In ordinary people’s eyes, the trip to foreign countries may mean romance and poetic scenery. However, for Cui Genliang---Chairman of the Board of Hengtong Group, the trip to South Africa in April is merely one of his numerous trips. The partners all know that Hengtong is a state-level high-tech enterprise group in China devoted to communications and electrical power undertakings. But they rarely know how it grew from a shabby township-owned factory to an internationally renowned group.
Now, let’s see how Mr.Cui raised his child-Hengtong Group and see how he influenced the next generation of Hengtong’s leadership.
“Innovation is key to the survival of an enterprise”
Optical fibre perform is the highest technological products in the Industry Chain of Optical Telecommunication. It occupies nearly 70% of the whole profits in the chain. As an entrepreneur, Cui Gengliang knows well that the blue sea of any industry is in the hand of enterprises that take lead in technology. If Chinese enterprises cannot achieve independent production, they will never succeed.
The research and development of optical fibre perform took over 1000 days of more than 200 Hengtong’s researchers. Moreover, Mr. Cui even gambled 600 million RMB for it. After times of failures and Mr. Cui’s encouragement, the first optical fibre perform was eventually developed on 7thAugust 2010, ending the situation where several foreign companies monopolize the market.
Mr. Cui often tells his staff: “innovation is key to the survival of an enterprise”. The creation of optical fibre perform is just a starting point. After that, Hengtong successfully has developed a bunch of high-end products and also undertaken more than 150 projects in different fields.
“Talents means everything to an enterprise”
6 years ago, Hengtong is still an immature enterprise that is far from being industrialized. Some international competitors of it took that chance and tried many ways to get it out of the market
However, Mr.Cui, with his insight strategy——independent product and technology innovation, Hengtong succeeded in lowering the price of optical fibre perform from 1200RMB/km 15 years ago to today’s 50RMB/km, which is beneficial to both the people and enterprises in China. Now, it has become one of the leading companies in the optical telecommunication industry.
In Mr. Cui’s mind, “Motivated and upright talents is key to an enterprise”. The competition among enterprises is in essence the competition among talents. So, Mr. Cui made it a rule that the standard of promoting a staff is determined by his/her morality and intelligence. Now, many staffs among the leadership are right appreciated and promoted by Mr. Cui.
At the key point of developing the optical fibre perform, someone recommended Wu Chong yang, the then chief engineer of Houma Cable factory affiliated to the State Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, to Mr.Cui. He recognized that Mr. Wu was the right person for Hengtong at once. So, Cui Genliang rushed to Mr. Wu’s hometown to invite him. After times of sincere persuasion, Mr. Wu finally accepted the invitation.
Go out along “One Belt, One Road”
In the exhibition hall of Hengtong’s headquarter building, there are footprints of Hengtong’s business. It has now set up several manufacturing bases in South America as well as many branches in over 30 countries and areas. Moreover, Hengtong’s products have already covered more than 100 countries and areas.
Early in 2000, when Hengtog set up its international business department, it was only an optical cable manufacturer. Nevertheless, Cui Genliang started to export the products to the overseas market after several times of cooperate with foreign enterprises. The path to internationalization was tough than he had imagined. At first, Hengtong exported the products by cooperation with some import & export enterprises, but lacked initiative, and the results were not so satisfying. Therefore, Mr. Cui decided to change the strategy to find clients directly in the overseas market. “In the process, we encountered fierce competition from local companies’ trade barriers and even sanction, but we made it.”Mr. Cui recalled.
The proposal of “One Belt, One Road” strategy in 2013 has brought a favorable new chance for Hengtong’s internationalization as well as for the whole optical communication industry. In Hengtong’s further plan of internationalization, Mr. Cui puts forwards “Three 50%”strategy——more than 50% export products, more than 50% foreign capital, more than 50% internationalized talents, which is proceeded on schedule.
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