Thirty Years of Turbulence - Chinese Enterprises

作者：admin  点击次数：34  发布时间：2025-12-22

Zhang Ruimin's first decision after taking office was to withdraw from the washing machine market and instead produce refrigerators. He reported in early December, and the brand of the factory was changed to 'Qingdao Refrigerator General Factory' that month. When he was the deputy manager of a home appliance company, he was sent to Germany for inspection. A local refrigerator company, Liebherr, had expressed interest in exporting manufacturing technology and equipment contracts to China. Zhang Ruimin seized this opportunity and repeatedly requested from the light industry departments in Qingdao and Beijing, finally being allowed to introduce Liebherr's technology and becoming the last designated production plant determined by the light industry department. The significance of the decision to switch production and introduce technology for this insolvent small factory will soon be revealed. It has been renamed repeatedly and finally named "Haier", and traces of its evolution can be found here.

The charm of Zhang Ruimin as a great entrepreneur will be unleashed in the next year. One day, a friend went to Zhang Ruimin's place to buy a refrigerator, but found that many of them had various problems. After her friend left, Zhang Ruimin checked all over 400 refrigerators in the warehouse and found that 76 of them had varying degrees of problems.