Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#394 - The half-open window and the rise of the first industrial wave

Due to external factors, Dongda's entire foreign trade structure is now focused on labor-intensive industries, with food and clothing serving as the leading sectors in steady development.

Unlike the starting point of opening up in the main world's historical timeline, the gradual nature of social changes in the past and the significant social capital investment have allowed the development of labor-intensive industries to be driven naturally from clothing to related sectors, rather than relying on overseas capital as in the main world, starting from Ren Zhong's initial promotion of the clothing industry.

The food industry is similar; after being driven by several leading enterprises, smart capital follows this general direction, pursuing differentiated and diversified paths under the influence and demonstration of these leading enterprises, supplementing the product matrix of the core leading enterprises.

With the promulgation of product quality standards, the basic quality of these products is subject to spot checks and control by local quality supervision departments, ensuring that the overall product quality control remains at a high level.

Counterfeit and shoddy products find it difficult to survive. Even though this timeline may not have as many information-based means, the most basic management of grid systems makes all factories inescapable and fully subject to the management of the local quality supervision system.

This has led to the peculiar emergence of a coastal industrial belt of low-end, labor-intensive products, becoming the main force of early inland exports and attracting the first batch of laborers to work in the coastal areas.

Coupled with the large-scale infrastructure construction of the First and Second Five-Year Plans, the first batch of massive labor force after liberation found their place.

This was not entirely planned by Ren Zhong, but as the Second Five-Year Plan approaches its end, the entire society is filled with an atmosphere of working hard for two more years to create new records.

The 400 million compatriots are either in schools, on construction sites, in fields, or in factories!

Without internal friction and outdated customs, the implementation of supervision and auditing systems allows the main enterprises and factories at all levels to operate successfully under transparent third-party supervision, maintaining monetary autonomy and quota-based limited exchange, like opening half a window.

However, after large-scale schooling, the first batch of technical college students began to graduate. A large number of vocational and technical college students first filled relevant positions in major domestic enterprises, becoming fresh blood for large state-owned enterprises in aviation, steel, machinery, electronics, chemical industry, shipbuilding, and other industries, supporting the development of these pillar enterprises.

At the same time, some manpower can be drawn out to start upgrading the structure of domestic and foreign trade industries. First, in the electronics industry, with the support of many achievements from the Liming Research Institute, Ren Zhong is promoting the initial integration and demonstration of the Qianlong Plan with the upgrading of foreign trade. With the success of Vision, subsequent seeds such as Goldenstar and CoCo Digital have also found Dongda, adopting the same cooperation model, obtaining a new batch of technologies from the Liming Research Institute and embarking on the road to take off again. This has made many Western capitals with a keen sense of smell start to come in and probe.

The diesel engine industry and the machine tool industry took the lead.

Sulzer, from the neutral country of Switzerland, brought out its housekeeping skills and reached a comprehensive diesel engine development plan with the Power Research Institute of Liming Research Institute, mainly focusing on the development of the power diesel engine market. The two sides signed more than a dozen cooperative projects in vehicle diesel engines and marine diesel engines.

In addition, Sulzer also brought out its flagship products in centrifuges and industrial pumps for cooperation, mainly targeting the Asia-Pacific market.

A large part of it is aimed at Dongda's booming marine diesel engine industry.

Of course, Ren Zhong doesn't care. With Sulzer, the power can be updated faster. Since the researched models are relatively mature, the time to convert to a practical state is very short, allowing small transport ships of 3,000 tons and below to have a more excellent power package.

Because the new power package has roughly the same power, the fuel consumption is much lower. Relatively speaking, for the same journey, the fuel consumption may be about 10% lower, making the competitiveness of transport ships more prominent.

In addition to being cheap, reliable, and durable, it now has the advantages of low fuel consumption and low operating costs.

Such cooperation is a win-win for both parties, so they are running on the road to success at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Following closely, the Austrian-Hungarian EMCO Group also began to cooperate with the Machine Tool Research Center of Liming Research Institute through the introduction of certain intermediaries. In the face of our absolutely dominant CNC machine tool technology, EMCO has become our bridgehead for breaking through the European market.

The machine tool production line established by our technology output in the EMCO Group quickly emerged with its amazing performance at the Brussels Electromechanical Exhibition in Europe, directly monopolizing the current high-end CNC machine tool market in Europe and becoming a new favorite in the European machine tool industry.

In order to realize these machine tool orders as soon as possible, it is obviously unrealistic to rely solely on EMCO's production line, so most of these orders are produced in Dongda in OEM mode and transported to the world, making Hardinge in North America unable to sit still. They brought out their housekeeping skills turning center and reached a technical cooperation with the Machine Tool Center of Liming Research Institute to produce CNC turning centers and new CNC machine tools in North America and Dongda respectively, directly swallowing the huge development space of the North American machine tool market.

The more successful projects like this, the greater the attraction to foreign capital.

In this way, without providing any preferential policy conditions, Dongda has achieved the integration and mutual achievement of some industries with the West.

Of course, all of this is not obtained out of thin air. From Vision to Goldenstar, CoCo Digital to Sulzer, success does not depend on someone bragging or relationships. Even the seeds released by the Qianlong Plan are actually taking advantage of the situation in the process of cooperation and are not deliberately promoting it.

It is precisely because of these leading technologies made by the Liming Research Institute system that after the flowers bloom, they naturally attract bees and butterflies, making capital bend for it.

Only by continuously innovating technology and sparing no effort to develop new products can we have the ability to open up new markets. It's just that Dongda at this stage has just re-emerged from a century of weakness on Blue Star. Many things cannot be directly intervened, so we have to cooperate with the capital of the great powers to open up their markets.

However, as Dongda's technological influence gradually increases globally, the new products with the labels clearly marked with the research centers under the Liming Research Institute are gradually penetrating into all aspects of the great powers. After a period of fermentation, Dongda will also begin to strongly accumulate and output in terms of brands. At this stage, let's first survive and pass the first round of comprehensive development stage of industrialization.

Now Dongda is much stronger than the reform and opening up period of the main world. Not only does it have cheap land prices and factory construction costs, but it also has its own unique technological innovation capabilities and qualified technicians, and efficient construction speed, directly reducing the cost of building new factories by about half. In addition, labor costs are also 20% lower than in China (this is still after a large part of it is collected by the local government, equivalent to part of the compensatory income as land rent). Calculating inside and out, if the scale is large enough, development in Dongda is much better than in other places.

Currently, there is a confrontation between two major camps. Dongda doesn't rely on either, standing apart as a third force. The Chief's discourse on the three worlds remains unchanged. Opening the door to the First World market is, in effect, opening the door to the entire world, while maintaining our financial controls to prevent the free flow of capital, ensuring that our nascent financial system isn't unduly disturbed by external forces.

It's like opening a window for import and export trade, but securing that window with a financial and foreign exchange safety barrier.

We guide industries to gradually go out and bring in, slowly forming a virtuous cycle. Although the domestic demand for some electronic consumer goods is currently small, it's only temporary. With economic development, Ren Zhong believes that it won't take many five-year plans before the first wave of industrialization turns the first batch of workers into the wealthy.

However, these industries currently lack the potential to develop into major forces.

Ren Zhong understands that, with the global economy not yet fully developed, the market for consumer products can't compete with the market for production-oriented products.

Following this simple logic, the first wave of domestic industrialization is primarily focused on small factory equipment.

Because the approval and construction authority for most local factories has been relaxed, except for industries with strong pollution, such as small steel mills, small chemical plants, small cement plants, and small thermal power plants, the rest, such as textile factories, food factories, repair shops, agricultural machinery factories, wineries, and other small and medium-sized enterprises related to people's basic needs, are not prohibited. Various regions develop according to their needs.

As a result, the production lines and machine tools needed by factories built with joint public-private capital in various places have formed a huge domestic demand market, allowing the domestic machine tool industry to begin a large-scale explosive development.

In this regard, Ren Zhong had long been prepared, forming five major machine tool groups from the division and merger of his subsidiaries, each targeting specific industries to develop these production lines.

However, the machine tool factories aren't the most profitable. Their most valuable asset is the complete set of production lines of the "five small factories" type exported to the vast Third World countries! Due to the experience gained from practicing in a large number of domestic factories and mass production, the price of complete sets of domestic production lines is at least half the price of Western production lines with the same production effect.

In this way, with a uniform pricing 20% lower than international competitors, domestic production lines are unmatched in competitiveness in the Third World!

With the demonstration of strength in defeating the rogue eagle and the launch of satellites into space, the domestic media cooperated to widely promote the rise of Dongda in the world, forming a huge promotional effect. Products marked as "Made in Dongda" entered these countries and, after practical verification, were indeed cheap and good.

In terms of promotion, Ren Zhong proposed not to repeat efforts, but to allocate a portion of the tax revenue from export commodities as Dongda's industrial promotion funds, and conduct overall promotion of Dongda products globally through a unified agency.

First, create concepts such as "Great Power Brand," "Great Power Quality," and "Great Power Technology," so that customers in these countries will have the image that products made in Dongda are definitely high-quality.

In addition, the quality inspection and punishment measures for export products are indeed strictly enforced, and the product control has several solid checkpoints. The overall product quality is very reliable. If there are defective products, they will be resolutely recalled for complete replacement and destruction. In this way, the reputation has been established through a few years of promotion + product demonstration.

Instead of low-price dumping, it wins with cost-effectiveness. Ren Zhong directly grasped the key points of laying the foundation for the first wave of industrialization. Through the export of production-oriented products, it not only enhances the production and development capabilities of the product-importing countries, but also creates a relatively wealthy group of factory owners in these countries, while also building confidence in Dongda products.

Under this condition, when the second wave of consumer electronics products, such as televisions, microwave ovens, radios, and video recorders, are launched, these newly enriched factory owners have a very high acceptance.

Even if the local area hasn't developed television stations and televisions can't receive television programs, with video recorders as a complement, these people buy them and use video tapes to play programs.

Some resourceful people even use this combination as a video hall!

In this way, the TV series produced by the entertainment company that Ren Zhong deployed in Hong Kong and Taiwan found another market. The action films, martial arts films, and war films that were first put into production all had the theme of the Eastern Giant being inviolable, justice will surely defeat evil, and those with thick eyebrows and big eyes must be Eastern heroes, while those with rat faces are mostly Japanese devils and pirates.

This is the unreserved implantation of Eastern culture.

If it were placed in the 21st century of the main world, these things would not be approved locally at all.

However, in the 1950s of the Bright Sword world, hardly anyone had the concept of cultural invasion. Everyone just thought that such TV series were good-looking.

Especially in the Asian circle, the acceptance is very high. Even in the Japanese devils' side, action films and martial arts films were all the rage, which really allowed the entertainment company deployed by Ren Zhong to eat a wave of dividends in this wave of industrial expansion.

Most of these things are exchanged for various mineral resources and other raw materials that are urgently needed domestically. With Ren Zhong as such a know-it-all, he is almost clear about where these countries have mineral resources. Although domestic capital doesn't go to plunder, it is normal to participate in infrastructure construction as an investor and bring domestic mining machinery and mining machinery over. Relying on the advantages of technology and capital, domestic investment in mineral development in these places is almost impossible to fail, which also fixes a batch of high-quality mineral resources for the domestic metallurgical industry.

Even if those minerals are available in China now, the current international prices are so low that Ren Zhong feels embarrassed. The pithead price of iron ore in many places is less than $10 in mining costs, and the grade of these large open-pit mines is not low, most of which exceed 50% iron content.

This allows Ren Zhong's new steel production capacity expansion to be mainly based on overseas iron ore, and several steel plants with an annual output of more than 3 million tons have been opened continuously in the southern coastal areas, mainly using iron ore and coal from Australia and Southeast Asia.

If there are no accidents, by the end of the Second Five-Year Plan, steel production capacity will increase to more than 20 million tons! Steel has begun to change from a shortage to a bulk product that can be exported.

It can be said that, in addition to continuous breakthroughs in the military industry, other basic industries have also achieved great development in parallel. (End of this chapter)