Li Shufu/Image source: Baidu Encyclopedia Welcome to follow the WeChat subscription account of "Sina Technology": techsina
Wen/He Jiayan
Source: He Jiayan (ID: ihejiayan)
It was about 1971 or 1972, and the place was Lijiayang Village, Shiqu Township, Huangyan County, Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province. Several children met head to head and shouted something to the world. When they came closer, they found that they were playing a game of gambling.
One of them had eyebrows and face like the Terracotta Warriors. A boy about eight or nine years old didn't shout loudly, but he was the most aggressive: if he won two dollars, he would bet them all; If you win ten yuan, you will bet all ten yuan. In any case, no matter how many, all bets, his hands do not leave a point.
It's not that the boy's family has money to lose. In fact, their family is extremely poor. They have five children, brother, sister and brother. They have had their last meal. My father and brothers sometimes sneak into small businesses, and they are often cut off from the tail of capitalism.
He grazed cattle for the production team on holidays, earning fifteen cents a day, and six yuan and eight yuan a summer vacation. He also had to pay book fees. There was really little left.
However, his character is to gamble as much as he has. As for leaving a way for himself, it doesn't exist.
We haven't seen any records, and we don't know whether he was nicknamed "crazy" at that time. This title first appeared in the newspapers more than 20 years later when he said he would build a car.
This little boy is Li Shufu. The scene of gambling in his childhood is the portrayal of his life after that.
At that time, he never expected that one day he would become a representative of China's private automobile industry, own a world top 500 enterprise, and include world famous brands such as Volvo and Mercedes Benz under his command.
Today, we will learn about the fantasy life of "crazy" Li Shufu.
1
Li Shufu was born in 1963, one year younger than Yu Minhong and one year older than Ma Yun.
For many years after liberation, his coastal area in central Zhejiang was in the forefront of Taiwan. Under the threat of potential war, there was little investment in major national projects and almost no industry. It was extremely difficult for farmers to earn a living by digging in the few fields in the mountains.
As there are more mountains and less land, the output of the land is limited. Before the reform and opening up, the local government secretly developed some small businesses. The Li family is no exception. At that time, Li Shufu was very strict about this area, so his impression of childhood always remained that his father and brother were chased by law enforcement officers.
After 1978, the policy was liberalized, and the commercial awareness and ability of Taizhou people (like the people of Wenzhou next door) were fully demonstrated. Li Shufu's family also saved some money.
In 1982, 19 year old Li Shufu graduated from high school. When he went to take his graduation photos, he saw his classmates queuing up in the only local photo studio with complaints. He thought, photography is a good business. So he took a job as an apprentice in a photo studio for two months and learned to take pictures. Then he asked his parents for 120 yuan to buy a camera. Every day, he rode a shabby bicycle around the villages and alleys of Huangyan County in Zhejiang Province to take photos.
In that year, all the regular photo studios were state-owned, only in towns or counties. After several years of reform and opening up, people in the village have a little money in their hands, and they inevitably need to take photos, but they may not have the time or money to go to the photo studio. Li Shufu, a "wild photographer", is diligent, has a good service attitude, and charges a low price, so he has snatched the business all at once. In a few months, he not only paid back the camera money that his parents funded, but also saved hundreds of yuan.
Although "wild photography" makes money, it is also hard to travel from village to village. With a little money in hand, Li Shufu wanted to open a photo studio as well.
But a few hundred yuan is only enough to pay the rent. How can you afford to open a photo studio. But for Li Shufu, it seems that this is not difficult. He will study the equipment he needs. For example, the price of a reflector at that time was more than 1000 yuan. He studied the principle and thought he could make it himself, so he drew a sample himself. He asked the hardware store's master to knock one with iron sheet, which only cost two yuan. After installing the lamp, the effect was not bad.
Later, the photo studio needed new cameras. Li Shufu bought lenses, gears and leather tigers and assembled them himself. The cost was only a fraction or even a fraction of that in the market.
Understanding the principle, and then copying with cheaper materials to significantly reduce costs - this way has become the only way for Li Shufu to start his own business.
The photo studio has opened and the business is good, but the good scene is not long.
At that time, the photo studio was a special business and needed a special license, while Li Shufu was operating without a license. He was investigated twice a day and made a lot of money, but once calculated, he paid a fine.
During that time, every time Li Shufu saw someone wearing a uniform or an official come to the photo studio, he would sweat with fear.
When Li Shufu was at a loss, he happened to see in a document that the main component of developing solution for developing photos was silver bromide, which could be extracted by chemical treatment. So he tried the experimental method in the darkroom of the studio and soon made silver.
He secretly sold the silver he refined and found that it was more profitable than photography. So he closed the photo studio and took silver refining as his main business. For a while, he bought almost all the developer in Taizhou.
Soon, Li Shufu's business was upgraded from silver smelting to gold smelting. He went around the streets to buy waste electrical appliances, and then refined gold and other precious metals from them.
As gold and silver are closely related to the national reserve currency and are related to the stability of the national currency, according to regulations, no one is allowed to trade gold and silver privately. Li Shufu's act of withdrawing and selling gold and silver privately is undoubtedly in violation of the Regulations on the Administration of Gold and Silver.
However, for Li Shufu at that time, violation of relevant regulations was not a matter at all. As long as you can earn money, whatever your rules are, you can avoid being caught.
He soon became a "10000 yuan household" and saved the first bucket of money.
However, since there is not much technology in this field, the only competition is who is brave. So soon, Li Shufu found that a lot of peers emerged overnight, which pushed the industry that had made huge profits to the point where there was no money to make.
Li Shufu, the pioneer, took the opportunity to turn around and set up a factory.
2
Li Shufu's first factory came from an accidental trigger.
At that time, his shoes were broken. In order to save money, he went directly to a local shoe factory to buy new ones. When he arrived at the shoe factory, he saw that several workers were hammering a profiled iron plate.
Li Shufu asked what it was, and the worker replied that it was a part processed for the refrigerator factory.
Li Shufu was concerned. He saw that there seemed to be no technical difficulty with this accessory. He could make it himself, but it was sold to a refrigerator factory at a very high purchase price.
So Li Shufu used the money he earned from refining as his capital, and joined hands with several brothers to open a factory specializing in manufacturing refrigerator accessories.
This is Li Shufu's first formal venture, which is extremely difficult.
The first is product research and development. The part he thought was easy to make at the beginning was unexpectedly so troublesome. He spent more than a year studying and experimenting day and night, so that he did not have a good skin on his hands and dared not shake hands when he saw anyone.
It was not easy to overcome the technical difficulties, and the factory building and qualification became a major problem. Li Shufu rented a school run factory to produce and sell in the name of the factory. However, the clattering noise in the factory and the noise of starting work in the middle of the night made the teachers in the dormitory next door very upset, and even caused a collective strike, requiring them to move away.
Li Shufu had a hard time finding another abandoned waterworks, carrying and pushing the equipment to the factory dozens of miles away. The factory has been abandoned for a long time, and even electricity is not available. Li Shufu persuaded the village secretary to pull electricity from the village and finally started production.
However, this is also a serious violation of the law because it belongs to pulling power without the approval of the power department. Soon, the factory was reported, the procuratorate filed a case for review, and the Public Security Bureau wanted to arrest people. Li Shufu was so frightened that he didn't dare to go to the factory, so he had to change places again.
Later, I found the director of the industrial office in Shiqu Township. With his help, Li Shufu and his relatives set up a "Huangyan Shiqu Refrigerator Parts Factory" in the name of a township enterprise. They put on a "red hat", and then rented the abandoned warehouse of the production team as a factory building, which was regarded as opening the factory.
The equipment and materials that were finally transported tens of miles away had to be transported back again. Unfortunately, when they were transported back, it was the rainy season. For several days, Li Shufu and others braved the downpour, along the muddy path, relying on flesh and blood and hand drawn carts, and dragged back equipment weighing hundreds of kilograms and thousands of kilograms.
Drawing source of the early workshop of the refrigerator accessories factory: Li Shufu: Weijiang and Liu Yang, China Machine Press After solving the policy and plant problems, Shiqu Township Refrigerator Parts Factory ushered in a great development.
At that time, materials were extremely scarce. As long as industrial products were produced with acceptable quality, there would be no unsold products. Therefore, the accessories of this factory were quickly sold throughout the country and became the commodities that many well-known refrigerator factories were eager to buy.
Li Shufu continued to expand the production category, from the first small special-shaped iron sheet to the core accessories such as evaporator, condenser and filter.
In 1987, Li Shufu took another big step forward and began to produce refrigerators, electric freezers and other complete products, and changed the name of the factory to "Huangyan Beibeihua Refrigerator Factory". In addition to selling by ourselves, we also help some well-known state-owned manufacturers do OEM production.
At that time, after nearly a decade of reform and opening up, the Chinese people gradually became rich. Some people had enough money to buy TV sets, washing machines, refrigerators and other household appliances, but the country's production capacity was extremely insufficient. When people bought these items, they even needed to rush to buy them with tickets. So as soon as the Arctic flower refrigerator was produced, the supply fell short of demand, and the vehicles that came to pull the goods often had to queue for several kilometers.
Soon, the output value of Arctic Flower Refrigerator Factory exceeded 100 million yuan, becoming the largest private enterprise in Taizhou at that time. The four brothers of Li Shufu also became the most famous private entrepreneurs in Taizhou.
3
An elderly man once said that a person's destiny, of course, depends on self struggle, but also on the process of history.
Just as Li Shufu's destiny was approaching its initial success, he ran head-on into a wall of historical progress.
At the end of the 1980s, China suffered from serious inflation for a period of time. After a wave of panic buying, all of a sudden, household appliances could not be sold. For the first time, the problem of overcapacity appeared in New China. Many factories have a large backlog of products and sales have stopped. Enterprises are facing difficulties and workers' wages are also affected.
In this case, the state has taken macro-control over the production of household appliances. For household appliances with excess production, it has determined several designated manufacturers. For those not included in the designated production directory, they are all "closed and operated".
Li Shufu's refrigerator factory was unfortunately not included in the designated list.
If it was just this problem, maybe Li Shufu would not care too much. After all, policy has never been an obstacle for him to do things, whether he is acting as an unofficial minister or refining gold and silver.
But this time, the situation is obviously different.
At the end of the 1980s, the social trend of thought was turbulent, and the public opinion began to discuss the exploitation of private enterprises. A few years have not passed since the "Eight Kings of Wenzhou", and the "Fool's Melon Seeds" are being filed for review.
Under the circumstances at that time, no one knew where private entrepreneurs would go in the future. Li Shufu is also deeply worried about his future.
In Hangzhou, not far from Li Shufu, Zong Qinghou wanted to expand Wahaha production line, but no leader dared to grant him land; Hope Brothers, who are far away from Sichuan, took the initiative to find the government department and offered to donate Hope Feed Factory to the country for free.
Li Shufu, 1700 kilometers away from the Hope Brothers, made the same choice as Liu Yonghao. He also went to the township government to donate the Arctic Flower Refrigerator Factory to the country for free.
But different from the fate of Hope Brothers, Hope Feed Factory failed to hand over the product, while Arctic Flower Refrigerator Factory succeeded.
In the following years, Li Shufu sighed for this decision and thought he was too timid at that time. Because there were many enterprises that were not on the fixed list at that time, and they finally persisted through various ways, and some later developed into national giants.
Li Shufu believes that if he had persevered, he might become the "refrigerator king" of the country in the future, rather than the "car king".
4
After handing over the factory, Li Shufu went to Shenzhen University for further study. At that time, in addition to the students who passed the college entrance examination and postgraduate entrance examination, there were also many advanced students like him.
In the year when he entered the university, Shi Yuzhu just graduated from Shenzhen University with a master's degree. He borrowed software from his dormitory at Shenzhen University. Ma Huateng just came in to study for his undergraduate degree. Three people who will be on the rich list in the future are now in the same space.
Li Shufu, after all, was a successful entrepreneur who had some money in his hand. Seeing that the dormitory assigned by the school was relatively shabby, he wanted to decorate it, so he went to the decoration market to buy materials.
In the decoration market, Li Shufu was attracted by a kind of magnesium aluminum curved plate, just as he saw the special-shaped iron sheet of refrigerator in the leather shoe factory. At that time, that kind of material could not be produced in the mainland, but could only be imported, and the price was very expensive. Li Shufu studied it and thought he could do it.
So he interrupted his studies halfway and returned to Huangyan to set up Huangyan Geely Decoration Materials Factory. This is the first enterprise named "Geely" under his name. Since then, the name of Geely will accompany Li Shufu's life.
After a whole year and four months of hard research and development, all the money saved was spent, and Li Shufu was almost at the end of his tether. But his magnesium aluminum curved plate was finally developed successfully. This is the first self-developed magnesium aluminum curved plate in mainland China.
At that time, the price of magnesium aluminum curved plate was surprisingly high, and the market was a blue ocean. In 1991, the sales of Geely Decoration Materials Factory reached more than 8 million yuan in just one quarter, soared to more than 70 million yuan in 1992, and reached 150 million yuan in 1993.
At the same time, a wave of investment has sprung up in Hainan Island, far away in the south. Tens of thousands of young people with enthusiasm have crossed the Qiongzhou Strait to seek gold. Li Shufu was also very excited. He took tens of millions and killed them.
As a result, with the release of the "National 16 Rules" in 1993, the real estate boom in Hainan abruptly receded, and Li Shufu was also in a mess.
Li Shufu, who found himself swimming naked after the ebb tide, was still frightened. For several years after that, he honestly engaged in industry and never dared to set foot in real estate again.
But at the beginning of 1993, Li Shufu did not know that Hainan real estate was about to face bad luck. At that time, Hainan real estate was getting more and more popular, and Li Shufu was also full of confidence in the future.
If a person has achieved several important things in succession, he will feel very powerful and omnipotent. At this moment, Li Shufu has entered this state.
This time, he wants to do one big thing: he wants to build a car!
5
In 1989, Li Shufu once bought a "Zhonghua car" in Shenzhen. After driving back to Huangyan, he disassembled the car and studied it. He felt that he could build it himself.
However, at that time, the refrigerator factory had just been handed in, and the policy for private enterprises was not yet clear, and the automobile industry was strictly controlled by the state. Even though Li Shufu thought he could do it technically, he did not dare to act rashly, so he had to hide this idea in his heart.
In 1993, with the spring breeze of Deng Gong's southern tour blowing all over China, the debate of "surnames, social organizations and capital" has become history, and the decoration materials factory has made a lot of money, the car dream has revived in Li Shufu's heart.
After the trouble of the refrigerator factory, Li Shufu doesn't want to break away from the policy permission anymore and do things secretly. He went to Huangyan Municipal Economic Committee, Zhejiang Provincial Department of Machinery, and the Ministry of Machinery Industry to build cars openly and honestly with the permission of relevant departments.
But all he got was a "no" answer. In Beijing, he could not even enter the door of the mechanical department. He just inquired with a sweeper across the door. After being ridiculed, he returned to Huangyan in a gloomy way.
If you can't build a car, you can build a motorcycle first. At that time, there was a motorcycle craze in China. The sales of motorcycles were excellent, but there were few domestic motorcycles. Imported motorcycles were particularly expensive, and the market space was huge. And at that time, a motorcycle was basically sold for 10000 to tens of thousands of yuan, while the cost was only 1000 or 2000 yuan. The profit margin was amazing.
Li Shufu registered a motorcycle company called "Huatian", which means "Honda of China". He dismantled several Honda motorcycles, spent seven months on research and testing, and finally copied them.
The car was built, but he didn't get the production and sales license. If you only sell a few cars secretly, it may be OK, but if you want to make it bigger, you may "go in".
Li Shufu began to travel around again, looking for relations and policies, but he still ran into difficulties everywhere and returned without success.
Later, he learned that there was a Xihu Motorcycle Factory in Hangzhou, which was on the verge of closing down. He came to ask for cooperation, and Huatian Factory would produce it. But he used the license of the Xihu Factory on the condition that for every motorcycle sold, he would pay the Xihu Factory a license fee of several hundred yuan.
As far as the West Lake Factory is concerned, it can earn a lot of money without doing anything. Of course, it will. So Li Shufu began to "borrow cards for production". Although it was a sidekick, it finally solved the policy obstacles.
However, the motorcycles produced by Huatian Factory at the beginning were not easy to sell, and the production efficiency was also very poor. At that time, people from the motorcycle factory were transferred from the decoration material factory. Because the factory's benefits were not good, no one was willing to come.
If it hadn't been for an accident, Li Shufu's motorcycle career might have died in the middle of nowhere.
At that time, an employee of the decoration material factory was riding a Guangyang pedal motorcycle made in Taiwan, China. Unfortunately, there was an accident. People were injured and the car crashed into a mess.
Li Shufu was still dealing with the real estate business in Hainan at that time. His brother and younger brother were studying the crashed motorcycle in the factory. They thought they could also build it, so they urgently called Li Shufu to come back and study it together.
After more than a year of research and test, Li Shufu assembled the first self-produced four stroke pedal motorcycle in mainland China.
This kind of pedal motorcycle is small and light, easy to ride, and rare in the market. Taiwan's Guangyang 1 sold for nearly 20000 yuan, while Li Shufu sold for 8888 yuan, which immediately spread all over the country.
Li Shufu organized research on the first pedal motorcycle imitated in mainland China. Source: Li Shufu: Weijiang and Liu Yang, China Machine Press In 1995, Li Shufu reorganized and acquired Lucheng Motorcycle Factory, a state-owned factory with serious losses in Linhai, Taizhou, which finally solved the policy problem.
But this acquisition also cost a huge price. Many years later, when he recalled it, he still said with lingering fear, "The price is very high, and now it's terrible to think about it."
It can also be seen how urgent Li Shufu is in order to get rid of his black or gray identity and gain a position of production and sales in the sun.
In 1997, Li Shufu renamed the factory "Geely Motorcycle Factory". At this time, Geely had become the motorcycle manufacturer with the highest market share in China, and its products were exported to dozens of countries around the world.
Li Shufu's dream of a car has begun to stir up again and become increasingly unstoppable.
Although there is still no possibility of breakthrough in policy, he decided to ignore it and work first!
6
Before telling the story of Li Shufu's car building, it is necessary for us to understand the situation of China's car market at that time.
The automobile industry is the representative and epitome of modern industry. Every country that can manufacture automobiles on a large scale is an industrial power.
Although automobile manufacturing has a history of more than 100 years, it is by no means easy for a country with underdeveloped industrialization to produce automobiles, especially large-scale production.
Therefore, in the 1980s and 1990s, almost all cars on the roads of China were foreign brands, which could be called "the World Auto Expo Park".
These foreign brand cars are very mature industrial products in foreign countries, and the price can be very low. Ordinary wage families can buy one car with two months' income. But after entering the Chinese market, although the income of the Chinese people at that time was only one tenth of that of the western developed countries, the price of cars was much higher than that of the western market.
A car that costs only $10000 or $20000 abroad may cost hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan in China with a lower configuration.
The West is just "robbing" our hard-earned hard-earned money, but we have no way. Who makes it impossible for China to build its own cars?
In order to change this situation, since the 1980s, China has embarked on the road of "market for technology" and built several joint-venture automobile factories.
The state has very strict control over automobile production. A company must be listed in the national automobile production license catalogue before it is allowed to produce and sell automobiles.
Not surprisingly, state-owned enterprises can occupy a place in the directory.
This is the reality Li Shufu faced when he broke into the automobile industry in 1997.
In terms of capital, other car manufacturing enterprises have invested billions or tens of billions. Li Shufu can only have about one billion, and with some private mutual aid funds in Taizhou, the maximum amount is 500 million.
Technically, other enterprises have decades of and hundreds of years of technical support from Europe, America and Japan. Li Shufu has only a few years of motorcycle production experience.
In terms of brand, others sell world-class well-known brands such as Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, General Motors, while Geely has no popularity in the field of automobile manufacturing.
In terms of policy, other enterprises have strong support from the state, and Li Shufu has no door.
The only thing he has is the obsession of "I want to build a car".
I don't know how ordinary people will choose in such a situation.
Many people will also say that they have such an ideal, but when they encounter the reality of iron walls, this ideal will be abandoned.
Li Shufu didn't.
In 1997, he took 800 mu of land in Linhai, Taizhou. In the report submitted to the government, it was written about the motorcycle industrial park, but the actual planning was based on automobile production and manufacturing.
Li Shufu bought several Mercedes Benz and Red Flag, dismantled them and imitated them. Then he bought parts and components from the mainland and Hong Kong to assemble them. Finally, he was stunned to imitate a "fake Mercedes Benz" and named it "Geely One".
He drove Geely No. 1 around the streets and alleys of Taizhou, causing a sensation. He also advertised in the local media, attracting many inquirers.
Li Shufu went to the provincial machinery department and the national machinery department to grind the policy again with the photos and materials of the imitation car, but he was still severely rejected, so he had to come back to study the policy and think of other ways.
He found that although the production catalog of "cars" is very strict, "passenger cars" are relatively loose, and many local enterprises have passenger car production catalogs. The difference between a car and a passenger car is that a car has a "butt" and a passenger car does not, which is the difference between a hatchback and a hatchback.
He turned over and over the list of bus production licenses, and finally found a factory in Deyang, Sichuan. This factory belongs to Deyang Prison in Sichuan Province. The factory is located in the prison, and the workers are prisoners. At that time, the production has been stopped, but the permit catalogue is still kept.
Li Shufu was introduced to the warden to talk about cooperation. At first, he wanted to buy the catalogue directly, but the warden told him that it was against the law. Finally, the agreed terms of cooperation are that Geely will invest 24 million yuan, accounting for 70% of the shares, and jointly establish "Sichuan Geely Boeing Automobile Co., Ltd." with Deyang Prison, where the original catalog can be directly used to produce cars.
However, this kind of cooperation has many inconveniences. Because the factory is located in the prison, access is very troublesome. The production workers are all prisoners, who have neither relevant skills nor good management, which makes Li Shufu very worried.
He wanted to establish a branch of Sichuan Geely Boeing in Linhai, Zhejiang, but according to the regulations at that time, Linhai branch was still not allowed to use the directory.
During that time, Li Shufu frantically searched for various relationships, hoping to solve the catalog problem. However, he couldn't help sighing: PR is the biggest productivity!
However, for Li Shufu, things have come to this end. Nothing can stop him from making a car. In Linhai Factory, under great pressure, he produced the first batch of cars without catalogues.
The first batch of large-scale production is not the original imitation of the Mercedes Benz Geely No. 1, but the economical Xiali imitation. Li Shufu was awakened by an expert in Beijing: "You should not compete with those big enterprises, you should go to the products they don't do."
Li Shufu woke up from a dream and quickly adjusted his direction. From then on, he aimed at low-cost cars and began to publicize his dream of "building a good car that Chinese people can afford".
According to the saying at that time, this kind of car should meet the "three five": five people, five liters of oil, 50000 yuan, that is, five people can sit in the car, only five liters of oil is needed for a hundred kilometers, and the price is only 50000 yuan.
After determining this direction, Li Shufu bought some Xiali for disassembly and research, and finally imitated it. It was Geely's first mass production car, the Haoqing 6360.
On August 8, 1998, the first Haoqing went offline in Linhai, Zhejiang. Li Shufu planned a grand celebration ceremony. He sent more than 700 invitations long in advance, and invited government officials and celebrities from all walks of life to watch the ceremony.
But to Li Shufu's great disappointment, until August 7, few people promised to come, and none of the heavyweight government officials.
The reason is very simple. Geely is not listed in the production directory. The "child" of pride is a "black family" without a "birth permit". Several government officials dare to provide a platform for it.
A reporter friend suggested to Li Shufu, "Why not invite Ye Rongbao, Vice Governor of Zhejiang Province?". Because Vice Governor Ye once led a team to attend an exhibition, hoping to pull some orders for Zhejiang auto parts manufacturers, but he got nothing. At that time, she vowed that Zhejiang must have its own vehicle factory. Geely is just able to realize Vice Governor Ye's wish, so she must be willing to come.
With the last hope, Li Shufu sent an invitation fax to the provincial government. Unexpectedly, in the afternoon, the provincial government informed him that Vice Governor Ye would be there to watch the ceremony tomorrow.
If all the vice governors are willing to attend, the original worries of others will disappear. So on August 8, the Geely car off line ceremony was held with great vigour and full of friends, which made Li Shufu really famous.
Ye Rongbao's presence not only solved the problem of a ceremony, but also gave a strong endorsement to the government. Because the manufacturing and sales of Haoqing cars in Linhai at that time, strictly speaking, there were still legal or procedural problems. Whether the local government would investigate and deal with them, and whether dealers would dare to sell them, all depended on whether there were government officials at the appropriate level. Ye Rongbao came here to help Li Shufu solve this big problem.
In the following years, Li Shufu never forgot the kindness of Vice Governor Ye. In a memorable ten thousand word long article in 2018, he also expressed special thanks to Ye Rongbao.
At that time, the Haoqing car was very rough in technology. It was handmade by a sheet metal worker according to Xiali. The body was uneven, and the potholes could only be filled by painting again and again.
But its price has also dropped to the lowest. At that time, there were few cars in the Chinese market with prices below 100000 yuan. The relatively cheap Alto and Xiali will also sell more than 70000 yuan. Li Shufu directly priced Haoqing 58000 yuan, making it the cheapest car at that time. So although the quality of Haoqing is poor, it still attracts many people who want to buy a car with limited budget.
More importantly, Haoqing was the only car in the market that was not made by foreign capital or joint venture, but was purely produced by domestic private enterprises.
The source of the first passionate car that went offline in 1998: Li Shufu: Weijiang and Liu Yang, China Machine Press But at this time, the most important issue for Li Shufu is not to sell the car as soon as possible, but how to solve the legitimacy problem.
He wants to buy up all the shares of Deyang Factory and sign the directory in Linhai. However, if the partners do not agree, things will be frozen there.
Later, an accident happened. The head of Deyang prison was killed in a car accident. The new head of prison was not interested in making cars, so he sold 30% of his shares to Geely. Li Shufu was able to have a complete bus directory and moved it to Linhai.
Soon after, Li Shufu bought Ningbo Tractor Factory in Ningbo, took 1000 mu of land, established Geely Ningbo Branch, and developed a new "Meiri" brand car. This is a car with two and a half boxes. In fact, it is more "sedan", but it still uses the bus directory.
In the national directory, the car is a directory with the prefix of "6", while the bus is a directory with the prefix of "7". Strictly speaking, Li Shufu is still playing an edge game.
Legitimacy is always a big stone hanging on Li Shufu's head. When it falls down, it will be the price of crushing for Li Shufu and Geely.
At the end of 1999, Zeng Peiyan, then the director of the National Planning Commission, visited Taizhou. Li Shufu was not on the list of people to be interviewed, but he managed to win the opportunity to report in person.
Li Shufu said to Zeng Peiyan: Please give me a chance to fail. If I fail to do so, I will bear the loss myself, not the state. If successful, it can provide some experience for China's automobile industry; If it fails, it can also provide some lessons.
Later, the phrase "Please give me a chance to fail" was reported by the media and became one of Li Shufu's classic sayings.
But this opportunity did not come so soon.
Li Shufu continued to march in the gray area for two years. It was not until November 2001, 10 days before China's accession to the WTO, that Li Shufu finally got the two "6" prefixes he had always dreamed of. By this time, Geely had already sold more than 40000 cars.
7
The catalog problem was only the biggest problem Li Shufu encountered at that time, but it was not the only problem. In fact, any of the major problems Li Shufu encountered in those years was enough to make a person with weak will give up directly.
The first is the shortage of funds.
As mentioned earlier, the construction of cars needs billions or tens of billions of dollars. Li Shufu's own capital is about 100 million yuan, and with some financing means, the maximum amount is 500 million yuan. Even if the production conditions are simple and crude, the cost of all aspects will be minimized, and the huge cost of car building will also bring huge financial pressure.
At the beginning, he led a team to a well-known joint-venture automobile factory in Shanghai to seek cooperation. After listening to their introduction, the chief engineer of the other party left the conference room without saying a word. Li Shufu thought that he was just leaving for a while. After waiting for several hours, he realized that the other party didn't care to talk to him at all.
Originally, after the first batch of cars were built, they could be developed through the profit of selling cars. However, Li Shufu's pricing strategy reduced the profit of cars to a paper thin level.
At that time, how tight was Geely's capital chain? Every time, the car factory must wait until the sales department has collected the payment before carrying out small-scale technical transformation. In addition, they have defaulted on the payment of local suppliers, and they are always unable to pay in time, which leads to poor reputation in the local area. They cannot borrow money, and the bank does not lend.
In desperation, Li Shufu came up with a "boss project" to set up an enterprise called "Geely Group Taizhou Auto Parts United Co., Ltd." and invited powerful private enterprises in Taizhou to join in.
The uniqueness of the "Boss Project" is that those joining bosses pay for the establishment of a spare parts factory, but do not hang their own brands, but are nominally part of Geely United, such as the First Branch, the Second Branch, the Engine Branch, and the Transmission Branch.
In this way, the relationship between Li Shufu and these "bosses" is nominally the relationship between the head factory and the branch factory, but actually the relationship between the assembly plant and the supplier.
On the one hand, this has greatly reduced the pressure on Geely's own capital and personnel to build its own factory. On the other hand, it has turned the purchase of spare parts into the internal allocation of the same company, reducing the taxes that both buyers and sellers have to pay.
This model solves the problem of capital shortage in the short term, but it foreshadows chaos.
In fact, each boss is responsible for the management of the nominal branch factories. Li Shufu cannot control the quality of supply and the speed of response. Moreover, the complicated equity arrangement has also led to many disputes. Li Shufu was even sued by his uncle once.
The second is the shortage of talents.
Li Shufu has recognized the importance of talents since he made refrigerator accessories in the 1980s. The "hard research and development after several months" we mentioned repeatedly before was not made by Li Shufu alone, but by consulting top experts all over the country and digging out experienced people in relevant fields.
In 1993, Li Shufu recruited dozens of college students from Peking University, National People's Congress and other schools in order to reserve talents for motorcycle and automobile manufacturing. But within a year, these people ran away.
When he began to build cars in 1997, Li Shufu once said, "What's great about cars? Two sofas and four wheels?"?
But when he really entered the industry, he fully realized how important talent is.
When he first started making cars, he searched through his employee manual and found only three employees who had worked in the automobile factory before. These three people together with himself are the original research and development team. Although the local team produced the first batch of cars, the quality was terrible.
Li Shufu understood that if Geely did not solve the problem of talents, it would be impossible for Geely to establish itself in the field of automobiles.
He mainly used two methods to solve this problem.
One is to dig people all over the country. At the beginning of the motorcycle industry, the factory building was not built, but the expert building was built first, and engineering technicians were dug from more than a dozen provinces and cities across the country. After the auto industry, many people were recruited from SAIC, Tianqi, FAW, Brilliance and other companies.
In addition to professional talents, he also poached professional managers everywhere, including Wu Minyi, former vice mayor of Wenzhou City, Xu Gang, deputy department level official of Zhejiang Provincial Department of Finance, etc. When Xu Gang said that his salary was not enough, Li Shufu directly gave him the blank salary form and said, "Fill in as much as you want".
Second, self built schools cultivate people. When he got 800 acres of land near the sea, Li Shufu first planned a school with six teaching buildings instead of factory buildings and staff dormitories, and hired an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the field of vibration machinery as the president.
Since then, he has continuously established various schools, and finally has one graduate school, three undergraduate universities, three higher vocational schools, two technical schools and secondary vocational schools.
Normally, when Li Shufu built the school in 1997, it was far from enough to quench his thirst. Moreover, students from a newly built ordinary private school could hardly become talents in a short time. Then why did Li Shufu build it again and again?
In a few years, people will find that Geely has a large number of cheap interns and a sufficient reserve of skilled workers because of the existence of these schools, replacing the original production workers mainly migrant workers.
The third is the issue of intellectual property rights.
The reason why it is difficult for backward countries to build automobiles is that, in addition to technical problems, there is also an important issue that is intellectual property barriers.
From materials, engineering to design, advanced countries have accumulated countless patents. If the latecomers want to research and develop from scratch, they need astronomical numbers; If it is applied directly, you need to buy patents, otherwise there will be infringement problems.
Li Shufu's early cars didn't have much independent technology. They were basically imitations. Imitate Mercedes Benz, Xiali, and Toyota. Everything that can be imitated is imitated. One car even imitates Toyota's logo.
This imitation not only attracted people's ridicule, but also caused protests from imitated manufacturers, and even caused lawsuits.
Li Shufu once said, "Mercedes Benz's boss always writes to me". It sounds as if the other side has a good relationship with him. But the truth is that Geely's cars always imitate Mercedes Benz, and Mercedes Benz's boss wrote a letter warning.
Li Shufu, however, simply changed the place mentioned in the letter after receiving it, and then imitated it again next time. Anyway, as long as I'm not embarrassed, others are embarrassed.
Toyota took Geely to court directly after several warnings failed. Geely, on the one hand, actively responded to the lawsuit and defended itself against infringement; On the other hand, it plays the national and emotional cards, suggesting that this is foreign capital's suppression of national industry.
Finally, the case ended with Toyota losing the lawsuit. However, you can also compare the two signs, and you will have an answer in your mind.
On the left is the Geely Meiri logo, and on the right is the Toyota logo The last is about brand and publicity.
Buying a car is a brand conscious behavior. At that time, in the Chinese market, the rich bought Mercedes Benz, BMW and Audi, the mid-range bought Toyota Volkswagen, and the economic model was dominated by Xiali.
As for Geely, who has ever heard of it? Even if it has heard of it, it only knows that it is a low-grade brand that is private, just starting, and not very reliable in quality.
So Li Shufu has a headache about how to open the popularity as soon as possible and let everyone recognize the brand.
In essence, Li Shufu is an introverted person, who speaks in a low key, even makes people feel a little dull. But his words, intentionally or unintentionally, have brought him great popularity. For example, "What's so great about cars? Four wheels and two sofas?" and "Ask the country to give me a chance to fail" are widely spread.
Perhaps he realized that this "eye popping" method had brought benefits to the company. Li Shufu later became a bit "unspeakable". For example, at an industry conference, Li Shufu said that Ford GM was nothing and would go bankrupt sooner or later. A senior official of GM was so angry that he left immediately and said sarcastically, "I have to find a job soon."
During that time, he often accepted newspaper and television interviews, and appeared on CCTV for many times to talk about his dreams. When almost everyone did not think highly of him, he "fought with others" and firmly believed that he could win. Therefore, it also won the title of "automobile maniac".
In order to expand the popularity and brand, Li Shufu also made several major moves.
First, crash tests were carried out in Tsinghua University with great fanfare, saying "Geely vs Mercedes". Under the operation of Geely, the final result is self-evident that Geely cars "(and Mercedes Benz) collided on the same platform under the same test standard, and the results are very gratifying, which shows that the safety performance of domestic cars is in line with international standards."
In fact, this is just the result of two different tests two days apart, but Li Shufu has linked the two with superb publicity skills, making Geely get caught up in the popularity of Mercedes Benz.
Second, "Flying Man" Ke Shouliang was invited to drive a Geely car across the Potala Palace. Ke Shouliang was very famous at that time. Flying over the Potala Palace itself was a very sensational topic, and it was the first time to drive a purely domestic car to do this, so it attracted national attention at that time.
But during the leap, the Geely car driven by Ke Shouliang fell down in the middle of the flight, and Ke Shouliang also hurt his neck.
This was originally a failed activity that took place in full view of the public. However, Geely later hyped the safety of Geely cars in turn: if you fall from a place more than 5 meters high at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour, it is not a big deal. That just means that Geely cars are safe?
In the words of Bo Yang, the president of Geely Automobile at the scene at that time, Geely Automobile met the Potala Palace Square hard and successfully.
Third, Geely won the title of Guangzhou Football Team, making use of the influence of China Football League to win national popularity.
At the beginning, Li Shufu was full of confidence and publicly promised to "operate Guangzhou football for 30 years!" But soon, he found that the business was too dark. At that time, it was almost a semi public rule to give money to the referee. Anyone who did not bribe the referee would be put on shoes on the court.
In that year, the Chinese Football League was divided according to A and B, and Geely was a B team. Li Shufu was running for A, but he only got the fourth place.
He thought that this achievement was caused by the referee's blackness, and angrily announced his withdrawal from Chinese football, and set off an unprecedented "storm of debunking the black", which opened the most sensational "anti black sport" in Chinese football history.
Li Shufu took the initiative to reveal the hidden rules of the game to the media at that time. Although the owners of all teams are well aware of this, Li Shufu is the first one to break this stinking shit so openly.
He even took the initiative to be frank. His team has also done the business of sending money to the referee. He can be a stain witness. More boldly, Geely directly sued the Chinese Football Association in court, which was the first time in history.
This kind of thing undoubtedly has great risks for enterprises. Although Li Shufu took this opportunity to attract the attention of the whole country and make Geely Group famous all of a sudden, he also put himself in a dangerous situation.
Not to mention how much interest structure he will stir up and how many people hate him, but from the legal point of view, although there is a problem with referees accepting bribes, is it not equally suspected of crimes for enterprises offering bribes?
Li Shufu insists that he is not afraid of this. He said: "It's worth sacrificing one of me to clean up Chinese football. I will go to prison if I go to prison, and I will not be afraid of being shot."
This made him suddenly stand in the position of "tragic hero".
Of course, the actual trend of events later was not so dangerous. Not long after he made the above statement, Li Shufu quickly withdrew from the edge of danger and avoided talking about football.
Li Shufu and Geely set foot in Chinese football for only eight months, but they left a far-reaching impact. Li Shufu, who dropped the "atomic bomb" in the Chinese football world, was able to retreat completely without any damage, and instead enjoyed great fame. We have to say: high, really high.
Under Li Shufu's various operations, Geely Automobile gained a reputation and influence far beyond its market strength at that time, and became a well-known brand in China.
8
Despite the difficulties analyzed above, Li Shufu has climbed the most difficult mountain in his career and entered a stage of rapid development since he got the catalogue.
At the beginning of 2002, Geely came out of the financial crisis, and the company began to make profits, with the basis for rolling development. By 2006, Geely's annual sales volume had exceeded 200000, ranking seventh in China and first among private automobile enterprises.
But at this time, there is a new and seemingly inextricable huge problem in front of Li Shufu: Geely has become a synonym for cheap in people's minds. The reason why people buy Geely cars is that they want to buy cars, but they can only afford Geely cars.
As you know, in addition to the pursuit of practicality, there is also a face problem when buying a car. Obviously, driving a Geely car doesn't make people feel proud.
As Chinese people become richer, they will more and more tend to buy cars that are more dignified rather than cheaper. If Geely stays at a low price level, it will be gradually eliminated by the market.
On the other hand, there is no brand premium for cheap cars, and the profit is as thin as paper. If Geely stays on selling cheap cars for a long time, it will not have enough profit space to support its long-term development. After all, technology research and development, new model development, and expanded reproduction all need profit as support.
In other words, brand upgrading, image upgrading, changing the low-end impression of Geely cars, and improving the brand premium of products have become the most urgent problems that Li Shufu needs to solve.
However, it is not easy to upgrade a brand that has been positioned as a cheap brand in people's minds for a long time?
Maybe we can spend a lot of money to move forward little by little. After all, Ford, Toyota, etc. used to be cheap goods, but later they have many luxury brands. But Li Shufu has no time to wait.
Maybe it can be done in another market. After all, many brands that are very cheap in the West have been treated as high-end products for a long time when they come to China? But China is the most promising market in the world. Giving up China and focusing on other markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America does not conform to Li Shufu's idea.
Before Li Shufu, there is only one way left: buy a recognized brand and use the influence of the brand to reverse the impression of Geely as cheap in people's minds.
In fact, Li Shufu has considered this problem for a long time. At an internal meeting of the company in 2002, he said that he would acquire a world famous automobile brand in the future. But at that time, no one was willing to believe Li Shufu's big story.
The brand mentioned by Li Shufu is Volvo. In that year, Geely Automobile was only five years old, and its annual sales volume just exceeded 40000. Volvo is a famous brand with a history of more than 80 years, and it enjoys a high reputation all over the world, with an annual sales volume of more than 400000 vehicles.
At that time, Volvo sold about 600000-800000 yuan a car in China, while Geely sold about 50000 yuan a car.
The absurdity of Geely's purchase of Volvo is the same as that of the current purchase of "Hema Xiansheng".
However, Li Shufu is keeping an eye on Volvo, accumulating strength and seeking opportunities at the same time.
At that time, Volvo was a subsidiary of Ford (wholly owned by Ford in 1999). If you want to buy Volvo, you need to buy it from Ford.
In 2006, Ford replaced CEO Mulally due to consecutive losses. Mulally put forward the strategy of "one Ford" in view of the fact that Ford's brands were too complex at that time. He was ready to focus on a few brands and cut off others.
This change was captured by Li Shufu, who has been paying close attention to Volvo. In 2007, he sent a registered letter to Ford, proposing the intention of acquiring Volvo. Soon, Ford replied, "Not for sale.".
Li Shufu did not give up. In January 2008, he went to the United States to participate in the Detroit Auto Show. After being introduced, he talked with Leclere, the CFO of Ford, and expressed his intention to buy Volvo in person.
Leclere said: Do you know the annual turnover of Volvo? 15 billion US dollars, equal to more than 100 billion yuan.
The implication is that you deserve it?
Leclere's query is not unreasonable. At that time, Geely's annual sales revenue was less than 10 billion yuan.
However, Li Shufu still believes that he has a chance to win. The main reason is that he firmly believes that with the booming trend of the Chinese market, Volvo's future must be in China.
This scale of M&A is certainly a commercial business, but it is also a bit like "marriage" - the parents of the woman should not only consider how much betrothal gifts they can get, but also consider whether their daughter will be happy in the future. After all, if Volvo's own management, its labor union and even the Swedish government behind it do not agree with this "marriage", Ford will not sell. Considering this factor, as long as Ford wants to marry Volvo out, China is the best place to belong.
On the one hand, Li Shufu has found the world's top investment banks, consulting firms and law firms to form a luxury M&A service team, and on the other hand, he has sought financial support at home and abroad.
At the same time, he is just like a dead boy who will never let go when he falls in love with a girl. He will stick on it shamelessly whenever he has a chance.
At the end of 2008, the opportunity finally came. At that time, affected by the financial crisis in the United States, Ford's vitality was severely damaged, and Volvo also suffered a large loss. "Getting married to get out of trouble" was put on the agenda. In December, Ford publicly said that "it is seriously considering selling Volvo".
In 2009, Li Shufu went to Detroit again. This time, he met the chairman and CEO of Ford. The guests and guests had a good talk. Li Shufu, with an honest face, told the "woman's parents" all kinds of embarrassing things he met when he first entered the car building business, making them laugh.
Ford finally relented and put forward a request for "betrothal gifts": $6 billion. Li Shufu counteroffered $4.5 billion. Ford felt that there was a little little. Both sides continued to talk, but their intentions were basically clear.
In April this year, Geely's team entered Volvo and began due diligence. At the same time, Li Shufu will also accept the investigation of Volvo's labor union.
In the negotiation with the Volvo trade union, one detail is worth mentioning, from which we can get a glimpse of Li Shufu's behavior and speaking style.
At that time, the head of Volvo's trade union raised in a very unfriendly manner: there are many people who want to buy Volvo, can you tell us in three words why Volvo wants to sell to you?
The Ford CEO who presided over the negotiation felt that the tone of the labor union was very unfriendly and embarrassed, so he came out to make amends. Li Shufu said, "It doesn't matter. I can answer it now. I love you.".
The awkward atmosphere was immediately magically reversed by this sentence. After this talk, the trade union did not set any obstacles to the acquisition.
From June 2007 to March 2010, after nearly three years of hard courtship, Li Shufu finally solved all the problems and signed his name on the final acquisition agreement.
After signing, he lay down on the table for a long time. When he looked up again, the people beside him saw that he was crying like rain and could not speak with sobs.
By the way, due to the intensification of the financial crisis, the actual signed purchase price has dropped from the original negotiated US $6 billion to US $1.8 billion.
At the time of actual delivery, due to the change of the exchange rate between the US dollar and the euro, it actually only cost more than 1.6 billion US dollars. Since then, Volvo has 100% belonged to Geely.
9
So far in writing, the major events of Li Shufu's 40 years of madness have been basically covered. There are two other important things, but neither of them is suitable for the article. I will mention them here.
One is the enmity between Li Shufu's four brothers.
From the beginning of making refrigerator accessories, Li Shufu was not alone, but worked with his brothers. Although everyone had their own development, as long as one person did a good job in his career, his brothers finally worked together.
Unfortunately, the four brothers of the Li family did not like the four brothers of the Liu family of Sichuan Hope Group to get together and disperse, but once fell into a situation full of contradictions. Even brothers have different opinions on who is the creative person, who agrees with, who opposes, and who is the most powerful person to build refrigerators, motorcycles, and cars. Later, brothers and sisters formed a wall, and went their separate ways to set up a separate stall.
In the process of Geely's de familialization, Li Shufu once sighed: "The pain from family businesses is bone marrow.".
The other is Li Shufu's education.
Many people have heard of Geely University, but most people do not know that Li Shufu has set up 8 other schools besides Geely University (now Geely College). It includes a graduate school that cultivates masters and doctors, has postdoctoral workstations, and has several academicians, as well as undergraduate colleges such as Sanya University and Xiangtan Institute of Technology.
Li Shufu's original intention of running the school is very simple, which is to solve the problem of shortage of talents and skilled workers for Geely. These schools really helped him a lot. At the very least, Geely Group will never lack cheap interns who are trained according to Geely's values.
But even if Li Shufu has his own interests, he runs these universities with great social significance: he recruits children who fail in the college entrance examination and have nowhere to go, and trains them to be qualified technical workers or workers in other fields - this is what the country needs.
When Sanya University, Geely University and other schools start or graduate, Li Shufu often goes to the ceremony and speaks to students.
He once said that it would take 20 years for his school to enter the national top 20. From now on, this ideal is a failure.
Perhaps, this is a dream more difficult than private enterprises to build cars.
But considering that Stanford University in the United States has been silent for more than 60 years since its establishment, even known as the "farm university", but now it is world-renowned, who can conclude that Geely College and Sanya College will stop in the future as an ordinary two university?
In addition to the above events, there are also several details about Li Shufu, which are quite interesting and show the other side of Li Shufu.
Once, Li Shufu was one of the winners of an award ceremony of CCTV. When it's his turn to play, he obviously slows down. Just like the slow motion camera we saw, you can imagine the scene of Chow Yun fat appearing in The True Color of Heroes or The God of Gamblers.
The host asked, Li Shufu, what are you doing?
Li Shufu replied earnestly: It was the director who let me go like this.
Another time, on CCTV, Li Shufu took off his shoes and showed them to the host and audience.
In the most difficult process of acquiring Volvo, countless people mocked Li Shufu, and almost no one thought he could succeed. But Li Shufu said privately to people around him: once I start to buy Volvo, the only way to stop me is to kill me.
I don't know whether these details make you think Li Shufu is more like a simple and honest farmer or a soldier who will never stop until he reaches his goal.
But perhaps in Li Shufu's mind, he would consider himself a poet.
Yes, Li Shufu likes writing poems very much and has written many poems. Here are the lines or lyrics he wrote:
"Power reverberates in the wind, miracles shine under the blue sky, rough roads carry ideals, and firmly extend into the distance"
"Who knows how many roads there are ahead? The ups and downs have long been in my memory. In the morning, the sun and the stars lead my way. The hope of spring, summer, autumn and winter is not far away. Don't bow your head, don't admit defeat, dry your tears, and stick to it. I will suffer the pain, and I know the way to go."
In addition to the above "small and fresh" poems, there are also such limericks:
"The thousand year old iron evidence has crossed the Xiushan Mountain,
The whole body is healthy and the sky is full of eyes.
The dog whistled black all over the sky,
Geely pounced on the gate of death. "
"The cold wind is gone, and the spring wind is coming. Keep working hard and quiet.
Don't blow, don't make noise, the self owned brand will be big.
Europe and the United States, Japan and South Korea, when is the worship of foreign things?
How high does a Chinese car fly? Strive for ten years to become a big eagle! “
The former was Li Shufu, the boss of Guangzhou Geely Football Team in 2001, who watched a "black whistle" game on the spot and became angry; The latter was made with feelings when participating in the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2005.
It is left to the readers to judge their own level.
10
In 2018, Geely became its largest shareholder by acquiring 9.69% of the shares of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, for 9 billion dollars.
Li Shufu spent 21 years from imitating Mercedes Benz in 1997 to becoming a shareholder of Mercedes Benz.
In 2021, Geely ranked 239th among the world's top 500 enterprises. Geely cars (including LinkedIn) sold 1.328 million vehicles in total, ranking first among Chinese brand passenger cars. If you add its Proton and Volvo, the total sales volume is 2.2 million.
It took Li Shufu 23 years to become the first Chinese brand passenger vehicle market from the first model launched in 1998.
When he stumbled out of the first step, no one thought he could succeed except himself.
But in the end, he broke through the inherent cognition of all people and created the possibility from the impossibility again and again.
At present, the world is facing new changes. In the automotive industry, the trend of new energy, intelligence and automation has become more and more obvious. The annual sales volume of pioneer Tesla is about to exceed 1 million, and that of latecomer Weixiaoli is about to exceed 100000.
Li Shufu used to be an imitator and catcher. Now, he is in the position of being pursued and may be replaced.
Li Shufu, 59, is no longer as sharp and outspoken as he used to be.
He is no longer like a "madman" who is desperate to move forward, but more like a very traditional, serious and tasteless entrepreneur.
Maybe this is a kind of maturity. But after losing innocence and wildness, we may also lose the power to shock people and the world.
Li Shufu may no longer need this power, but it is the source of new young people to challenge him (and his peers).
