Hearing Lin Sanqi's concerns, Fu Guoding didn't care:
"Mr. Xiaolin, you're worrying too much. Medicines are different from other commodities. Medicines are evaluated based on their efficacy. Take a closer look at Tong Ren Tang Angong Niuhuang Wan and Pian Zai Huang, which are in short supply in the market? Which one of them is advertised in the media?
The key is efficacy. If your medicine works, patients will spread the word, and once it becomes a legend, patients will flock to it. So as long as Mr. Xiaolin makes good medicine, I believe sales will be a breeze."
Mr. Mao was thoughtful at this time:
"Mr. Xiaolin, if you really want to set up a factory, there is actually another place you can consider."
Lin Sanqi chuckled and said, "Old man, you are not talking about Hong Kong, are you?"
As soon as these words were spoken, the eyes of several people in the office lit up.
Director Song clapped his hands and said, "Yes, that's great. Xiangjiang is right next to Huadu. It takes one hour by high-speed rail, and just over two hours by car. It's like being in the same city. It takes me over an hour to drive home from get off work during the evening rush hour in the city."
Mr. Mao laughed and further explained:
"Hong Kong is different from mainland China. Its medicines are in line with international standards. They don't ban the sale of natural medicinal materials such as musk and bezoar. As long as you can provide proof of legal breeding, you can get it.
Many domestic pharmaceutical companies have already set up pharmaceutical factories in Hong Kong.
As far as I know, Peking Tong Ren Tang, Jinling Tong Ren Tang, Guang Yu Yuan, Darentang, Pian Zai Huang, Hu Qing Yu Tang, Jiu Zhi Tang, Tasly, Guang Sheng Yuan, etc., all have their own factories in Hong Kong.
Not only are mainland pharmaceutical companies setting up factories in Hong Kong, but Japan and South Korea have also opened Chinese herbal medicine factories in Hong Kong, such as this Japanese Jiuxin Pill.
The old man took out a small medicine box from the drawer next to him.
"This was given to me by an old friend for research. Look at the ingredient list: musk, toad venom, bezoar, bear gall, iris, pearl, ginseng, and borneol.
Among them, musk, bezoar and bear bile can be used freely in Hong Kong without so many restrictions.
Therefore, if Lingnantang wants to make its own medicine, Hong Kong is a good choice. Musk can be imported from abroad or from relevant domestic breeding bases, which makes it easier to find the raw material source.
And most importantly, Hong Kong is part of our country. The country offers Hong Kong many preferential policies, and the trade tariffs between the two places are not too high, which will facilitate the export of medicines from Hong Kong to the mainland."
Lin Sanqi had long had the idea of setting up a factory in Hong Kong, but the idea was only vague before. Now, after hearing what Mr. Mao said, his idea became even more firm.
Mr. Mao then added:
"But setting up a factory in Hong Kong also has its risks. The biggest one is the high land prices. Not only are residential buildings expensive in Hong Kong, but industrial land is also expensive."
Hong Kong has a typical urban economic model, with the service industry accounting for 93.4%, the secondary industry accounting for 6.5%, and if we look specifically at manufacturing, the proportion is less than 1%.
Therefore, Hong Kong actually has very serious industrial hollowing out. It does not encourage industrial development, and there are no preferential policies for industrial enterprises, such as land discounts.
They just like to speculate in real estate and play with finance.
Fortunately, Lin Sanqi was not short of money. He just needed the opportunity and reputation to bring the medicine from 1960 to 23 years ago. So he had to go to Hong Kong and set up a factory.
The next day, Shenzhen Bay Port
Lin Sanqi was sitting in the company's Alpha business car, looking at the long line of cars in front of him with a bit of surprise.
"Hey, today isn't a holiday, why are there so many cars going through customs? It's going to take a long time to queue up, right?"
Lin Tianhua, who was sitting nearby, chuckled and said, "Qizi, is this your first time in Hong Kong?"
Lin Sanqi nodded awkwardly: "Yes, it's my first time there."
There was no way around it. Before the Dragon Boat Festival this year, the Lin family was still one of the poorest in Shilou Village. Not to mention crossing the border to Hong Kong to play, the Lin family had never even been to other cities in the country.
Traveling is a luxury for ordinary people.
Millionaires per capita can only appear on Douyin, and not everyone in the urban village is a real estate tycoon.
Hearing Lin Sanqi's sincere answer, Lin Tianhua felt a little confused.
I wondered what kind of opportunity had struck this nephew? How could he have, in just a few months, gone from being a poor scholar to having enough capital to open a factory in Hong Kong?
Of course, a veteran in the workplace like him remained calm on the surface:
"Then let me tell you about the situation in Hong Kong. Look at this long convoy. And then look at the license plates. Aren't the vast majority of them from Hong Kong? Very few from mainland China."
Lin Sanqi glanced around a few more times and said, "Yes."
Lin Tianhua smiled slightly:
“This has been the latest trend in recent years.
In the past, our impression was that we mainlanders would go to Hong Kong, whether for shopping or tourism, with a pilgrimage-like mood, looking up to them.
But in recent years, the situation has been completely reversed. Hong Kong people have flocked to the mainland in large numbers, mainly because prices in the mainland are cheaper.
Oh, these prices refer to things related to ordinary people, such as food and beverages, entertainment, clothing, daily necessities in supermarkets, etc. ”
When it comes to shopping, Yin Lianyi becomes excited:
“You still have to go to Hong Kong to buy international brands because they have the latest styles, which are launched globally at the same time, and the prices are cheaper than in mainland China. But if you want to buy ordinary casual clothes or home clothes, people in Hong Kong now go to Shenzhen to buy them.
On our return trip, we went to the Sam's Supermarket in Shenzhen. It was incredible: the entire supermarket was almost entirely filled with Hong Kong people, buying everything: paper towels, condiments, snacks, pushing carts of everything home.
Lin Sanqi was a little puzzled:
"Hong Kong's commercial logistics are much more developed than ours. Why would they come to the mainland to shop at supermarkets? Isn't there a ParknShop supermarket in Hong Kong? It was opened by Li Huanggua and is very famous in Hong Kong movies."
Yin Lianyi rolled her eyes at her boss:
"How stupid! Things are so expensive in Hong Kong. A box of tissues might cost a hundred wen in Hong Kong, but only fifty or sixty wen in mainland China. Other things are generally more than one-third cheaper in mainland China than in Hong Kong.
"There aren't any supermarkets this big in Hong Kong. Land is expensive there, so supermarkets tend to be small and sophisticated, just like the convenience stores in our neighborhood. So now, it's the turn of Hong Kongers to come to the mainland, just like Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden."
Everyone in the car chuckled.
This time when Lin Sanqi came to Hong Kong, in addition to the driver, General Manager Lin Tianhua, Financial Manager Yin Lianyi, and Sales Manager Meng Peng all came together.
Meng Peng is Lin Tianhua's direct subordinate. At the beginning, Lin Tianhua poached all the most elite sales team of Mercedes-Benz in South China and gave them an annual salary that was several times higher than the previous one. It was definitely the ceiling in the sales industry.
But this sales team is also worth the money.
Although Lingnan Tang's precious Chinese medicinal materials and food ingredients have no shortage of sales channels, it is not something that an ordinary sales team can do to make Lingnan Tang's reputation known to everyone in the medical circle and wealthy circles of Dongguan Province in a short period of time, and to establish a brand positioning of "Lingnan Tang products must be high-quality."
To put it bluntly, the most important thing for high-end sales channels is connections.
If you don’t even know the top billionaires, let alone have access to them, how can you sell your products to them?
Do you run to the company's headquarters and tell the front desk to please make an appointment with your chairman, saying that you are here to sell ginseng? Believe it or not, you won't even be able to enter the company's door and will be immediately chased away by the security guard.
It just so happens that the Mercedes-Benz sales team has resources with wealthy people. Even if they are top-level wealthy people, the staff of Meng Peng's team are not afraid at all when they go out to contact them. This is their foundation.
After hearing Yin Lianyi start talking, Lin Tianhua also talked about his own concerns.
"Yes, Xiao Qi, although setting up factories in Hong Kong is less restricted, why are domestic pharmaceutical companies, with the exception of a few leading pharmaceutical companies, unable to set up factories in Hong Kong? It's because the threshold for setting up factories in Hong Kong is too high.
I've also checked with friends in Hong Kong beforehand. For example, the 90,000 square foot industrial land on On Kui Street in Fanling fetched HK$600 million at auction last year. Converted to just 13 or 14 mu (approximately 16 acres), the price is truly staggering.
Lin Sanqi was mentally prepared. He knew that land in Hong Kong was expensive, but he didn't expect it to be so outrageously expensive.
"Oh my god, Uncle Ten, if we want to build a factory on this thirteen acres of land, it can only be considered a 'small and micro enterprise' at best in our mainland, right?"
Yin Lianyi chuckled: "The office building our company rents occupies two acres of land."
After passing the customs, the car drove on the Shenzhen Bay Highway Bridge, and under the bridge was the vast sea level.
Lin Sanqi had looked up information and knew that in 1960, if you wanted to go to Hong Kong, you basically had to sneak there.
If you want to smuggle by boat, the most common route is to go through Dapeng Bay in the east. The distance between the mainland and the Hong Kong River is about 10 kilometers, so you can only take a boat.
But you have to pay the snakehead to take the boat, at least 300 yuan per person. People are so poor that they have to flee to Hong Kong, how can they have 300 yuan? If there are four or five people in a family, it will cost more than 1,000 yuan.
Not everyone is as rich as a middleman named Lin who treats the blacksmith like dirt.
What to do if you have no money? You can only swim across. The most common swimming route is Deep Bay, which was later renamed Shenzhen Bay.
Lin Sanqi looked left and right at the sea scenery outside the window in the car, and was amazed. He thought that the sea here was not narrow either. The shortest was 4 kilometers. What kind of person could swim across? No wonder the death rate was so high.
Seeing Lin Sanqi looking around, Lin Tianhua asked curiously:
"Xiao Qi, what are you looking at? Just across the harbour is Yuen Long in Hong Kong. We'll be there soon."
"Uncle Shi, I was thinking about how scary it was for stowaways to swim across Deep Bay back then. Those who made it to shore after such a long swim were incredibly lucky."
Lin Tianhua laughed and pointed to both sides of the bridge and said:
"Back then, the illegal immigrants either set out from the mangroves in the east or from Shekou in the west, not from the cross-sea bridge under our feet. But it was good enough that half of them made it ashore.
We used to joke that there weren't just countless bodies beneath Shenzhen Bay, but also countless gold bars. It was said that those who stole across had gold bars on them, but they all sank to the bottom of the sea. Anyone who touched the bodies would be rich.
In Dongguan Province, almost every family had relatives who fled to Hong Kong. Most of the many fellow villagers from Shilou Village in Hong Kong swam over there back then.
Therefore, the people of Dongguan are not averse to smuggling. Instead, they think it is normal and that young people who have no food to eat should go out and try their luck.
The speaker may not have intended it, but the listener took it to heart. At this time, Lin Sanqi remembered the two places, Mangrove Forest and Shekou, and was also silently evaluating in his mind whether he could swim across the Hong Kong River if he went there in 1960.
Suddenly Lin Sanqi felt that he was so stupid.
Why swim over there when you have a golden finger? You can just buy a speedboat and install six engines. Isn’t this the legendary “Big Fly”? The maximum speed can reach 120 kilometers per hour.
If a large aircraft like this were to fly out, not only would the Hong Kong police in 1960 not be able to detect it, but even if they did, they would not be able to catch it unless they used a helicopter.
Thinking of this, Lin Sanqi relaxed. How could a time traveler die from holding his urine?
After the Alpha drove off the Shenzhen Bay Bridge and officially entered Hong Kong, Lin Sanqi felt as if he had suddenly come from a big city to a big countryside.
Looking at the vast expanses of farmland and open space before him, Lin Sanqi asked curiously:
"Uncle Shi, didn't they say there wasn't enough land in Hong Kong to build a building? Don't you see these are all empty lots?"
Lin Tianhua patiently explained:
"The situation in Hong Kong is different from that in mainland China. Land in Hong Kong is privately owned, so the farmland you see is basically privately owned. The government can't just requisition it or do whatever it wants with it."
Meng Peng, who was sitting in the passenger seat, turned around and spoke:
"Boss, I heard a rumor that a lot of land in the New Territories is actually in the hands of large real estate developers. They deliberately don't develop the New Territories in order to drive up land and housing prices in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.
There are also some "banana" capitalists who are deliberately sabotaging the mainland. A few years ago, they planned to build a crematorium and cemetery on the south bank of the Shenzhen River, deliberately embarrassing the mainland. Their intentions are very sinister.
The Shenzhen River is a small river only about ten meters wide. Its south bank is the New Territories, while its north bank is the city center of Shenzhen, with tall buildings and bustling traffic.
If the crematorium is really built by the river, it will have a huge negative impact on Shenzhen’s city image and residents’ lives. The intention is nothing short of malicious.
Lin Tianhua nodded in agreement:
"It's just like when we watched Hong Kong movies back then, the protagonists would often say: Hong Kong, this isn't the Governor's Hong Kong, nor is it Chen Haonan's Hong Kong, but the Hong Kong of a few major families. Even after the handover, they were unwilling to lose their voice."
Lin Sanqi got furious when he heard this:
"Isn't this too much? Shouldn't our country completely eradicate this pest lurking in Hong Kong and sweep it out of the country?"
Yin Lianyi is also a young person and was also very angry when she heard this:
"No wonder Hong Kong is getting worse and worse. Even Hong Kong people are going to Shenzhen to consume. It seems that they are being bullied by local capitalists. In the past, there was no choice. Where could a small city go? Now there is a choice. It's different."
Lin Sanqi looked at the farmland outside the window and thought, this is indeed a city kidnapped by capital.
If there weren't so many restrictions in the mainland, Lin Sanqi would never have thought of investing in Hong Kong.
Now the city’s status as a financial center and logistics center has been shaken. The decline of the once dazzling Oriental Pearl Tower is inevitable, and perhaps it is what some unscrupulous capitalists want to see.
The car drove off the main road and turned left to Yuen Long.
Along the way, Lin Sanqi felt particularly familiar with the place names he saw, such as Lai Chi-keung, the tiger of Tuen Mun, Yuen Long, the territory of pheasants, and Tin Shui Wai Village, where Ann Hui filmed "Days and Nights in Tin Shui Wai".
Lin Tianhua didn't know that his nephew's mind was wandering again, and continued to introduce:
"Hong Kong's main industrial areas were originally in Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung, Kowloon West, Sham Shui Po, Lai Chi Kok, as well as Kwun Tong and Kowloon City in Kowloon East. This shows how prosperous Hong Kong's economy was at the time. Even the richest man started out making plastic flowers.
Later, with the rapid decline of industry, only three industrial villages remain: in Yuen Long, Tai Po, and Tseung Kwan O. The name "industrial village" (not "industrial zone") suggests that the area is very small.
A direct consequence of the small industrial zone is that the industrial land quota is quite tight and the price is several times higher than that of mainland investment. With such high land prices, no foreign investor is willing to set up a factory in Hong Kong.
Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate is now taking the high-tech route, and all factories settled there are not allowed to cause pollution. Pharmaceutical factories like ours are excluded, so the only two places available to us are Yuen Long and Tai Po.
I chose Yuen Long because it's home to a renowned pharmaceutical company, Aome Pharmaceuticals. With a competitor already established there, it should be easier to get approval for our factory in Yuen Long.
"Ausme Pharmaceuticals!"
Lin Sanqi had actually heard of this factory. The amoxicillin capsules they produced were of the best quality among similar products. They had relatively high sales in the mainland and were also quite effective.
Even many patients shook their heads when they saw that it was ordinary amoxicillin produced in mainland China, and specifically asked for the amoxicillin in the blue box.
"By the way, Uncle Ten, Aomei Pharmaceuticals is considered a well-known pharmaceutical company. How big is their factory?"
Lin Sanqi thought about the several pharmaceutical factories under the name of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group, which together covered several thousand acres of land. The old factory alone occupied 600 acres.
Then, an international-level pharmaceutical company like Australia and America Pharmaceuticals must occupy an area of at least a thousand acres, right?
Lin Tianhua laughed heartily after hearing this: "How big it is, you'll know for yourself when you see it."
Yuen Long Industrial Estate.
Lin Sanqi and his group drove around the entire industrial village and then circled around Aome Pharmaceuticals. Lin Sanqi found that the Aome Pharmaceuticals factory could only be described as mini.
Yin Lianyi handed the iPad to the disappointed Lin Sanqi:
"Look, Aome Pharmaceuticals only produces a few drugs now, and they don't have any exclusive patented drugs. They mainly deal in medical beauty and health products. It seems that they are also undergoing a transformation."
Lin Sanqi glanced at the screen and saw that the main products were still the same three things: amoxicillin and some cough suppressants and expectorants. There was no ambition at all.
"It seems like running a pharmaceutical factory in Hong Kong is really difficult. With so much money involved in finance and real estate speculation, what's going to happen to the jobs and income of ordinary Hong Kong citizens?"
Yin Lianyi burst out laughing again:
"Boss Lin, are you still worried about the income of Hong Kong people? A security guard there earns tens of thousands a month. Just imagine how much a security guard in Shenzhen makes a month?"
Lin Sanqi touched his face and said, "You're making me sound like a black-hearted capitalist."
Lin Tianhua still had to secretly flatter his nephew boss:
"Xiao Yin, our Lingnan Hall's revenue is pretty good. This year isn't even over yet, and if you include the year-end bonus, your Finance Department's average revenue is going to be over a million. And if nothing unexpected happens to our Sales Department, the top seller's revenue will be over five million."
Lin Sanqi raised his chin and said, "How's it going? I'm a good boss, right?" (End of this chapter)
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