The Grandmother in the Siheyuan

Chapter 526 Take it Down

“Your Baosteel is rich, but Shougang is not. We should naturally get involved in such a good thing. I propose that we split the cost equally.”

Finally, the secretary-general said with a smile, "It's not much money in total, so you don't need to fight over it. I'll reimburse you all. If you big bosses are happy and think I did a great job, please give me a few extra cents."

No one knows what happened to the Secretary-General, but less than a week later, the Daily Mail and Fox News in the United States broke the news.

This was a huge scandal. When it was first reported, it caused a huge uproar. After a day of silence, the executives of several major steel companies in Japan pulled the entire management team out to bow and apologize.

If someone else had reported this, they would have just bowed and let it go, but since their godfather exposed it, it's not so easy to let it go.

I don't know how the Secretary-General arranged it, but the American newspapers started publishing long articles, bringing up the projects that major domestic military industrial enterprises had abandoned.

Those reporters used all sorts of methods, including using vague language, with one goal in mind: to pin the blame for the cancellation of these military industrial projects entirely on Kotoyo Steel.

Even if steel only accounts for 5% of the total steel usage in this project, the fact that it was used means that the project is unqualified because the quality of your steel is substandard.

When the bigwigs behind the military industry saw that there was something to gain from this, they immediately joined in and fueled the fire, aiming to make the matter seem convincing and see if they could extract some compensation from Japan.

The steel company in Xiaodongyang is in a terrible mess. They were the ones who spread most of the rumors in the first place, but now they don't have time to spread rumors anymore. They need to quickly refute the rumors about themselves.

Some so-called authoritative institutions conducted third-party testing on all the steel on the market, and the results were surprising. Our steel fully met the technical standards, and there was no such thing as being substandard as rumored.

This wave of reverse evidence proved very favorable, and domestic steel companies received a large number of orders, making the managers extremely happy.

The secretary-general is an extremely busy person. He handled this matter brilliantly. Although it didn't cost much money, the benefits he received from the major steel companies were countless.

Now he's even busier, leading a negotiation team to negotiate with BHP Billiton and Vale, because the demand for iron ore is expected to increase significantly in the next few years, and a good price needs to be negotiated.

In particular, Liu Hua's steel plant uses more than one-third of all the iron ore produced by the company. Both BHP Billiton and Vale are trying their best to secure such a large order.

Unfortunately, they didn't understand the concept of "two peaches killing three warriors," and in the end, we were the ones who benefited.

Everything in the country is booming, and Liu Hua's industry is also thriving. In the past two years, the sales volume of carbon fiber has increased significantly.

Besides being used in various high-end industries, carbon fiber is also used in luxury goods, such as sports cars.

Our country's economy is developing rapidly, which has made our people richer. With more money, all kinds of luxury goods have become available.

A few years ago, it was rare to see a sports car on the street, but now you can often hear that roaring sound on the main roads of Beijing.

Sitting in his Hongqi car, Liu Hua smiled and said to the driver, "Now I'm rich. Three Ferraris have passed by in just a short while."

The driver laughed and said, "It's not just the number of luxury sports cars that has increased, but the number of ordinary cars has also increased. This shows that ordinary people are really rich." Liu Hua's job wasn't something he hired himself; I was assigned by the relevant department, so I spoke with a certain political correctness.

"It's good to be rich. I've worked hard most of my life. Isn't it all for the sake of living a wealthy life?"

"Professor Liu, I heard that there are still people organizing something called a sports car club. It's just a bunch of rich kids who bought sports cars and get together to mess around."

Liu Hua nodded: "As long as you abide by the law, it's not a bad thing."

"Your two children are quite good," the driver said with a smile. "Although Qiaotong is from a wealthy family, she is never bossy. Guodong is more like a researcher than you, always engrossed in research. I haven't met him much, but I feel that he doesn't seem to have very high demands for material life."

“When Guodong was born, our family was just an ordinary family, a dual-income family. Although we were a little better off, we were no different from ordinary families, and we couldn’t afford to raise him to have those extravagant and decadent habits.”

“That’s not right,” the driver said with a smile. “I talked to Guodong about his childhood. He said he always had snacks when he was a kid. While other kids were still worrying about getting meat, he was already chewing on beef jerky.”

"Those were all sent from steel mills all over the country," Liu Hua said with a smile. "Besides, eating beef jerky won't necessarily lead to any bad habits."

The driver, who was focused on driving, suddenly said, "There are more cars on the road, but I think there's something not so good about it."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Most of the cars are Japanese and South Korean, some are American, and the rest are joint venture cars." The driver shook his head: "It would be great if our purely domestically produced cars could be widely available."

"That day will come, it won't be too far off." Liu Hua nodded: "We are currently building a complete supply chain. Once the supply chain is integrated, the price of cars in China will drop significantly. At that time, you can buy a decent car for less than 100,000 yuan, and people will naturally choose our purely domestically produced cars."

“That’s great! I’ve saved up some money, and I’ll buy one when domestically produced cars become cheaper.”

Liu Hua waved his hand and said, "Just tell me what kind of car you want, and I'll reimburse you."

"No need, I can earn my own money. I can't use your money, otherwise I won't feel secure running the business."

Liu Hua smiled and shook his head: "We're being too formal. You've been my driver for over five years. You're a trusted confidant. How big of a problem would it be to reimburse you for a car?"

"It's a matter of principle." The driver smiled. "However, I still want to thank you. I get double the salary for driving you."

"Then I'm entrusting my safety entirely to you." Liu Hua waved his hand: "Don't say such formal things."

However, the driver's words did remind Liu Hua that it was time to bring down the prices of domestically produced cars.

Back at the company, Liu Hua didn't go to the laboratory. Instead, he first looked through Taiyi Heavy Industry's reports and tried to think of a way to lower the price of the engine.

(End of this chapter)