Chapter 282 Want to do and do

Every day and night in mid-June in the midsummer of 1994 seemed to be filled with rain and dreams, and the air in the dreams was mixed with astringent smells and musty odors. Some people were desperately bleaching it, while others were quietly drying it.

Chu Jian's life seems to have returned to its original calm. He goes to school at six in the morning and finishes school at nine thirty in the evening. His routine is as regular as a machine. The rational Lin Yongqiang is already in the detention center, facing the four words "leniency to confess" which is tortured his soul. The senior high school students who are about to go to the examination hall are finally embarking on what they think is the ultimate battle of their destiny amid cheers and tears. And Zhang Yunqi, during his youth when he worked hard to make money, studied well, chatted and made Chu Jian laugh, welcomed the once-in-four-year World Cup in the United States.

During that period, apart from accompanying Chu Jian, Zhang Yunqi stayed up late to watch football every day. In fact, to be honest, he was at best a pseudo-football fan, and he played football only a few times. I remember the first time I played football, it was in the open field of Yunxi Village. The football was bought by Ji Ling's father. In my memory, Ji Ling always sat on the haystack with his hands on his cheeks. His black and white eyes were big and bright, and his smile was sweet and beautiful. I watched him and a few children in tattered clothes chasing the ball, running around the world on the muddy road under the blue sky and white clouds. There were no rules, no victory or defeat, and they didn't know what tiredness was.

What really made him obsessed with football was when he was in technical secondary school, because technical secondary school had more time than college, so much so that one could sleep for fifteen hours a day and still have a nap. A bachelor without a girlfriend who couldn't have sex was really lonely. If he didn't find a job that could vent his strong energy, he would easily get into a traffic accident. The guys couldn't sleep with a ball, so they had to sleep with a football.

I remember the World Cup in the United States in my previous life. There was only one TV in the entire Xiangnan Technical School to watch the live broadcast. Everyone brought their own mats and laid them on the ground. We reviewed our homework in the first half of the night and watched the games in the second half. As we watched, the sky got brighter. In the early morning, we went back to talk about the mountains with lingering passion, and then went to take the exam. That time period happened to coincide with the final exam. I finished the test paper in a hurry and was too lazy to check it, and then came back to watch the game.

The heroes and passion of that World Cup were later integrated into the blood of youth. Romario's breakthrough, Balakov's midfield conspiracy, Stoichkov's kingly demeanor, Roberto Baggio's most famous penalty miss in football history. The most impressive thing is Maradona, the king of football, who caught the last train of the national team. His two short legs dragged his bloated body. After scoring a goal against the Greek team, he roared at the camera, proving to the world that heroes are not old. Zhang Yunqi remembered that his nerves were cramped with excitement at that time, but like all dramas, things are impermanent. Later, Maradona's urine test was positive and he was directly banned. Argentina without Maradona was not surprisingly eliminated by Romania. At the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles, Maradona witnessed the tragedy and buried his head in his wife Claudia's arms with tears, which was heartbreaking.

What really made Zhang Yunqi a fanatic Yunqi was the Chinese football team that he only wanted to love and laugh at. At that time, the curtain of professionalization of Chinese football had just been opened, the old Jia A generation was still young, and the darkest decade of Chinese football was far from coming. He will never forget that the Chinese football team was invincible in the World Cup qualifiers and entered the World Cup finals for the first time. However, he never thought that the team that lost all three games and conceded 9 goals, which made him, a Chinese Yunqi fan, cheer hysterically, would be the last glory of Chinese football.

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Shortly after the opening of the World Cup in the United States, the rain stopped.

At the end of June, on a rare sunny day, Jiangchuan City Mayor Yang Jiarong visited the Longjingyuan Cannery.

Zhang Yunqi didn't sleep well for several nights to watch the World Cup. Despite his sleepiness, he accompanied his leaders to visit the entire factory, mainly the production workshop, canning workshop, and the new canned products of black bean chili sauce. The scene was not beautiful. All workshops were overloaded. The weather was hot and humid. The fans were completely useless. The black bean chili sauce smelled choking. The workers were all sweating and in a hurry, but they were all working hard.

Yang Jiarong spoke very little, just watched and occasionally talked to the workers, asking about salary conditions and welfare benefits. He also asked Li Jilin, who was in charge of the explanation, about several key data, such as the number of employees on the job, the daily output of canned food, the current monthly sales of canned food, etc. When he heard Li Jilin say that Liansheng's monthly sales had reached 700 million and that the wages owed to employees last year had been settled this month, he nodded.

When the group was leaving, they met a few workers moving cans. Under the scorching sun, they wore cotton work gloves and carried the cans, which were several meters high, into baskets under the sun. Perhaps out of curiosity, a reporter walked over and asked, "Why do you wear such thick gloves to work in such hot weather?"

A worker, whose eyes were almost swollen from sweat, replied: "I can't handle it without gloves. It will burn my skin."

The symposium was held in Lianshengkai.

At the meeting, Zhang Yunqi gave a detailed introduction to Liansheng’s current operating conditions and strategic planning.

Yang Jiarong watched him talking eloquently with a bright look in his eyes, but no one knew what he was thinking. However, from the expression on his face, he approved of this overly mature young man in front of him. It was probably the right decision to hand over the Longjingyuan Cannery, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and more than 200 laid-off workers to him, at least for now.

After Zhang Yunqi finished speaking, Yang Jiarong took a sip of the teacup and said, "Mr. Zhang, the current Longjingyuan Cannery is already a private enterprise, and it is also the first private enterprise in the city to successfully carry out a pilot of property rights reform. It can be said that it has effectively implemented the spirit of the state's "Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Establishment of a Socialist Market Economic System" and the policy of implementing "one guarantee, three in place, and five reforms." I came here today for two purposes. The first is to learn from you, to learn from your good experience, good practices, and good ideas. I think the cannery has been restructured for more than half a year, and the results achieved in restructuring legacy debts, relocating laid-off workers, and marketing are still very significant. As you know, all enterprises in the city are suffering from heavy losses. If the cannery's restructuring model can be promoted, it will also contribute to the majority of workers and ordinary people."

This is a big topic, and it is difficult for Zhang Yunqi to answer it. If we can use the "Longjingyuan property rights reform experience" to revitalize the city's state-owned enterprises, then it is naturally our responsibility.

Nowadays, in vegetable markets across the country, there are laid-off workers who wait every day for the rotten vegetable leaves thrown away by vegetable vendors to be picked up and eaten at home. There will be more in the future.

However, one should only do what one can do. There is no point in doing empty things. He is a capable human being and wants to do something practical for the people in his hometown. However, he is clearly aware that due to the spontaneous and decentralized nature of the restructuring of the property rights system of China's state-owned enterprises, the methods of reform are bound to be varied. Different enterprises prefer different methods of reform. More importantly, the vast majority of enterprises lack uniformity in the goals, principles, procedures and so on of the reform. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to copy the reform model of the Longjingyuan Cannery and promote it on a large scale in the city. It is just a wishful thinking.

Of course, Yang Jiarong has the courage to cross the river by feeling the stones and eat the first crab in the early stage of the property rights reform of state-owned enterprises across the country, so he cannot be too rigid in his words. The property rights reform involves the interest game between relevant enterprise entities such as enterprise operators, employees, creditors and property rights acquirers. There is no effective set of standards, but according to different situations, in the specific reform process, we can grasp the two most prominent constraints, namely the possibility of restructuring legacy debts and relocating laid-off workers, to achieve diversified reform of the property rights of public enterprises.

Thinking of this, Zhang Yunqi said, "Mayor Yang, although the property rights reform of Longjingyuan Cannery has achieved phased results, it may not be realistic to promote this enterprise reform model on a large scale. However, some effective experiences and methods can still be summarized. We will write a report to the government as soon as possible."

Yang Jiarong could tell that Zhang Yunqi had something else in mind, but he couldn't say it out loud because of the situation. This young man was quite thoughtful. He nodded in agreement and said, "Can Liansheng help solve the problem of unemployed workers in the city? This is very important. Now that Longjingyuan Canning Factory is developing so well, we also need to recruit people to expand production."

When Zhang Yunqi heard this, he suddenly realized that Yang Jiarong was creating problems for him under the guise of a visit and inspection.

Whether it was the 70s, or the SOE reforms from the 90s to the early 21st century, during these two peak periods of layoffs, employment and livelihood security were always the most important issues for local governments. However, the requirement to accept laid-off workers was quite embarrassing for enterprises. Of course, it was slander to say that laid-off workers were generally of low quality and lazy. On the contrary, most SOE workers were skilled and had solid business skills, but they were generally older and the cost of training them for re-employment was high. Liansheng was an operating company, mainly marketing personnel, and it was impossible to have assembly line workers. It could only stuff people into the Longjingyuan Cannery, but a broken production line in the Longjingyuan Cannery was already stuffed with more than 24 workers at full capacity 200 hours a day. It was not realistic to recruit more people. However, he could also understand the difficult situation Yang Jiarong was facing. Now the city had a lot of burdens and the finances were not balanced at all. Not to mention rolling up their sleeves and working hard, it was a problem to pay the cadres. Otherwise, how could Yang Jiarong see that Longjingyuan had improved and immediately went to him to negotiate business for the laid-off workers.

Zhang Yunqi said: "Mayor Yang, Longjingyuan does need to recruit people to expand its production scale, but the current production line is outdated and needs to be updated. If we introduce two advanced production lines, we can accept at least 300 employees who have passed the interview. However, even if the production lines are introduced, the current factory area cannot accommodate so many people, so I plan to build a production and processing base in Yunxi Village. The joint-stock cooperative project we are doing in Yunxi Village is our raw material supply site, and we can transport the raw materials to the production base for processing and production as soon as possible. As for the current Longjingyuan canning factory, it will be renovated as the headquarters of Liansheng."

Zhang Yunqi continued, "But Liansheng also has difficulties. Although our monthly sales are more than 700 million, the production line is too backward and the loss is not small. The net profit of each can is about 20%. In the past six months, the total profit is only more than 600 million, and the majority of the profit has been invested in the purchase of raw materials and advertising and marketing to build distribution channels. The large amount of historical debts left over from Longjingyuan also need to be repaid, especially the suppliers and the wages and resettlement fees owed to employees. They can't be delayed. In this way, it is a bit difficult to introduce a production line and build a production and processing base."

"If you can't introduce advanced production lines, you can't accept laid-off workers, right?" Yang Jiarong knew that the guy in front of him was a person who wouldn't do anything until he saw the rabbit. After saying so many things, he wanted to express only one meaning: he could accept people, but introducing production lines would cost money, and building production bases to expand production would still cost money.

Yang Jiarong knocked on the table: "If I ask the bank to give you a loan, what are you going to do?"

Zhang Yunqi knew that if he spoke too much in such an occasion, he would easily suffer. He said sincerely: "Mayor Yang, let me give you an example. Let me talk about the situation of Yunxi Village's joint-stock crop professional cooperative this year. At the beginning of this spring, Yunxi Village's joint-stock cooperative, under the leadership of Liansheng, piloted the crop planting base + farmer scattered planting model. I will not talk about the situation of the crop planting base first, but the economic benefits of the farmer scattered planting model. The cooperative has a total of 63 members. Without destroying tobacco fields and paddy fields, it uses dry land, irrigated land, and awn fields, which have lower economic returns. On average, soybean yields range from 300 to 400 jin per mu. Taking the middle value of 350 mu, Longjingyuan buys soybeans at the market price of 1.2 yuan per jin, and the income per mu is 420 yuan. Each person in Yunxi Village has 8.5 mu of land, so a family of three has 2.55 mu of land, and the extra income per year is 1071 yuan. Of course, this is just a conservative calculation. In fact, each member of the Yunxi Village joint-stock cooperative has an average of five or six people. In addition to the reclaimed land on the mountain of the village group, each member has far more than 2.55 mu of land, and the annual income of each household will not be less than 1500 yuan. "

Zhang Yunqi added: "If the two production lines are in place and the processing base is successfully built this year, the monthly sales target of Longjingyuan Cannery next year will not be less than 2 million. It is expected to purchase no less than 1.5 million glass cans from the glass factory and no less than 700 million cartons from the carton factory, requiring no less than 1100 tons of peppers and 1600 tons of soybeans. If the soybeans alone are all supplied by the cooperative, it can benefit no less than 1000 farmers, and each farmer will have an additional annual income of no less than 1000 yuan, solving the employment problems of thousands of employees and helping nearly farmers to solve their food and clothing problems and get rid of poverty and become rich. Mayor Yang, this is what Liansheng wants to do and will do next."

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Pls. I am afraid that some book friends will suddenly come out and criticize me for writing nonsense data and prices. In fact, I spent a lot of energy and time to check these data. For example, soybeans. Some readers may question how it is possible that soybeans in 94 cost 1.2 yuan per catty? So expensive? At that time, a box lunch was only 2 or 3 yuan, right? In fact, I wrote this after consulting a lot of information and taking the middle value. The price of agricultural products in my country has been relatively stable and has not risen much. In 94, soybeans cost 1.2 yuan per catty. In 2020, it is only more than 3 yuan. The reasons are very complicated, but it can be summed up in one sentence, and it is also a particularly cruel sentence: low grain prices hurt farmers, and high grain prices hurt people.

(End of this chapter)