When will I have a long tassel?

"The difficulties currently faced by Houban Industrial Park are mainly due to the lack of an independent industrial system in our country, and many industries are heavily dependent on China."

In the conference room of the Hou Ban Industrial Park Management Committee, Ruan Duc reported to Fan Minh Son, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce who came to inspect the work.

In just two months, 15 foreign-funded companies that settled in the Houban Industrial Park have left. It is actually not accurate to say that they have left, because their workshops are still there and a small number of workers are still working. The main responsibility of these workers is to label products shipped from China with a "Made in Vietnam" label, and then repack them and send them to the dock, so that these products can appear in the U.S. market across the ocean.

The original intention of establishing Houban Industrial Park was obviously not to make it a place for labeling. In the early days, these companies did transport production equipment and carried out production for a period of time.

During the production process of these enterprises, Ruan De constantly received complaints from them, saying that the park was unable to provide them with necessary supporting support. Ruan De led his team and tried their best to solve these problems, but the problems increased and eventually led to the outflow of the company.

Ruan De clearly remembers that there was a US-funded company named Twigg that he personally pried over from Ruigang, China. Hensley, the general manager of Twigg Factory, once vowed to create greater glory in Houban Industrial Park and create no less than 1,000 local jobs.

After sluggish production for more than half a year, Hansley finally returned to Ruigang with the Twigg factory. It is said that Ruigang's side gave him some shame because of his departure, and some of the preferential conditions he had enjoyed in the past were also cancelled. But even so, Hansley still went back without hesitation, which made Ruan De feel like a failure.

After talking to some senior executives of foreign-funded companies who had left, Ruan De finally understood what he was missing.

An industrial system covering the entire industry chain.

This cannot be established by Houban Industrial Park by itself. It requires the efforts of the whole country to build it.

"Most of the production equipment used by enterprises in the park is made in China. Even if some are imported from Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries, substitutes can be found in China, and routine maintenance can be completed in China. This is what The key to companies being able to maintain stable production in China.

"Vietnam does not have such equipment manufacturing capabilities, or even the ability to maintain these equipment. For some of the simplest equipment repairs, companies have to go to China to hire repairmen, and all accessories have to be imported from China.

"As a result, the company's production costs will increase. If one piece of equipment is damaged, the entire production line will be stagnant. Repairing this equipment will take many days.

"Many companies in the park have said that unless these problems can be solved in Vietnam, they will not dare to expand their production scale in Vietnam."

Ruan De said mentally exhausted.

"However, the production situation in some of our other industrial parks is still very good. Although there have been problems similar to the Houban Industrial Park, foreign-funded enterprises in those parks have not evacuated in large numbers." Fan Mingshan reminded.

Ruan De smiled bitterly and said: "Minister, the positioning of Hou Ban Industrial Park and other industrial parks is different. Other industrial parks mainly undertake some low-end export processing industries, and their main production equipment is sewing machines and injection molding. Machines and soldering irons have little technical content.

"By the way, most of these equipment without technical content are imported from China. The Chinese don't care about transferring these industries to Vietnam, so they have established a complete sales and service system for these industries. For example, China Every sewing machine factory has sales and service centers in Vietnam. The sewing machines they sell are of good quality, full-featured, and very cheap.”

"Then, can't you let Chinese machine tool companies also come to Houban Industrial Park to establish their sales and service centers?" Fan Mingshan asked.

Ruan De said: "This is very difficult. In fact, some Chinese machine tool companies have indeed established sales and service centers in Vietnam, but their service centers only provide services for some mid- to low-end machine tools, and services for high-end machine tools still have to go back to China. Finish."

"Why is this?" Fan Mingshan's assistant Huang Chunrong asked.

Ruan Duc said: “I once talked with them, and the reason they gave is that there are too few high-end machine tool users in Vietnam, and after-sales service of high-end machine tools requires more professional personnel and equipment, and the Vietnamese market is not enough to support it. Such a service system.”

"Maybe this is just an excuse?" Huang Chunrong said.

Ruan De nodded: "Indeed, this is just an excuse. The real reason is that the Chinese do not want companies that need to use high-end machine tools to build factories in Vietnam. They use this method to set up obstacles for those companies."

"This is a shameless act! This is an imperialist act!" Huang Chunrong said angrily.

Ruan De looked at Huang Chunrong with a helpless smile on his face. In fact, he wanted to make a mockery of Huang Chunrong:

Please, don't be so naive, okay?

International industrial transfer has always been about transferring low-end industries that one does not want to do to others. Who has not tried hard to keep high-end industries that are highly profitable and easy to work in their own hands?

At the beginning of its opening up, China took over the most difficult and tiring industries from abroad. Hundreds of millions of shirts were exchanged for an A380, which is a description of the international industrial division of labor faced by China at that time.

China has successfully achieved industrial upgrading. It has begun to leave low-end manufacturing to developing countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa, and it has begun to engage in projects such as large aircraft, 5G, and high-speed rail that are in the upstream or even top of the industrial chain. However, this kind of upgrade has It is not a gift from Western countries, but something that people have made by themselves.

Back then, when China wanted to enter high-end manufacturing, Westerners also blocked high-end machine tools and other equipment from them. Right before our eyes, when the Chinese were trying to impact the high-end semiconductor industry, ASML also refused to export EUV lithography machines to China under pressure from the Americans.

People are working hard to develop high-end equipment, isn't it because they want to enter the upper reaches of the industry chain? Why should you use the equipment that others have made based on their own skills?

Ruan De did not realize this at first. After working as the director of the management committee of Houban Industrial Park for more than a year, he gradually realized what an independent industrial system is. If your industrial system is not independent and autonomous, others can choke you. If people want to give you something, you can give it to them, and if they don't want to give it to you, you don't have to give it to them. There's nothing you can do about it.

Losing your independence in the industrial system, you can only stay in the lower reaches of the industrial chain, working as a coolie for others and earning some hard money.

Nguyen Duc is a man with big ambitions, just as his leaders are also leaders with big ambitions. They want to be as wealthy as their northern neighbors and don't want to suffer in the lower reaches of the industrial chain. This is their trouble.

"Ruan De, what do you think?" Fan Mingshan asked. He is not as naive as Huang Chunrong and knows that there are some things that cannot be counted on others.

Ruan De said: "I think our country should work hard to control the most critical technologies in its own hands. I have studied China's industrial history, and the Chinese have been determined to establish an independent industrial system from the beginning.

“When they introduce technology, they are never satisfied with obtaining the equipment itself, but require the other party to transfer the manufacturing technology of the equipment. They call this ‘market for technology’.

“Through this method, they obtained a large number of technologies from the West, and then innovated on the basis of these technologies, thus forming their own technologies with independent intellectual property rights.

"They are able to do this because they are a socialist country. The state can control production behavior and concentrate its efforts on doing big things. And we are also a socialist country, and we can also concentrate on doing big things. I believe that if If we learn from China's methods, we will be able to establish our own industrial system and get rid of dependence on other countries."

"Your idea may be right," Fan Mingshan said. "However, you may have overlooked an important reason, that is, China is a big country. Only a big country can afford the so-called independent industrial system.

"China has aerospace industry, nuclear industry, electronics industry, and heavy chemical industry. These industries cooperate with each other. Just like the high-end machine tools you mentioned, the Chinese develop high-end machine tools to support their aerospace industry. We develop high-end machine tools, What can it be used for? Is it just to support several companies in Houban Industrial Park?"

"This..." Ruan De was speechless.

It’s not that Ruan De has never thought about the issue Fan Mingshan mentioned. But his thinking is limited to Houban Industrial Park. He feels that even if the scale of Houban Industrial Park is not enough to support an equipment industrial system, what about the entire country? Isn’t it possible too?

But Fan Mingshan's words gave him an unpleasant answer: The entire country can't do it either.

"Nguyen Duc, we have to be pragmatic in doing things." Fan Mingshan said, "The problem with Hou Ban Industrial Park is that it is too ambitious and has introduced a large number of projects that Vietnam's industrial system cannot support at all. As a result, it has become passive.

"For now, we should clarify our industrial positioning and not look down on those low-end industries. Yes, those industries are being eliminated by China, but they are still very valuable to us. If we do well in these industries, we will It can enable our economy to develop rapidly.

"As for the issue of competition with China, this is indeed our national policy, but it is also a long-term national policy and cannot be realized in the short term. What we have to do now is to cooperate better with China and win their support for us. More support.”