Chapter 160: The Motorola R&D Team

Fangfang still retained that personality of not wanting to worry others.

Especially regarding Wang Xiaoli. In her own words: "You are already Xiao Jin's person, and the two of you talk on the phone so frequently every day. If I tell you everything, wouldn't you end up telling Xiao Jin about it all?"

Therefore, seeing Wang Xiaoli approaching, she hurriedly used her sleeve to cover the wound on her arm.

"I'm fine. I just accidentally scratched it on something."

"It definitely wasn't."

Wang Xiaoli pulled back her sleeve, looked at it for a moment, and said, "Was it beaten by your aunt?"

"No, I told you I just accidentally scratched it."

"I'm not talking about this anymore, I still have work to do."

Chai Fang avoided Wang Xiaoli and hurried over to the desk.

Wang Xiaoli still wanted to ask, but ultimately swallowed the words.

Out of pure heartache for Chai Fang, she walked over to the side to get some medicine.

Guo Rufeng's family had placed immense pressure on Chai Fang.

Chai Jin completely ignored Guo Rufeng, maintaining an attitude so unyielding that there was not even a sliver of room for compromise.

As for Chai Mingguo, there was no need to mention him; he treated her no differently than an enemy.

Although Chai Shanshan was young, she had been only a toddler when Guo Rufeng left their family.

She had not the slightest impression of this mother, and coupled with her father's attitude, naturally she would not bother with Guo Rufeng either.

Thus, the kind-hearted Chai Fang was Guo Rufeng's only breakthrough point.

Consequently, over the past few months, Guo Rufeng had resorted to physical violence against Chai Fang on several occasions, yet Chai Fang had never told anyone about it.

She was simply afraid that her father and younger brother would blow the matter completely out of proportion.

This was her greatest strength, and also her greatest weakness.

Only Wang Xiaoli knew the suppressed pain in her heart, and several times she had wanted to tell Chai Jin, but managed to hold herself back.

In the end, neither of them spoke another word.

...

Meanwhile, on Chai Jin's side.

He carefully read through the article once more.

After all, this was no longer the 1980s of the planned economy where one could turn back the clock at will.

The term "profiteering and speculation," which carried such a strong flavor of that era, looked glaring on the newspaper.

However, the content below was not all that radical.

The general subject discussed by this newly arrived vice mayor was economic criminal behavior.

For instance, the illicit resale of the nation's scarce commodities abroad, as well as instances of embezzlement of state-owned assets during the restructuring of certain state-owned factories, and so on.

It turned out to be a false alarm.

Yet he could not afford to take it lightly, seeing as he was currently the biggest "speculator" in Shenzhen.

He was frantically acquiring daily necessities to exchange for airplanes.

Therefore, he specifically called Lao Huang and the others back to hold a major meeting.

Certain sensitive commodities were promptly removed from the list, and he communicated with Menvonov and the others to replace them or delay the shipments.

After all, with many policy-related matters, those at the top were still groping their way forward.

The current strict supervision was merely a temporary regulation based on the conditions of the domestic market.

Just as their meeting was underway,

an airplane flying from Tianjin landed at the Shenzhen airport.

A group of seven or eight individuals looked remarkably conspicuous.

They were impeccably dressed, or to use the parlance of the time, very international.

With yellow-toned complexions, the group was led by a man of around thirty years old who spoke with a Cantonese accent.

Only, it lacked the local underworld flavor often associated with street-level slang.

At a glance, one could tell he was the descendant of overseas Chinese from generations past.

This man was Cai Dazhi, who was also a clan relative of Cai Weiqiang and the head of that third research and development team at Motorola that had suffered from thwarted ambitions.

Invited by Chen Ni, according to their original agreement, he was supposed to arrive a day later.

He had come ahead of schedule because he wanted to inspect the situation here firsthand.

Chen Ni had previously given him a rough outline of the mobile phone factory's construction progress.

As soon as the group exited the airport, they rushed impatiently to the construction site.

After asking around at the scene and learning that this place was previously a winery,

Cai Dazhi was deeply disappointed. He sighed and said, "It seems we've made another wasted trip."

Currently, there were many people trying to poach them.

They had also met with numerous individuals, and the situations they encountered generally fell into these categories:

First, those lacking any real strength who, upon running over and hearing how much money research and development would cost, got scared away.

Second, those with strength, but right at the beginning of the reform and opening up, entrepreneurs blindly pursued short-term exorbitant profits. Upon hearing that it would take such a long time to see a return on investment, they gave up.

Then there was the final category: fraudsters.

They would rush over, opening their mouths to demand a deposit from them under the pretext of fearing that they might walk away halfway through, thereby causing the R&D to be interrupted and resulting in heavy losses on early-stage investments.

They had encountered all sorts of people and every variety of scheme, which had at one point made them want to give up and return to the United States.

Now, Shenzhen had disappointed them yet again, leaving them feeling that their future was utterly bleak.

However, a colleague beside him spoke up, "Mr. Cai, shall we contact some of the others instead?"

"Aren't there still a few people waiting to talk with us? If those negotiations don't pan out, we can make our next move then, how about that?"

Irritated, Cai Dazhi paced back and forth across the construction site.

After struggling with immense hesitation for a long time, he said, "Alright then, let's put the word out and have them come to us for talks."

"Whoever can meet our conditions is the one we will go with. That's the only way left."

Shortly after, the group left the construction site together.

A few workers behind them stared at them in utter bewilderment.

...

That very evening,

almost the entire electronic industry circle in Shenzhen was abuzz with this news.

Who wasn't envious of Motorola's astronomical profits and monopolistic status?

Especially in the south, where the electronics industry was most developed.

Many people had their eyes fixed on this prize, yet no one knew how to get their foot in the door.

Now, a complete R&D team from Motorola had openly emerged.

Wasn't this precisely an opportunity?

Consequently, numerous powerful factories began discussing overnight whether or not to make an investment.

For instance, Shi Yuzhu, who was currently making waves in Zhucheng, was also holding a meeting.

After starting out in Shenzhen with Chinese character cards (Han cards), this tycoon had gone there at the invitation of the Zhucheng municipal government, and was now planning the Giant Building that would eventually drag down his commercial empire.

Right now, he was by no means lacking in capital.

There was also Boss Duan, who had just established the Subor enterprise; upon hearing the news, he too began rubbing his hands in eagerness.

And so on.

When Chen Ni received the news, she was somewhat taken aback.

Wasn't this someone I personally and exclusively invited over? Furthermore, you yourselves requested confidentiality.

How is it that after creating such a huge stir here, I am the last one to know?

The young lady was exceptionally clever.

Without a moment's hesitation, she dialed the phone number of Cai Dazhi, who was staying at the hotel.

"President Cai, why on earth have you publicly announced your intention to seek investment? Didn't we already communicate and reach an agreement beforehand?"

On the other end of the line, Cai Dazhi's expression was somewhat cold.

People in technical fields tended to have eccentric personalities, characterized by a straightforward, zero-EQ approach to handling matters.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have reached an impasse where he couldn't stay at Motorola any longer.

At that moment, holding a brick-like mobile phone, he stood by the window and said, "This is the final consensus reached by our team."

"Ms. Chen, I know you put a lot of thought into this, but there's nothing we can do. You should understand our predicament."

"We urgently need to find someone reliable, rather than pinning all our hopes on a single individual."

Anxious, Chen Ni replied over the phone, "At the very least, you should have waited until we had our discussion before doing anything! If the talks didn't work out, you could have considered others then."