When will I have a long tassel?

Germany, Premier Tech's headquarters.

Chairman Wardenberg held a report, frowned, and asked several subordinates in the office: "Do you think the Chinese people's actions this time are true, or is it a new deception?"

"I feel it's true," said Sales Director Short. "Our actions this time have greatly angered the Chinese side. They have already let the wind out and said they will no longer negotiate with us and will steam their own steamed buns."

"What does steamed buns mean?" Technical Director Rauser asked strangely.

"Probably it means you have to work hard on your own." Short replied perfunctorily. Foreigners would not be able to understand the Chinese homophones of not steaming the steamed buns, but he did not get the basic meaning wrong.

"Several major media outlets in China have published heavyweight articles. They claim that this time PATEO first promised to sell special precision milling machines to China and then canceled this commitment, which reflects that China's equipment industry is controlled by others. China's National Science and Technology The Working Committee signed a contract totaling nearly 200 million euros with Tengji Company, which previously claimed to have developed a precision milling machine, requiring Tengji Company to develop seven types of key equipment in the next three years. Coincidentally, these seven types of equipment are Our flagship product,” Shorthui reported.

Wardenberg asked: "How credible is this news?"

Short said: "I think it is quite credible. In recent years, China has increased investment in defense equipment, and 200 million euros is not a big number for the Chinese military. What they listed The seven types of equipment are currently dependent on foreign countries. To be precise, they rely on our company, PATEO.

"If we interrupt the supply of spare parts for these equipment to China, then the Chinese will not be able to continue production without getting replacement equipment. In order to avoid falling into such a dilemma, the Chinese military is entirely likely to spend a lot of money to ask for their local Enterprises break through these technological barriers.”

"With 200 million euros, can the Chinese develop these seven types of equipment?" Wardenberg turned his head to Rauser again.

"It's possible." Rauser answered honestly. "The Chinese are very hardworking and smart. If funding can be guaranteed, they should be able to solve the key problems in the design of these seven machine tools and come up with designs." plan."

"However, your technical department spent more than 200 million euros on the company just to develop a machine tool. How can we explain this?" Wardenberg asked.

"This is completely incomparable." Rauser said in embarrassment. "The Chinese's labor costs are much lower than ours. Their engineers' monthly salary is only 500 euros, but here, a cleaner's weekly salary is more than 500 euros." . Also, their research does not need to start from scratch, they can completely learn from the machine tools they bought from us, as long as they carefully circumvent the patent barriers."

"If it is used by the military industry, they don't even have to bypass patent barriers." Short said sadly.

Patents are related to the market. If a company produces a product that is not sold on the market, no one knows whether it infringes the copyright. Military industry companies are highly confidential. Even if there is a batch of equipment in their production workshops that infringes the patent rights of other companies, the infringed party will have no way to do it because you can't provide evidence at all.

China is a country with machine tool manufacturing capabilities, and its manufacturing level has increased rapidly in recent years. It is no longer a problem to imitate a foreign precision machine tool. What stands in front of the Chinese is nothing more than material and process issues, because these two cannot be cracked through imitation testing.

My family knows their own business, and the materials and process know-how that Botech has mastered may sound mysterious, but in fact there are no insurmountable obstacles. If the Chinese get serious and invest enough money in experiments, it's entirely possible that they can find the right method so that materials and processes no longer become bottlenecks.

By then, the Chinese really don’t need to buy PATEO’s equipment.

If it is just the loss of orders from Chinese military industrial enterprises, PATEO can still afford it, although this is also a huge amount of income. What PATEO needs to worry about is that in the process of solving various technical obstacles, Chinese machine tool companies will form technologies with independent intellectual property rights, and then produce machine tool products that are comparable to PATEO and carve up PATEO's international market.

The equipment produced by Botai is of excellent performance and quality. The only drawback is that it is too expensive. In the absence of competitors, PATEO's equipment can be sold as expensive as you want. If it's too expensive, buy Chinese cabbage. 100 euros can buy a large truck, but it can't be used to produce parts, right?

Once the Chinese master similar technologies and produce similar machine tools, even if the quality is slightly inferior to that of PATEO, the impact on the market of PATEO will be immeasurable. The ability of the Chinese to control costs is really terrible. As long as the Chinese can make any product, manufacturing companies in other countries will have no choice but to close down. Their sales price can be half of your cost. How can you compare with them? ?

"Is there any way to get the Chinese to give up this unnecessary effort?" Wardenberg asked. His question was also quite interesting. He directly said that the Chinese people's efforts were unnecessary, which actually hinted at the answer.

"Milling machine sales to China must be resumed immediately." Short said without hesitation.

"In this case, will we fall into the trap of the Chinese?" Rauser reminded.

Wardenberg said: "Yes, there is indeed such a risk. If the Chinese are just bluffing to trick us into lifting the embargo, wouldn't we be fooled?"

"However, if we do not lift the embargo, the Chinese may completely fake it." Short said, "The production of their new missiles requires the use of our precision milling machines. If they cannot obtain these milling machines from us, They will have to do their own research and development, and then the fake will become real.”

"Damn it!" Wordenberg cursed, but he couldn't tell who he was scolding. He thought for a while and said: "Well, Short, you go to China in person and bring Merce with you. He has connections with the Chinese military industry system. You try to meet people from the Chinese military industry system. Find out what they are doing to determine our strategy.

"By the way, you can also go and meet Professor Qimudeng for a while. As a dissident in China, he may be able to provide us with some different information."

With Wardenberg's authorization, Short and sales representative Meuse hurriedly bought air tickets and rushed to China. They were greeted at the airport by Baboka, a staff member of the Asia-Pacific Service Center of PATEO. In the taxi heading to the hotel, Short couldn't wait to ask Baboka about this matter:

"Baboca, the newspaper said that the Chinese are planning to invest 200 million euros in developing seven types of machine tools. Is this true?"

Baboka nodded and said: "Yes, I have inquired with the purchasing department of Factory 82. They said that this time Botai changed its mind, which made their senior management very angry and decided to invest a large sum of money in Develop products to replace PATEO Machine Tools. By the way, the purchasing department of Factory 82 was also severely criticized by their superiors. The original head of the purchasing department was removed and replaced by a person named Han Weichang.

"This Han Weichang is a very slippery businessman, completely different from the Chinese military industry procurement personnel we have dealt with in the past. On the one hand, he told me that there was no room for recovery in this matter, and on the other hand, he hinted to me that he Personally, I still like PATEO products very much.”

"What does this mean?" Mercy asked in surprise.

Baboka said: "I have private discussions with some technicians in the Chinese military industry and found that there are big differences in their attitudes towards rejecting PATEO's products. Some technicians have a very tough attitude and think that PATEO's actions It hurts their self-esteem, and they will never accept PATEO's products no matter what. Others express a lack of confidence in China's own machine tools. They are more concerned about whether they can achieve results, and which country they use. machine tools, they don’t care.”

"This is a reasonable phenomenon." Short said, "Not everyone cares about the conflict between China and us. For ordinary engineers, they just want to get the best machine tools. Only officials can Will pay attention to the issue of autonomy.”

Baboka said: "I think what officials are concerned about is not so much the issue of autonomy, but the issue of face. This time, our company first promised to export precision milling machines to China, and then quickly canceled this promise , this incident has caused many Chinese officials to lose face, and this is the crux of the problem."

"But are they willing to invest 200 million euros just to save face?" Meuse asked.

Baboka said: "It is high-level officials who can decide where 200 million euros will be invested, but their decisions are also based on reports from lower-level officials. This time, some lower-level officials in China's military industry have lost face, and it is said that it may also affect them career development, so they will pass on some exaggerated information to their superiors to reduce their responsibility in this matter."

"Your analysis makes sense." Short praised Barboca, and then complained: "There are some people on the company's board of directors who don't know how to deal with the Chinese at all. They still have the mentality of the Cold War. They don’t know how to adapt. What happened this time would not have happened originally, or even if it was to be done, some milder methods could have been adopted. It is a big mistake to hurt the self-esteem of the Chinese people."

"So, Mr. Short, did you come to China this time to make peace with the Chinese?" Baboka asked.

Short said: "You can understand it this way, but I think what I want to do is far more than just making peace."