Ren Zhiqiang’s in-depth analysis of the values of the younger generation of entrepreneurs
An analysis of Ren Zhiqiang’s values towards the younger generation of entrepreneurs
Young people should make up their minds first, so as not to waste their youth.
When we are near the age of 60, it is precisely youth that is particularly precious. It is precisely the time that slips away from us and can never be recovered. We will never be able to return to the post-80 s age and reshape our experience.
First, we are all very poor people.
Before the reform and opening up, China was very poor, and on average, almost all of them were poor at the starting line. It was Deng Xiaoping who got China out of a stagnant pool. With life, the reform and re-division of labor at that time made different people take different paths.
Before the post-80s age, our generation didn’t have a life orientation, but they never lost their determination to "save the country". Perhaps the "red" education experienced by this generation made almost all people never have the illusion of personal wealth, and only the spirit of sacrificing for the country gave them the fearless impulse of the Cultural Revolution. It is precisely this determination and unremitting struggle spirit of "taking the world as one’s own responsibility" that makes the difference between their different development paths and different status quo.
When we entered our thirties, it coincided with the process of reform transferring from rural areas to cities. The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee liberated the rural labor force, but it has not solved the employment problem of a large number of unemployed young people in cities. The original state-owned system and collective system simply can’t meet a large number of employment needs, and the social services of urban "five difficulties" can’t meet the basic needs of urban life. Encouraging entrepreneurship and supporting self-entrepreneurship with preferential policies have become a trend in society. Opportunities are everywhere, but there are still a few people who can seize the opportunity, dare to seize the opportunity and strive to seize the opportunity.
I have been engaged in the entrepreneurial process of dozens of cross-industry workshop-style small enterprises, during which I have a lot of aftertaste, from the processing and export of rabbit skins, the production of Rubik’s Cube, the transportation of containers, the mailing of books, the operation of small shops to the dispatch of hourly workers in rural areas, the beating of typewriters and printing, binding, tailoring shops, home appliance maintenance, animal models, automobile maintenance, tapestry weaving to opening restaurants, selling fruits, selling cabbages and running offices.
At three or four o’clock in the morning, I get up and make a fire to fry oil cakes. Each oil cake costs three or five cents, and the consumption of two bags of noodles for breakfast is only a few tens of yuan. At night, when I count steel shovel, I often fight. A confused person will spill the ten pennies that have just been stacked all over the floor, and I have to look around and stack them again. A month later, a restaurant with more than 300 square meters and dozens of laborers will have a profit of less than 3,000 yuan. In the thirties, our monthly salary is only tens of yuan, and the bonus is only six yuan a month. And all this has never affected our confidence in starting a business. Poverty can make us hard, but poverty can’t affect our fighting spirit. "Being poor but not short-minded" has long been dissolved into our blood from the words and deeds of the older generation.
Second, create your own path.
We never hate the poor, but we hate poverty. Communist party’s aim is to "wipe out" all the poor people in the world and make everyone rich. We often help the poor, but we will never help those who become poor because of laziness and lack of effort. Because we have also walked through poverty and made our own way where there is no road.
It is a leap from selling apples and cabbages to reversing video recorders. Most people share the price difference caused by the logistics transfer after the reform and opening up from the circulation field. Like the traditional Silk Road, the initial trading and business started by taking advantage of the geographical difference between the north and the south and the opening of pilot cities in the early stage of the reform in the south, and it also changed from petty cash trading to bank credit and transfer. We chartered a military plane to transport goods, from bicycles to motorcycles and then to cars.
From toddler to running, almost no one will not stumble, no one will be smooth sailing, and most of those enterprises that started to expand too smoothly are mostly gone today.
Huayuan, Sitong and Lenovo are almost all generations that appeared in the market at the same time, while more well-known enterprises at that time went away in the big waves and never returned. The difference lies in going their own way or catching up with others’ ass. Mr. Qi Baishi said that "those who learn from me live like me die", which is intended to learn the spirit and soul, and is by no means a similar copy.
The transition from planned economy to market economy is not an easy task, especially for those of us who once left only a large number of remnants of planned economy. It is even more difficult to completely change everything in the past. However, we made a student movement and hit the authoritative leaders (perhaps wrongly). We climbed the mountain, got off the village, plowed the fields and planted grain with the wave of Chairman Mao’s hand, served as a soldier and carried a gun in the People’s Liberation Army in Cye.com.cn, and went to school and stayed abroad after resuming the college entrance examination. Some of them went to prison and hit the wall in the reform, but they still got up and groped again in the fall. These experiences and tribulations have just created their iron bones and muscles and iron will, and they have embarked on a road for China to cross the river by feeling the stones.
China’s reform chose to touch the stone passively from no road, and explored in the unknown way of crossing the river. Countless martyrs exchanged their blood and lives for the establishment of a new China. Similarly, countless later generations have become pioneers in seeking the successful road of reform, and many people have benefited from it and become well-known contemporary entrepreneurs, leaving behind experiences of failure and success for later generations.
If at the beginning of the reform, a generation dared to press their bloody fingerprints in order to find happiness, then is there anyone who is willing to use his life as a stepping stone to the success of more people today after 30 years of reform? It is this reverse mechanism of reform and the rising environment created by reform that makes two generations have different choices, and also makes more modern young people reluctant to use the premise of "determination" as the basis of their lives.
Modern post-80s students also think that they are going their own way, but most of them are no longer about how to achieve a "career" and "save the country", but how to build a small family with a happy life. Studying abroad with the support of their parents also makes them stop washing dishes in their spare time. More people don’t go into the sea because they are tasteless from the "comfortable" civil service posts, but flock into the "single-plank bridge" of civil service examinations.
After graduation, I will concentrate on large and medium-sized cities, and strive to enter cities where less than 10% of the population lives, instead of paying attention to the blind date of my parents and the hot land. They are keen to find happiness in life on the Internet, and they are also keen to discuss housing prices and social issues in the virtual world. They drive small private cars romantically in the mountains and fields, while proudly looking down on colleagues and classmates who pick them by cart, while shouting loudly at the high housing prices of luxury houses in the city center, which seems to have become a way of life for them …
Everyone has a different understanding of "going your own way", but society will redefine what "going your own way" is. Huayuan, on the other hand, withdrew and started a second venture in order to safeguard the interests of state-owned assets after entering the capital market, showing the competitive strength by re-entering the capital market, and proving what "breaking out of its own way" is with hard work and strength and performance recognized by the society.
Third, the power of example.
Li Yanhong, Ma Yun and Feng Jun are all role models for the younger generation. Although they are not called the post-80s generation, they are the best in this age group and can be worthy of all the pride of Chinese. But perhaps because their image is too high, many people think it is unattainable. Instead, they give up the pursuit of role models and make many people lose their attention to them.
In fact, the role model is a phased goal drawn up in the determination, and it is precisely a step that needs to be continuously improved and easily touched by yourself, which urges you to strive for it.
When we make a profit of millions, we set a profit target of tens of millions. When this goal is to be achieved, we set a profit target of hundreds of millions. When the company has hundreds of millions of capital, we hope to reach the level of billions and then tens of billions. Those companies that run faster than us are our role models and turn them into motivation.
When we only have the ability to return to work, we made a promise to allocate housing for employees, so that people who build houses can live in their own houses. After years of hard work, this goal has been constantly improving standards, from less to more, from small to large, and finally caught the last bus of welfare housing distribution.
Today’s housing prices make many young people feel unattainable, but I think this is just a kind of motivation. Young people’s efforts should be based on the pursuit of high-standard housing, but the reality should start with low-standard and long-distance housing or renting, just as learning to run should start with step by step. It is by no means to weaken one’s fighting spirit by complaining and complaining, and the goal of always being one step behind will not relax the spirit of hard work. The idea of expecting a pie from the sky is not conducive to the growth of young people.
As a soldier, I was lucky enough to crash into the team of the best Long Live Army in China. The excellent tradition has branded all soldiers without exception as always striving for the first place. In this army that survived the Red Army era led by communist party, Napoleon’s famous saying that "a soldier who doesn’t want to be a general is not a good soldier" is also taken as a message of determination and inspiration. Of course, it is accompanied by military history, teacher history, regiment history and company history, and the role model of heroes. It is the rendering of this environment that makes every soldier who lives in this competition with infinite excitement know to move forward. Never know what retreat is, all the complaints focus on not being the main attack company and having the honor of being the first to plant the red flag in the position, even if this honor comes at the expense of sacrifice.
Perhaps this spirit only belongs to that particular era and has been forgotten today. But for our generation, it is still fresh in memory and unforgettable for life. It is this specific living environment that has enabled me to win the second-class and third-class military exploits, both collective and individual, seven times in my 13-year military career. People who have never been a soldier may not understand the difficulty and value of meritorious service. In a fighting team with a strong sense of honor, the cruelty of its competition is not only reflected in the hard work of bleeding and sweating, but also in the struggle of technology, knowledge, ability and willpower. Wang Zhongjun’s "Soldier Assault" has become a TV series with high ratings for all ages, which is undoubtedly closely related to his personal experience in the military life of the 38th Army.
Undoubtedly, it is the role and strength of role models that have become the basis for this generation to become outstanding people on different fronts. These essences deposited in their blood are also one of the reasons why this generation has become the backbone of China’s reform and economic development.
It is also the power of example that makes this generation selflessly shoulder the heavy responsibility of "serving the people" and silently endure the lagging costs and burdens of the reform of the national management system for the development of the country.
Our parents have shed blood and suffered injuries for the establishment of the new China, but their income so far is less than that of their grandchildren, but they have never doubted and wavered about "serving the people", and they have never put forward extravagant demands for personal consumption. Up to now, they still maintain the tradition of hard work and plain living, wear patched clothes, and still insist on taking public transportation when they are over 90 years old. Their weirdness has made the later generations incomprehensible and helpless. They will "secretly" raise unrelated children to go to school, and will "quietly" donate the balance of their lives to those "needy people" who are unknown and have never met for life. They have already left their leadership positions, but they are more concerned about politics and state affairs than everyone in this family. CCTV and local news are still essential contents in their lives. They insist on reading party newspapers at all levels, but hardly read non-party newspapers and "lace news". What they pay most attention to is to participate in activities arranged for veteran cadres at all levels and military activities that they have fought. They always put on Lenin’s clothes of that year and hang up various medals and medals that they have won in history to show the glory that has long been forgotten by society. As always, they are pursuing their former ideals.