Both Mr. Dong and Meng Fanze chose to remain silent about Feng Xiaochen's prediction. Their generation knew the most about how lacking China is. Before the reform and opening up, whenever the country expressed its determination for something, it often added a sentence "It is better to tighten the belt", which means that the country's funds are saved from eating, and investment means hunger for several days. Since the reform and opening up, there have been few words about tightening the belt, but various places are also full of blood and tears in the process of attracting investment. The slogan "Whoever can't get along with investors will not be able to get along with whom" is not just casual. Investors are the absolute masters in the minds of governments at all levels. After all, isn't it because of insufficient funds?

But this situation is also changing quietly. After 20 years of reform and opening up, private capital has gradually formed, and the country's fiscal situation has improved greatly compared to the past. The problem of capital shortage is no longer as serious as in the past. The two old people are both people who can participate in high-level decision-making, and of course they have some understanding of these macroeconomic changes. In addition, Feng Xiaochen has repeatedly made some accurate predictions in the past, so this time, the two old people have nothing to say.

Feng Xiaochen knew from the silence of the old people that the other party had accepted his point of view, so he continued: "What I just talked about was the capital issue, and the second problem was technology, which is the strength of our equipment industry company. We have introduced technology from Western countries. After years of digestion, absorption and innovation, we have made great progress in metallurgical equipment, power equipment, mining machinery, chemical equipment, etc. Our technical level is still a little different from that of Western countries, but for developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, such technology is enough. Not to mention that we can't take out the higher-end technology, even if we can't take out, they can't use it."

"So your next plan is to export the technology you master to Africa?" Meng Fanze asked.

Feng Xiaochen smiled slightly and said, "Actually, even the technologies we have mastered now have some of them exceed the needs of African countries. For example, the supercritical 600,000 kilowatt thermal power unit technology that Longjiang Motor Factory just mastered has the advantages of energy saving and emission reduction, and is a high-clean thermal power unit. This unit can adapt to my country's environmental protection requirements. The State Planning Commission requires that new power plants in various places must adopt this unit. However, many African countries have low economic development levels and are not as high as ours, so they cannot use this latest technology unit. Instead, our previous generation of thermal power equipment is more popular with them."

Mr. Dong frowned and said, "The industry is underdeveloped now and the pressure of environmental protection is low. But when their industry develops in the future, will they also face environmental protection problems? Our environmental pollution problems have become more and more serious in recent years. Some experts are criticizing the so-called concept of 'pollution first and then treatment'. Africa's development lags behind us. Should we also remind them to avoid following such an old path?"

"I'm afraid this can't be avoided, right?" Feng Xiaochen said.

"Why can't you get around it?" asked Mr. Dong.

Feng Xiaochen said: "The equipment cost of a previous generation of 300,000 kilowatt units is only 50 million US dollars. If it is replaced with our latest high-cleaning unit, the cost will be increased by 60%, reaching 80 million US dollars. For users, they get only one unit. If there is no environmental pressure, why should they buy more expensive units?"

"How come your new unit is so much less costly?" asked Mr. Dong.

Meng Fanze laughed and said, "Old Dong, you were deceived by this Xiao Feng. I heard that in order to sell the previous generation of units to Africa, they deliberately adjusted the price system, lowered the price of the previous generation of units, and increased the price of the new unit, with the purpose of making African countries willing to choose the old model of units."

"You can't say that." Feng Xiaochen said embarrassedly, "The units we export to Africa are some of the equipment that are used by power plants, so the price is relatively cheap. In fact, compared with Western manufacturers, we are already very kind, which is mainly because of the payment ability of African countries, so it is inconvenient to export too expensive equipment to them."

"So that's how it is." Mr. Dong understood that in recent years, the country has begun to pay attention to environmental protection and put forward very strict environmental protection requirements for domestic thermal power plants. Some old equipment in some power plants cannot meet this requirement and can only be scrapped in advance. But it is said that it is scrapped, but the equipment itself is still usable, and there is no quality problem. Everyone is used to hard life, so who is willing to send 60 to 70% of the new equipment back to the furnace?

Therefore, a specialized business emerged, that is, after appropriate renovation and repair, it was sold to countries with relatively backward economic development such as South Asia and Africa. Like China in the early 1980s, these countries were short of money and survival were the most important thing. How could they have the leisure to pay attention to environmental protection? These old equipment that is not very environmentally friendly is just right to take over.

Of course, when Chinese companies sell these equipment, they also make it clear to customers. Customers fully know that these equipment is second-hand goods. They only want to be cheap, so there is no fraud. In contrast, some Western countries directly sell second-hand goods to African countries as first-hand goods, and the price is several percent higher than first-hand goods. This is completely domineering.

"Now we can see the significance of introducing foreign technology back then." Meng Fanze said with emotion, "India was about the same level of economic development as ours. At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, India's industrial foundation was even better than us. But now they can only buy the second-hand rolling production lines we eliminated, and we use the latest domestic technology production lines."

"The cost of our domestic equipment is not much different from the quotation of second-hand equipment sold to India. Some companies almost use the money they earn from eliminating second-hand equipment and buy new complete sets of equipment." Feng Xiaochen reported happily.

Mr. Dong and Meng Fanze are both happy about this kind of thing, so they will not say any sympathy. At the time, China's technology was backward and buying equipment from Western countries was not the same? I remember that the Nanjiang Steel Plant planned to introduce a hot-rolled production line from Japan. The Japanese were tampering with the equipment list and even flush toilets were counted in the equipment. Such humiliation will be remembered for the rest of their lives.

"Tell me about your third item, talent." Mr. Dong took the initiative to switch the topic. He had already understood the matter of technical assistance, and there was no need for Feng Xiaochen to explain it again. In fact, the cooperation between the Equipment Industry Company and the Ministry of Industry of Cabe is a successful example of technical assistance to Africa. Mr. Dong has read the relevant reports in the past.

Feng Xiaochen nodded and said, "Talent may be the biggest obstacle to the development of African countries. The average education level of Africans is very low, and the illiteracy rate in many countries is as high as more than 50%. Even for the literate population, their cultural level is incomparable to junior high school students in our country."

"I have heard of this situation." Meng Fanze added, "Our country's standards for getting rid of blindness are very high. The requirement for rural residents is to recognize 1,500 Chinese characters, and the requirement for urban residents is to recognize 2,000 Chinese characters, which can basically meet the reading and writing requirements. The standard of some countries is that as long as they can write their own names, they are not illiterate, so even those countries have difficulty reading a newspaper even if they have a literate population."

"That's true," said Feng Xiaochen. "Because of the low level of education, many African countries have low quality, do not understand management, and do not care about economic and trade cooperation rules. When dealing with Western countries in the past, they were often deceived by the other party on some common sense issues, and even suffered losses but did not know."

Mr. Dong smiled faintly and said, "This is not just an education issue, but also a horizon problem, right? We have suffered such losses in the past."

"But we learned the market rules very quickly." Feng Xiaochen retorted.

Mr. Dong smiled: "You are right, are you not afraid of losing, what you are afraid of is that you still cannot learn experience after suffering losses. In the past few years, we have paid a lot of tuition fees, but we have also learned some knowledge. This time China participated in the WTO negotiations, and the negotiators in the foreign trade department seemed very experienced and much better than our generation."

"That's because there is an old coach like you who is here to serve as the magic needle for the sea." Feng Xiaochen quickly flattered. Compared with Mr. Dong and others, Feng Xiaochen's generation has far exceeded his cultural level and understanding of international rules. But this is not because Mr. Dong and others are not as smart as the younger generation, it is just the limitation of the times. As the older generation, more appreciation and support for the new generation, while the new generation should have awe of the older generation and should not be disrespectful at any time.

Mr. Dong waved his hand, which was considered to have accepted Feng Xiaochen's compliment. Feng Xiaochen continued: "Most officials in African countries are educated in the West, and Western countries instilled a colonialist concept in them, which makes them instinctively think that this is a natural thing and lack the awareness of fighting against Western countries when facing exploitation of Western countries."

"So, are you going to teach them to resist exploitation?" Meng Fanze teased with a smile.

Feng Xiaochen said: "This is not. I just think that I can share with them the eight words of China's development experience, the focus is on independence and self-reliance. If they can master the essence of these eight words, they can stand firm in international cooperation and not be at the mercy of others."
Chapter completed!