After parting ways with Chen Yu, Chen Liqi took Chen Yang around. Beijing, an ancient capital, was Chen Yang’s first visit to this city, and there were many differences between the Beijing of today and the modified Beijing of later generations.
Chen Yang and Lei Baoguo had a good time for a few days. Three days later, Li Yong’s reply arrived.
As Chen Yang had anticipated, the leaders agreed to allow Chen Yang’s Zhenhua television sets to be sold in supply and marketing cooperatives and department stores, but they could not crowd out the sales of other television brands, and the prices would be the same.
Then, all profits would go into the state’s public accounts, with all profits from the sale of Zhenhua television sets uniformly submitted to the national treasury.
The department stores and supply and marketing cooperatives were also not allowed to stop selling other brands of televisions just because Zhenhua television sets could be supplied in large quantities and generate profits. Each brand of television would have a dedicated store, and customers could choose freely.
The decision to allocate land and build a building was also approved by the leaders, but it was requested to maintain the architectural style of the Dongfeng Market as much as possible, and the construction should not affect the normal operation of the market.
Chen Yang could accept this outcome. Fair competition would prevent him from being accused of suppressing other television factories through connections. His costs were lower than those of state-owned factories, and he additionally promised after-sales service and warranty. In an era where sales were guaranteed but repairs were not, and buying goods required queuing, if he still couldn’t beat other factories, he might as well go home and sleep.
After signing the agreement with the department store and the supply and marketing cooperative, with Li Yong’s personal attention, a state-owned construction company in Balitun, Beijing, was responsible for the construction of Chen Yang’s appliance building.
Once the cement and bricks were in place, construction would begin. It would be a total of five floors, with each floor having over two hundred square meters, totaling over a thousand square meters. This scale would be sufficient for the next twenty to thirty years.
At present, there was probably no larger appliance store in the entire country. After all, these items were expensive and often required queuing to purchase, making it impossible to have so many appliances displayed in one store for people to choose from.
In this era of a seller’s market, Chen Yang displaying Zhenhua’s home appliances floor by floor on the counters would have a shocking deterrent effect that would undoubtedly drop many jaws.
However, these were all secondary considerations. For at least the next one to two years, Chen Yang’s Zhenhua Appliances’ main battlefield would still be television sets. Only after capital was gradually recovered and the loans from HSBC were repaid could he begin a new round of appliance product introductions.
Furthermore, Chen Yang also needed to cultivate his own design talent. Currently, they were still in black and white televisions, but in a few years, they would upgrade to color televisions. They couldn’t rely solely on introductions; they needed independent research and development.
To be honest, Chen Yang had already set his sights on the college students who had just entered universities in Beijing and Shanghai.
However, university students in this era were considered the elite, and their schools provided job assignments. These individuals usually entered government agencies or large state-owned enterprises. It would be somewhat difficult to get them to work for Zhenhua Appliance Factory.
Even in the 21st century, many graduates from top universities like 985 and 211 would give up lucrative positions in private enterprises with annual salaries of five to six hundred thousand yuan to become junior civil servants in government agencies.
Let alone in this era where private enterprises were just emerging; generally, no one would be willing to give up a “rice bowl” (stable job) to work in Chen Yang’s factory.
Chen Yang had no connections in Beijing for this matter, but in Shanghai, he had been introduced to the leaders of Shanghai and the director of the Shanghai Education Bureau through Director Hou of the Shanghai Administration for Industry and Commerce.
Chen Yang directly offered a salary twice that of state-owned enterprises and promised that as long as the factory did not go bankrupt in the future, the retirement benefits for these first batch of employees would definitely not be worse than those of their classmates who joined state-owned enterprises at the same time.
One cannot catch a wolf without sacrificing a cub. Regarding pensions, he would make the promise first, as there was no perfect social security system yet.
Even when receiving a pension, one could only claim it after decades of contributions. Chen Yang would absolutely not give up on these talents due to reluctance to spend a little.
University students in the 1980s were generally highly skilled. In the next thirty to forty years, this batch of university students and technical secondary school students would essentially form the elite and leadership of various industries in China.
He needed both management talent and financial talent, and he was even more desperate for engineering students specializing in technology. Currently, Zhenhua was hiring workers in large numbers, mostly from the assembly line with lower educational backgrounds.
In the future, managing the factory and technological innovation would require talent. This money would be absolutely worth spending.
Although the salary offered was not small, Chen Yang still dared not let down his guard. He planned to give several speeches at prestigious universities like Fudan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University, and Zhejiang University before the first batch of university students graduated.
During the summer break of their third year, he would ask the schools to organize students to visit Zhenhua and see this factory that employed tens of thousands of people.
When funds were more abundant in the coming years, he would build canteens and dormitories for the factory. For some elite employees, he would even build houses. As long as they agreed to work at Zhenhua for more than fifteen years and signed a contract, he could allocate housing.
A house in Pudong, even a one-bedroom apartment of about forty square meters, would become considerable wealth in the future.
This was Chen Yang’s greatest sincerity towards talent. In the future development of Zhenhua Appliances, these individuals would definitely be arranged in leadership positions and as key personnel in various branch factories, workshops, and R&D departments.
Mastering talent meant mastering future technological power, and technology was the primary productive force!
All of this still required time. Chen Yang’s most urgent matter at present was to meet his future brother-in-law before returning.
After finalizing the cooperation matters, Chen Yang waited for a day. Chen Yu had a day off on Sunday and came out to stroll around Beijing with Chen Yang and the others.
She was accompanied by a male classmate from Beijing. Chen Yang himself had not expected that his casual remark would actually lead his sister to bring that guy out for a meal.
“Brother, don’t misunderstand. This is my senior, he has helped me a lot, especially with student union matters and my studies. He has been a great help to me.”
“He is also from Beijing. When I mentioned going out to explore Beijing on Sunday, he offered to be a guide. So, I’m taking this opportunity to treat him to a meal to repay his kindness, and also have him show us around.”
Seeing Chen Yang, who had come to pick her up from school, Chen Yu blushed and wished she could disappear into a crack in the ground.
Especially thinking about Chen Yang’s previous teasing remarks, she felt even more mortified.
“Liu Xiaoguang, classmate Liu?”
“Hello, I am Chen Yu’s brother, Chen Yang.”
Chen Yang stepped forward, extended his hand, and looked at the shy young man in front of him. Tsk tsk tsk, who would have thought that this little fellow would become a professor at Renmin University and a well-connected figure in less than ten years.
“Brother, hello.”
“I, I am Chen Yu’s classmate, my name is Liu Xiaoguang.”
“Eh, wait, brother, I haven’t introduced myself yet, how did you know my name? Did Chen Yu mention me to you?”
Liu Xiaoguang seemed to suddenly realize and looked at Chen Yang blankly.