Chapter 178: Production Suspension Troubles: Directors of the Joint Venture's American Parent Company...
Chapter 178 Production Suspension
Yan Jiuru plans to visit various local grassroots organizations before the New Year.
Chen Yin has been coming home from get off work on time these days and taking time to pack his luggage.
The journey took us all over the country. In the cold places it was covered with snow, and in the south it was so hot that we had to wear short-sleeved shirts and shorts.
You have to dress formally when going out on business. It is inconvenient to bring too much luggage, and it is also very worrying if you bring too little.
That day, Chen Yin found two woolen coats and was looking from left to right to see which one was suitable.
Seeing Yan Jiuru coming back, he asked, "It's going to take at least a month to finish this trip. Can you handle being away from the department for such a long time?"
After saying that for a long time without hearing any response, he couldn't help but look up.
Seeing this, he couldn't help but laugh, "What's wrong? Why are you so lucky?"
Yan Jiuru was indeed a little angry.
My good plans were disrupted. I couldn't lose my temper at work, and I couldn't be angry when I got home. I was left with nothing but luck to deal with. . . .
He walked around the room twice, like a millstone, and then he said loudly, "Don't pack it up yet. You can't leave for the time being."
Chen Yin put down her coat and asked curiously, "What happened?"
After all, this person of ours is a department-level leader, and his itinerary is planned half a month in advance. Not only the transportation route, but also every place he visits must be arranged. It will not be changed easily.
Yan Jiuru plopped down next to her and said, "We were urgently stopped by the higher-ups. They said our first joint venture car factory was going to 'disband,' and we were told to deal with it first!"
"Break up? How is that possible!" Chen Yin found this unbelievable.
"Is it the one that produces the Yanjing 4140 off-road vehicle? Didn't they form a joint venture two years ago, start production last year, and are they going to disband this year?"
"Marriage and divorce don't happen this quickly, right?"
Yan Jiuru snorted and said, "The two investors in this joint venture are like a remarried couple, each with their own thoughts and not on the same page.
When they have a child, they always pull it towards themselves, focusing on their own interests, and in the end, the child suffers."
"Well, that's nothing."
Chen Yin sensed his little emotion and thought for a moment. She turned around, picked up the coat and shook it, then told him to stand up straight and put it on to try out the size.
She smoothed her hands from shoulders to back, from sleeves to hem, and asked him to open his arms to see, praising him: "Hey, it has to be your head, you are born to wear clothes, everything looks good."
To be honest, it’s not the clothes that complement the person, but the person that complements the clothes.
"Tsk tsk, look at him, he doesn't look like a father of three children!
When we walk around campus, people always say, "Teacher Chen, this is your new student." You make me look older than me.
Yan Jiuru was delighted by his wife's caressing. He raised his hand to pinch her nose and said with a smile, "Then Teacher Chen must teach the students well tonight, okay?"
Chen Yin turned around and saw that he had calmed down. She took off her coat and said, "Hang it up. You can wear it tomorrow. It won't get wrinkled when you pack it in the box. It won't be a waste of my time."
Yan Jiuru did as he was told.
Seeing that he was still quiet, Chen Yin coaxed him, "There's nothing to be angry about. Haven't you seen the neighborhood committee? Every day, it's either a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law arguing or a couple getting a divorce.
Today an egg is thrown at his house, tomorrow someone’s oil bottle is tampered with…”
"There are always those who threaten to break up.
Let me tell you where the problem lies. If you can reconcile them, reconcile them. If they won't listen, let them separate! No, let them separate!
Who is afraid of whom?
A huge amount of money has been invested, at least tens of millions or millions. If it is disbanded, it will be a waste of money. Don't be sad if you don't do it!
Look at how determined they are. Do they really want to disperse, or are they just shouting to scare people?"
It’s true.
***
The Yanjing JEEP joint venture is located on Hequ Road. Driving from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation requires crossing three urban districts.
In order to avoid the morning rush hour, Yan Jiuru and others' convoy set off from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation at 6:30 in the morning.
Yes, that's right, a small convoy.
Although he was going to a company in the same city, it involved foreign businessmen. In accordance with foreign-related regulations, Yan Jiuru not only brought his secretary and accompanying subordinates, but also a professional translation team.
Even though Yancheng now has two or three car factories, Yan Jiuru's data shows that as of the end of this month, there are fewer than 2,000 private cars in Yancheng, and fewer than 80,000 including official vehicles. They are scattered throughout Yancheng, making them uncommon.
At this moment, three cars suddenly appeared on the street. Compared with the huge army of bicycles and the ox carts and horse carts driven by suburban farmers into the city, they immediately became conspicuous.
The Red Star car passed by a slow-moving ox cart. The fellow driver was happily pointing his whip at their convoy and excitedly talking to the people on the cart.
Several people had smiles on their faces.
Yan Jiuru glanced over and even saw the hole where the person had lost a tooth...
***
"material!"
Song Hongwu, who was sitting in the passenger seat, quickly turned around and handed him a stack of papers: "It was delivered just before departure."
I don't know how long this "breakup" has been brewing. That afternoon, I only heard the relevant personnel give an oral account of the situation. The information provided was very limited, and I didn't even get any specific materials about the differences between the two parties and the reasons for the breakup.
Yan Jiuru quickly flipped through the freshly released information.
The first page is a fax copy of the content of a press conference held by directors of the joint venture's parent company in the United States:
They are preparing to stop investing in the joint venture factory in Xuan Country, stop training technical personnel, stop transferring related technologies, withdraw expatriate experts, etc.
He also said that the Xuan government's efficiency is low and it is not suitable for investment at all.
It took five years to negotiate the joint venture, and by the time it was officially completed, the originally planned car models had been completely eliminated by the market.
It’s a pity that the United States doesn’t understand the term “cutting off the source of the firewood”, otherwise it would definitely use it.
The basis for the original plan to establish a joint venture no longer exists, and the temporary launch of other models has caused a series of new problems.
Let’s put this aside and not talk about it for now.
The other party also complained in the media that a feasibility report in Xuan Guo went through more than 40 bureaus and more than 120 department-level units, and could not proceed if one unit got stuck. What's more, once a problem occurred, the responsible department or person could not be found.
No one is willing to take responsibility.
Moreover, the so-called shareholders of Xuan State are just a group of outsiders who either don't care about anything or make trouble.
There is also chaos in production and operations. Everything has to be "reported" and production cannot proceed to the next step without approval from higher authorities.
In short, investing in Xuan Guo is a pitfall.
It almost caused a diplomatic incident.
***
Yan Jiuru asked Song Hongwu, "Did you get the joint venture contract for Yanjing JEEP?"
He handed this matter down after he was urgently summoned by his superiors.
Song Hongwu shook his head. "They said it was a confidential document and we had to go through the formalities. Even if everything went smoothly, we'd have to get it tomorrow at the earliest."
Now even Li Zhonghua and Shen Kunlun burst out laughing.
I just read the materials about the low efficiency of foreigners’ complaints and didn’t think much of it, but now I’ve been slapped in the face.
"parking!"
After the car stabilized, Yan Jiuru said to Song Hongwu, "Take the car behind and go back to the deputy head of the foreign investment working group. Tell him that I'm waiting at the joint venture factory and will start work when I get the copies of the Chinese and English contracts.
If we can’t get it today, let the leader replace us.”
"Yes!" Song Hongwu got out of the car without saying a word.
Li Zhonghua and the later business secretary (translator) Shen Kunlun looked at each other and secretly wiped a cold sweat.
The last vehicle can hold the leadership team members and their respective secretaries.
Was he just 'sent back' like that?
They glanced at the rearview mirror and saw that after the two cars behind them stopped for a few minutes, the third car slowly turned around and went back. . . .
Yan Jiuru didn't take his eyes off the materials.
***
He was looking at another feedback document regarding Yanjing Automobile Factory.
This document contains many issues concerning the foreign side's "petty bourgeois" style.
The first thing that Xuanguo shareholders are dissatisfied with is the "high consumption" of foreign management.
The first general manager was required to stay in a luxury suite at the newly built Great Wall International Hotel, which was said to be of five-star standard, for a monthly fee of over 10,000 yuan.
This is the hard-earned money of so many workers!
The experts and technicians sent here also requested to stay at the Great Wall International Hotel, or in a single-family villa. They didn't even want a bathroom in the house, but had to have a bathroom at home. Even the gas stove had to have "four holes".
Eat beef every meal!
In addition, they wasted 200,000 yuan to renovate the factory toilets. Not only did they have to flush the toilets, but the light bulbs inside had to be no less than 60 watts.
It's such a huge waste!
The joint venture factory has more than 4,000 employees, and they produce so much good organic fertilizer every day, but it’s all washed away in vain!
It makes me so sad just thinking about it...
"Haha..." Yan Jiuru couldn't control his laughter for a moment. His fist lightly touched his lips and a few muffled laughs came out of his nose.
***
In Yan Jiuru's opinion, the following scattered information are not critical issues.
I turned another page and found that the key point was that the foreign party changed the general manager again in the middle of last year!
The second general manager was very concerned about the joint venture, or rather, he was optimistic about the huge blank market in Xuan Country.
This person is quite smooth and resourceful. He actively communicates with both sides. Faced with some decisions made by the parent company's international department that are unfavorable to the joint venture, he even reports to the board of directors to fight for the rights and interests of the joint venture.
Yan Jiuru shook his head secretly.
Based on his many years of experience in dealing with foreign companies, the general manager had committed a big taboo in the workplace.
The purpose is good, but the result may not be satisfactory.
Sure enough, the international department of the foreign party later began to make trouble for the general manager's behavior of bypassing his level, and finally succeeded in getting him removed.
The third and new general manager was appointed by the international department. As you can imagine, he was very critical of the joint venture.
Of course, after all, it was his own real money that invested tens of millions of dollars, so the parent company would never send an incompetent rat over.
The most direct trigger for the production suspension was that after the foreign general manager arrived, he discovered that the complete set of imported production lines that he had purchased at a high price, with a total of ten workshops, could only produce twenty off-road vehicles per month!
Playing?!
However, after being inspected by foreign experts, the new model prototype developed by the company's R&D department was found to have more than 200 unqualified points, and almost the entire car was "defective".
We were originally thinking of promoting our products to some blank international markets once the localization rate increased.
However, after quality inspection by foreign parties, the so-called domestically produced accessories failed to pass the inspection at all.
The United States' domestic vehicle after-sales department refuses to provide maintenance on vehicles of this quality.
Therefore, General Manager John proposed to increase the production of CKD knock-down assembly vehicles.
The plan is to increase annual production from 200 to 300 units to 20,000 units in the next three years.
However, as luck would have it, Xuanguo adjusted its import product policy in the middle of last year.
The management of import licenses has been tightened, and the 4140, which relies entirely on the import of parts, is within the scope of the tightening policy.
This directly led to the fact that starting from August last year, the imported parts of more than 1,000 vehicles could not obtain import licenses, and all ordered parts could not be shipped and were piled up in the port warehouses in the United States.
The off-road jeep, which was entirely assembled from CKD parts, was discontinued in such a magnificent way!
The joint venture had to rely on producing jeeps for the original Yanjing Automobile Factory to maintain its daily operations.
Not only are the foreign parties anxious, but the management of Xuan Country has also been running around and seeking help everywhere, but still cannot solve the import license problem.
The suspension of production continues until this moment!
Tsk tsk!
The reason why the new director Yan Jiuru was appointed to solve the problem this time was that an "old soldier" of Yancheng Automobile could not stand it anymore and went to find his former superior.
Coincidentally, this old superior is already at the vice-state level.
***
Yan Jiuru met the foreign general manager John and others in the conference room of the joint venture factory.
After the identities were introduced, John finally found an outlet to vent his anger when he heard that Yan Jiuru was the new director of the Foreign-invested Enterprises Administration Department. He slammed the table and glared at Yan Jiuru in protest.
What? There was no restriction on imported components in the original contract?
Now that we have the money and people coming in, why are you suddenly doing this? What do you want to do?
Do you want to share our assets?
I shouldn't have believed in you communists in the first place!
The people in the translation team frowned, but still translated it as it was.
Some people also protested why companies had to constantly report production to higher-ups and obtain approval before proceeding. They argued that companies couldn't operate independently, which was completely different from what was originally said.
Another expert protested, "You said the workers all had junior high school education, but in fact, most of them haven't even graduated from elementary school. They can't even learn about four-wheel drive systems and torque..."
Yan Jiuru listened to them vent quietly, and then asked the management of Xuan State about the situation.
General Manager Bai from Xuan State had a worried look on his face and said, "We are not sure about what the foreign party said.
The initial joint venture negotiations lasted almost five years. The most serious aftereffect of such a long negotiation period was that the model originally planned for cooperation had been eliminated from the market.
Another issue is that the negotiation process was so long that no one person followed it from beginning to end.”
This means that unless you read the contract item by item, you will not be able to know the details.
However, some clauses in the joint venture contract involve confidential documents, access rights, etc. Even shareholders cannot access them at will. They must apply for approval from the board of directors. . . .
So, even though he is the general manager of Xuan Country, the information he can access is limited.
When foreigners shout that this is wrong and that is not okay, he doesn't know whether it is true or not, and has no way to verify it, which is very frustrating.
What?
Not applying to the board of directors?
He has submitted no less than a hundred applications!
All of them fell on deaf ears!
Yan Jiuru couldn't help but ask, "Who are the members of our board of directors?"
Mr. Bai pointed and said, "There's one former automobile factory secretary, Gao, one representative from Xuanqi Group, one representative from the Yancheng Municipal Government, one representative each from the Yancheng Trust Company and the bank, and two or three representatives from the auto parts factories."
Yan Jiuru frowned. Looking at the composition of the board of directors, he knew that all the representatives were only concerned about their own interests, and no one would consider the interests of the joint venture.
No wonder it hasn’t been fixed even after being suspended for half a year.
***
The morning was mainly spent understanding the current situation and contradictions.
In the blink of an eye, it was noon, and Yan Jiuru and others went to the cafeteria to eat.
However, in order to understand the situation more fully, Yan Jiuru also went to the Western food counter with a tray of food.
A technician who had been at the factory for a long time saw him and laughed, saying, "In the beginning, the joint venture's restaurant wasn't separated from the old factory as planned. We ate meat while the workers ate cabbage. They cursed us in secret, and I even saw the staff serving the food secretly spit in our food..."
He said all this in front of the chefs, but unfortunately, the chefs didn't understand at all.
Yan Jiuru shook his head helplessly, it was a pity that he could still laugh.
Yan Jiuru ordered a can of braised beef, beetroot soup, fried pork chops, and three sandwiches.
The chef, wearing a white hat, saw this unfamiliar face and saw that he wanted so much at once, and couldn't help but remind him: "It will be a waste if you can't finish it."
Yan Jiuru raised the corner of his mouth slightly and said, "I'm very strong and eat a lot, so this is only enough to make me about 30% full..."
The chef...
He had heard that someone from above had finally arrived today, and he wanted to say a few more words, but seeing the person's extraordinary demeanor, he thought it was probably a leader who was helping the factory solve the problem. He was afraid of offending him, so he could only say, "If you don't have enough food, come back for more. You'll be full."
During the meal, John and others sat together with Yan Jiuru.
After so long, there is finally a manager who can talk and laugh with them in English, and even German and French.
Whenever foreigners see the serious faces of translators and the like, they always feel that they are unable to communicate smoothly.
However, according to organizational regulations, although Yan Jiuru spoke English and German at this time, it was not allowed to involve substantive issues.
Yan Jiuru talked to them about his life studying abroad.
When they heard that he was a graduate student from Berkeley School of Engineering, the two foreigners present cried out and hugged him.
They shouted, "Yan, please allow me to call you that. We are alumni! I am from the School of Mathematics."
"That's a coincidence! My wife also has a PhD in EECE, but she specializes in computers."
Now all the foreigners, including John, became excited, "Oh, what a surprise!"
"Mr. Yan, you are outdone by your wife. Hahaha."
"Oh, I've been here for over a year, and this is the first time I've seen you guys like this. I thought all the people in Xuan Country were...
Well, you know."
He shrugged without stating it explicitly.
These foreign managers and experts are indeed at least graduate students, and none of them have undergraduate degrees.
No wonder they felt they could not communicate with Xuan Country's management. The gap between the two sides was too huge, both in terms of professional knowledge and cultural concepts.
After drinking coffee, Yan Jiuru went to the bathroom.
Thomas, a foreign schoolmate, went with him.
While peeing, he also told Yan Jiuru a joke.
They said that when they first saw that the factory toilets were all so-called "dry toilets", the foreign managers almost vomited on the spot, not to mention being asked to use squat toilets.
"Oh my god, you didn't see it. It's summer time, and not only does it stink, but it's crawling everywhere..."
Later, the first foreign general manager, despite opposition from many people, invested 200,000 yuan (equivalent to 80,000 US dollars at the time) to renovate the toilets in the entire factory, requiring that all of them be replaced with flush toilets and single-room toilets with exhaust fans.
As a result, they were resisted by workers throughout the factory.
When open protests proved futile, they resorted to covert attacks.
"Look at these tiles. Cleaners secretly use strong acid cleaners and steel brushes to damage the glaze of ceramic toilets. Some people also remove the wooden boards in the cubicles and cut off the water pipes and electrical circuits."
He pointed at the dangling lightbulb above his head. "This one's had its wiring replaced at least a dozen times. Every time, they pull a wire off the bulb. Sometimes, if they don't pull it properly, the bulb will flicker and burn out. But they don't think it's a waste."
When Yan Jiuru was in the car, he saw some of our opinions and statements about the toilet renovation. When he heard what the foreign personnel said, he realized that everyone had their own reasons.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
