As our van slithered up the road snaking through Mogan Mountain’s bamboo forests in 1994, I could see why the enchanting scenery and cool climate of this “Little Switzerland” lured nineteenth century Chinese and foreigners seeking respite from the sweltering summers of Hangzhou and Shanghai. Chinese elites, as well as Western missionaries, businessmen and diplomats, built houses, villas, churches and public buildings, and over 100 villas remain to this day, including one in which Chiang Kai-shek spent part of his honeymoon.

Yet in spite of Mogan’s beauty, its prized bamboo forests and treasured high mountain tea, most locals remained mired in poverty back then, so I was delighted to learn during my 2019 exploration of China that even Mogan Mountain folks were finally enjoying the Chinese Dream thanks to visionary entrepreneurs like Tang Hairong, alumnus of Xiamen University (XMU).

Mr. Tang grew up on a poor farm but his childhood was enriched by a passion for books. His love of learning reminded me of ancient tales of youths who, too poor for candles, read books by moonlight reflected from snow or by the glow from lanterns of fireflies. The farm boy’s love of learning paid off because as soon as college entrance exams resumed after the Cultural Revolution, he tested into the Shanghai Institute of Building Materials (now merged with Shanghai Tongji University). He graduated in 1984 and worked several years in provincial government agencies before seizing the opportunities of reform and opening up by investing in business and establishing the Zhejiang Jinyan Technology Co. Ltd., for which he is chairman of the board.

Mr. Tang’s passion for learning has yet to subside. He believes that knowledge is key to changing fate and achieving one’s dream, so he took EMBA programs at XMU and Fudan University. Over the years he has not only excelled in business but also obtained a technology patent that he industrialized and which now accounts for most of the company’s profits.

Although Mr. Tang epitomizes New China’s self-made entrepreneurs, he is quick to admit that he owes much of his success to China’s 40 years of reform and opening up.

Mr. Tang grinned as he said, “Those of us in our 60s experienced firsthand China’s transition from a planned economy to a market economy. This is what let China leapfrog development. And my generation was lucky. Those just a few years older than us never had the chance to enter university, but we did, and we got good jobs after graduation. You yourself witnessed China’s very rapid development in the 80s, Professor Pan (Fig. 1.1).”

Fig. 1.1
A photograph displays professor William Brown interviewing Tang Hailong with people in the background.

Photo by Zhu Qingfu

Prof. William Brown interviewing entrepreneur Tang Hailong in Hangzhou, Zhejiang on July 4, 2019.

Full size image

“Where do you live now?” I asked.

“I have a factory in Deqing County, 50 or 60 km from Hangzhou. It has very beautiful scenery, and many Europeans are familiar with Mogan Mountain. On weekends, many city people go there, and you see more foreigners than locals — especially Europeans. There are so many bed & breakfasts (B&Bs) there now. It was not at all like this when I was young, but now the entire country likes to stay there. There are many Europeans, South Africans, etc. and many have opened what we call yangjiale — our term for foreign B&Bs. Europeans come, buy a small plot of land, and open a small hotel with a dozen rooms. When locals open this kind of small hotel, we call it a nongjiale — Rural B&Bs. We have many of these, and they are very nice thanks to our superior location so close to Hangzhou and Shanghai.”

“But what about your own story?” I asked. “Your own Chinese Dream?”

“My story? It would have two parts,” he said. “One is a dream — the Chinese Dream. And the other is innovation. I was a poor farm boy and became very independent at age 11 because my parents were sick, which forced me to do everything from cooking to washing clothes.”

“Do you have a sister?” I asked.

“I have two elder brothers, one seven years older than me and one nine years older. But my parents have always been sick, and we were so poor that my brothers left home early to seek work, leaving me alone to care for my parents. The state subsidized my studies, but I had to work hard in the summer and winter vacations to earn my tuition and pocket money, but I worked hard to make it through junior high school to high school because we all shared a dream.”

“What dream was that?” I asked.

“Being able to read books was a dream! Most people were illiterate in the old days. Then I went to high school, and I was laboring the very day I got the university acceptance letter. I was so shocked when the postman handed me the letter that I leaped up — and fell heavily! After university, I returned to Hangzhou because of my good grades, and then I studied in Shanghai’s Tongji University, which was then called Shanghai College. XMU has always been independent, with few schools integrated into it. But Tongji University was later merged with many schools. After college, I was assigned to work in a government agency where the conditions were not good at first. As our planned economy underwent a social and economic transformation to a market economy, everything was allocated and ration coupons were required to buy anything.”

“I remember that,” I said. “It was confusing to me to have to use flour, vegetable and meat ration coupons even at the university cafeteria.”

“But people’s thinking changed after we entered the market economy,” Mr. Tang said. “As the conditions improved, those of us with even some education, knowledge and enterprising spirit saw that we could strike gold everywhere!”

“Yes, others have likened it to the California Gold Rush,” I said.

Mr. Tang nodded in agreement. “When you first arrived in China, the country was still very poor and not developed at all. But anyone with a little knowledge, willingness to work, and readiness to take a risk was certain to succeed — capable and innovative people like me!”.

“While working in the early 1990s in the building materials department, I was responsible for many industrial projects, and I developed a patent myself. At that time there were still very few college students. We had more than 200,000 candidates but only just over 10,000 college students. Only a few people from an entire township or county would take the college entrance exams — compared with thousands nowadays. The opportunity to study was rare but priceless if we could apply the knowledge after graduation. Even with a very backward situation, we knew that if we had a little knowledge and studied harder, things would improve.”

It was perfect timing for Mr. Tang. “It takes a big investment nowadays to create innovative technology,” he said. “But at that time everything was so outdated, and society needed such change that all we had to do was go abroad, visit our professional counterparts, and get ideas for adapting new technologies. But today it is different.”

“Yesterday, and last month as well, I talked about Ren Zhengfei’s example because Americans are trying to suppress others. But it doesn’t matter. In our new era of sharing, technology is borderless. For example, some companies may create a new tech but they may license it to other companies to produce it, and they may also produce the other company’s patented tech as well. Both companies benefit and even the patent fees can be offset. You give me your products, and I give you mine. But in today’s world, many people ignore the spirit of cooperation.”

“China is developing fast but it is no threat to the world. China’s development has made many achievements — our convenient travel by high-speed rail, for example. Many people think our bullet trains are Siemens but they are actually based on Japanese technology that Chinese evolved to far surpass that of other countries. This is not stealing technology. At first, we simply cooperated, but other countries’ technology was stuck in the 1980s, so we Chinese innovated and developed even better technology.”

“I’ve seen this myself,” I said. “Chinese used to send engineering students abroad, but today the world is sending its engineering students to China.”

“Yes, many Westerners mistakenly think Chinese are not innovative, but that’s not true,” said Mr. Tang.

I thought of Joe Biden, who in 2014 said that the US was innovative but China had not developed “one innovative project, one innovative change, one innovative product,Footnote 1” and even in 2019 he said that China was no competition for the US.

“China has developed very fast,” Mr. Tang said. “My classmates and friends who settled in the US returned home after two or three years and were astonished. The speed of China’s development was unimaginable for them, and some of them now regret emigrating. They were all top talents with deep academic foundations, and they settled abroad because they thought China was so backward and foreign countries were so good. But later, after seeing how so many people created great wealth during China’s rapid development, they regret squandering such a great opportunity.”

“You certainly seized the opportunities,” I said. “Even with your childhood poverty, and having to care alone for two sick parents, you worked hard anyway to change your destiny and enter college. What motivated you?”

Mr. Tang smiled. “We have an old saying, Carp Leaps the Dragon Gate (鲤鱼跃龙门).”

“Yes, in the old days, those who passed the difficult imperial exam were said to be like the carp that leaped the dragon gate on a legendary mountaintop above a waterfall. I suppose your generation did that.”

“Life was difficult in my youth,” Mr. Tang said. “But if you have hope, you redouble your efforts. Today’s children are very happy, and many don’t care to hear stories about the old days that are so different from now. When college entrance exams resumed at the end of the Cultural Revolution, college became our only way out. And it is very equitable to this day, even though it is exam-oriented, because it is the only hope for children from poor families. In high school, I lived on campus and lights were turned off at night, so we read with flashlights. But though we were poor, we knew we could change our thinking. There is an old Chinese saying that the poor are always thinking about change.”

“You were obviously very motivated,” I said. “But so were many others, yet they failed the entrance exam. What set you apart from others?”

Mr. Tang didn’t get my point because he replied, “Unlike today, with its abundant educational resources, there were few resources back then. Many people were poor, but if you worked hard and paid the price, you would be rewarded.”

I pressed on, determined to find out what really made him tick. I said, “My point is that your conditions were even worse than other people’s. You were not only poor but your parents were both sick — how did you stick with it?”

“After high school, we had to decide on either furthering study in a college or in a technical secondary school,” Mr. Tang said. “Technical school was easier to get into, and for those of us able to test into college, going to a technical school would have been easier. But many of my teachers thought that if I worked hard, I could take the college entrance exam, and only the top students entered university. My Deqing No. 2 Middle School had only 16 students reach the cut-off score.”

Now I was getting somewhere. So many others I’d met, such as Professor Hu Min, CEO of New Channel, had told me that the turning point in their life was a teacher’s influence or intervention. “Even though your family was poor, your parents sick, and college entrance exams were hard, you pressed ahead because many of your teachers believed in you. This I can understand. But what makes you continue to excel to this very day?”

Mr. Tang was silent. It occurred to me that he had probably never thought about why he stood out from the herd. “Well, it must have been because of my own efforts. Suffering mountain children’s only hope to change their fate was the college entrance examination. As I’ve told my daughter, knowledge can change destiny. Knowledge widens your horizon. It’s the same with technology. If you have a keen mind and a level of knowledge, you will certainly master something new. But practice is very important — especially now with China’s rapid development. In the future, China will have even stronger capabilities in technology and innovation. As I go forward, I’ll discover my shortcomings and improve myself. Innovation in China is everywhere, and development involves all aspects. As long as you keep learning and growing, you will discover new shortcomings — and you must keep correcting them. If you see your own shortcomings, you will correct them. Many innovations were not conjured out of thin air. When China was poor and had nothing, we had to create from nothing. But today it takes practice to see deficiencies up front, and as knowledge grows, we improve upon our creations.”

“This is the case in China, and perhaps Japan as well. The US may have more people doing scientific research and innovation than us, and its innovation foundation is very strong, but China is innovating through practice in many areas, and I think this is very good. If the world remains peaceful over the next two or three decades, in the next 20 or 30 years, China’s development prospects are boundless.”

“What do you think have been the greatest changes in your company and China over the past 25 years?” I asked.

“I started my business from scratch in 1994, exactly 25 years ago,” Mr. Tang said. “I started with RMB300,000 but I could not sell my patented technology. I thought it was very good but the companies I visited paid no attention to me. I had to wait for a research and development organization to appear before my innovations could be transformed into industrial products. It was very difficult to promote and industrialize my patented technology. I tried for half a year but no one accepted it. I was loath to give up what I’d worked so hard for, so I resigned from the agency, which was a very good job with good conditions and an apartment given to me, and started my own business. Then I hit on the idea of telling chemical companies that they could use my patent for free but they had to purchase their materials from me. Sales of these small materials generated tens of millions in annual sales, and with excellent technology, profits doubled. I promoted my technology in this way until I eventually had 100 percent of the entire national market for cities.”

“It was very good technology but by 2008 my industry had peaked and it was no longer the latest technology. Sooner or later, new technology would replace mine, so since 2008, my main focus has not been on my production and products but diversifying in finance and banks. But now my 15-year patent has expired, so since last year, I have been thinking about withdrawing entirely from the market and how to smoothly turn the factory over as a base for my children who are doing cross-border e-commerce work—and then I will retire!”

As Mr. Tang’s factory is being rebuilt, he is expanding into foreign trade—and he feels he is luckier than the students who later went abroad. “Our generation was lucky to experience China’s great reform and opening up. Students who went abroad did not get to witness the huge changes. My experience is much richer than theirs, and my life has been more colorful. Premier Li Keqiang called for ‘mass entrepreneurship and innovation,’ but in fact China has been innovating ever since reform and opening up began. We work hard but we are low key — this is the style of Zhejiang businesspeople. And Western countries now feel threatened by China’s rapid development.”

“But China’s development is not a threat to the world,” I said.

“China has never initiated a war overseas,” Mr. Tang said. “The Chinese love harmony and peace. For example, in China, we are never afraid to walk about at night, but many countries cannot understand this. The West does not understand China, there are many misunderstandings. Professor Pan, you have felt the peace in China.”

“Yes, I have, but people in other countries are not so peace-loving, and they fear China because they think Chinese are the same as they are.”

“Many people have different perspectives,” Mr. Tang said. “They have not witnessed how China has developed. In fact, China is a very peaceful country, and it has had more development opportunities and faster innovation than any other country. But for the sake of peace, globalization and sharing, we are now hiding ourselves. We do not show our edge — people such as Ren Zhengfei, who we call a ‘spare tire.’ Some time ago, I saw our COMAC C919 take off. Many people say that the future of aviation will be ABC, which means Boeing, Airbus and China. In my opinion, China’s development has no hidden agenda. We have only one purpose, which is to do our own thing, devoting our efforts to innovation and enjoying the fruits of development.”

I appreciated Mr. Tang’s frank comments on China’s relationship with the rest of the world. I hope that China will continue to “do its own thing” — and, through the Belt and Road Initiative, continue to help empower other developing nations to do the same.