But there is one thing that only Matrix can do, and other mobile phone manufacturers can't do, that is, to give Chinese enterprises opportunities in technical parts, so that Chinese enterprises can also enjoy technological dividends. ”

Speaking of this, Cao Yongluo was a little frustrated, "I told you in an email before that the matrix keyboard was counterfeited by other companies in China and then exported to Ameriken.

This incident has made me very suspicious, Huaguo has done a very poor job in intellectual property protection, in such an environment, can Huaguo enterprises really enjoy technological dividends?

What I said in the email is relatively simple, that is, the matrix keyboard has been disassembled and copied by other manufacturers in about two months.

After they achieved the replica, they mass-produced products that simulated the Matrix keyboard, and then exported them to Ameriken, which was almost exactly the same as the Matrix, at most it was slightly worse than the Matrix in terms of quality control and quality.

But the Matrix keyboard sells for $499, and the export price of these products has dropped from $100 to only $15 now, and I estimate that their profit margin is only 20% at most.

At first, it was counterfeited by one or two companies, and then more and more companies began to counterfeit, and export prices plummeted.

In the face of price advantage, except for some users who are really not short of money or respect the original version, they buy matrix keyboards from official channels. And it's useless for me to find a relationship on this, because companies that counterfeit matrix keyboards are everywhere from the Yangtze River Delta to the Pearl River Delta.

It's impossible to manage it, and they don't want to manage it locally. If Matrix were the only one to make Matrix keyboards, the export value would be millions of dollars at most, because the high price of $499 would be affordable even for the Americans.

After the export price was reduced to 15 US dollars, the entire export value instantly increased to a market of 10 million US dollars. And because the keyboard structure of Matrix has brought a violent impact to the original keyboard industry, from Cherry to Filco to Dell and Logitech, a series of manufacturers that originally made membrane keyboards and mechanical keyboards have begun to enter the field of imitation matrix keyboards.

And almost without exception, they are looking for OEM companies in China, counting the export volume of the overall keyboard industry, it is about 50 million US dollars.

If you want to investigate the responsibility for technology patents one by one, it will seriously hit the export foreign trade industry, and there are even counties in the Yangtze River Delta, and more than thirty percent of the enterprises in the entire county focus on the production of keycaps, shafts and metal shells.

From the perspective of protecting the local economy, protecting the survival of enterprises, generating income for the local government, and creating employment opportunities, the protection of intellectual property rights is much less prioritized.

Therefore, in this context, it is difficult for me to be confident that Chinese enterprises can truly enjoy technological dividends, or enjoy long-term technological dividends. ”

Cao Yongluo took a sip of Coca-Cola and moistened his throat before continuing: "When I was in the ivory tower, I always felt that the rules came first, and after the rules were formulated, they needed to be implemented according to the rules. In the real world, a lot of the time, rules don't do their job.

It is not necessarily enforceable that rules are made to enforce them, and enforcing them can cause greater losses in the short term than not enforcing them. Rules, including those related to the protection of intellectual property rights, were also expedited after China's accession to the WTO, and in fact the level of implementation was very limited. ”

Zhou Xin smiled, looking at this question from a higher perspective, he can give a good answer in the future, Zhou Xin has never worried about this question:

"When I was making the Matrix keyboard, I didn't expect it to sell many copies at all, purely to build the Matrix brand, so that everyone can realize that Matrix is a high-end, high-tech, and innovative brand.

Quickly associate the brand with these concepts. Therefore, we need to subvert a certain industry, the keyboard is a popular field, as long as the people who have used the computer will have the need to use the keyboard, this is an extremely homogeneous competition field, you make a membrane keyboard successfully, then I also make a membrane keyboard.

The R&D ideas of enterprises in this field also revolve around lower latency and longer use time, and the R&D investment is also very small.

This also means that the field is easily disrupted, and there are so many ways to change it in terms of appearance, overall texture, typing sound and haptics. A lot has changed, but honestly nothing technical.

It's more of a creative subversion, coupled with high pricing and ads everywhere, in fact, to give users a concept of the Matrix brand at minimal cost.

The commodity itself is only secondary. Now judging by the number of sales of Mphone, this is a very successful step. The launch of Mphone has once again deepened users' recognition of the matrix brand and the recognition of the brand concept.

Therefore, the matrix keyboard has no technical content, so other companies can easily reverse crack it and then produce it.

It's not that easy to change to other fields. Like Mphone, it sells very well in Ameriken and the price is very high, has any company imitated it?

I'm afraid not, right? Just Mphone's mobile phone chips, not to mention Chinese companies, no one in Americon can imitate them. ”

"So matrix is not a technical advantage, it is a design and concept advantage, which is very easy to imitate."

Cao Yongluo shook his head: "I don't agree with Ling's statement.

Taking Mphone as an example, now Chinese enterprises can only do mobile phone shells and assembly, and in the future, it will probably slowly move from batteries, to pcb boards, to screens, and finally chips and cameras.

The problem is that the advantages of Chinese enterprises are limited, and their technological advantages are also weak technical advantages, which are easy to be cracked backwards.

In this way, it is difficult for Chinese enterprises to accumulate technological advantages. ”

Zhou Xin said: "We can choose, choose the enterprise with patent rights, with the support of matrix, the enterprises with patent rights can enjoy the technological advantage, they either maintain the technological advantage, or one day be eliminated by other enterprises."

Nothing more than these two outcomes. ”

Zhou Xin continued: "The biggest problem with Mphone now is that the battery is not enough, and users need to charge it once a day, and even twice a day if it is used frequently.

If anyone can solve the problem of the battery, even if it is only a slight technological progress, then we will choose it as a supplier, Mphone has now completed the distribution of Maple Leaf Country, South America, and Europa regions, and is expected to sell more than five million next year.

For suppliers who can optimize the battery, this is a market of five million, which also means that the entire mobile phone industry will be open to them, isn't this market big enough?

The great advantage of doing Mphone lies in the brand effect, Mphone is successful enough, then in the future, the upstream and downstream suppliers of Mphone supply chain will also be looked up to by other mobile phone manufacturers, and even directly enter their supply chain process.

When we do the selection of Mphone suppliers, we will naturally take a high look at Nokia's suppliers, and after Mphone replaces Nokia's status in the future, Mphone's suppliers can enjoy the same treatment. ”

The problem for Chinese enterprises is that it is difficult to continue to invest in R&D after having technological advantages.

Take Changhong as an example,At this time, Changhong is the most technologically advanced TV manufacturing company in Huaguo,The only manufacturer in Huaguo that can manufacture the fourth generation of rear projection TVs。 Later, it gradually lost its technical advantages and lost its core technical advantages.

Zhou Xin remembered a thing he heard from the other party when he met with Morgan investors before, and then said to Cao Yongluo: "Huaguo is actually able to achieve technological leadership or technological advantages in a few fields.

I've heard that China launched a new set of multimedia TV protocols last year, which is much ahead of the Americon, Europe, and Neon TV protocol standards.

It seems to be called DMB-T, which is a set of standards jointly developed by a company founded by Mizuki University and Mizuki University alumni who returned to Japan, and improves transmission efficiency by 10% compared with European technical standards.

They are now developing decoding chips based on this set of standards, and I think they need to have confidence in the companies of Huaguo. ”

DMB-T standard was developed in the laboratory in 2000, and became a national standard in 06, which can achieve a transmission speed of 33MB/s, which was enough for the clarity of TV at that time.

Of course, they just design the chips.

Later, the chip LGS-8G52 launched by them has excellent single-carrier and multi-carrier performance, and has obvious technical advantages in anti-multipath interference and low power consumption, reducing the cost of chip implementation. At that time, the digital TV all-in-one machine launched by LG on the market adopted a dual-chip solution, and LGS-8G52 only needed a single chip to achieve.

Coincidentally, the foundry of LGS-8G52 is SMIC.

Cao Yongluo: "Maybe I'm too pessimistic. ”

Zhou Xin: "It's always easy to be pessimistic when you look down and do things, it's easy to ignore the power of time, and it's easy to be optimistic when you look up at the sky, and you feel that the sun doesn't seem to be far away from you." ”

About the LGS-8G52 TV decoding chip, you can go to the report on SMIC's official website on April 18, 2008.

I don't know if I'm yang or not, it happened twice during this time, about three or four days apart, at night first with an itchy throat, then a wild cough, and the next day after drinking cough syrup, I was fine.

(End of chapter)