Li Chengpeng: How Long Can the “Patriotism Card” Be Played by Domestic Products?
Renowned writer Li Chengpeng deeply analyzed the long-standing "patriotism card" phenomenon in China's commercial sector in his program. Using the incident where the brake bracket of the Huawei Maextro V800 snapped as a starting point, he reviewed several controversial events in Huawei's history regarding marketing, quality, labor practices, and overseas expansion. He also compared this to the anti-foreign goods movements during the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, pointing out how commercial marketing under the banner of patriotism has evolved into a tool for binding the nation to public opinion trials.
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Iron Army, an army of kings, forging ahead, unstoppable! Victory! Victory! Victory! An army of kings, forging ahead, unstoppable! Victory! Victory! Victory! Victory!
It looks alike, so alike. Happy families are always similar, and brainwashing techniques are always identical. Go, Huawei! Go, China! Touching, so touching, it makes one suddenly feel the urge to urinate. However, please look.
Once upon a time, Ms. Wang in Guangzhou used a Zhang Xiaoquan kitchen knife to smash garlic, and the knife snapped upon impact. Ms. Wang sought an explanation from customer service, and they replied that their kitchen knives are not recommended for smashing garlic. If Chinese kitchen knives cannot smash garlic, should we stop eating dumplings? Should we stop making stir-fried pork? What about salt-fried pork, twice-cooked pork, garlic ginger ribs, garlic ginger eggplant? Are we no longer allowed to happily eat smashed cucumber?
Just when I thought a kitchen knife snapping while smashing garlic was the most shameless record in Chinese commerce, the famous patriotic brand Huawei Maextro created a brand new record of shamelessness. Everyone knows what happened, but let me go through the timeline again. Dongchedi bought three brand-new Maextro V800s for braking tests. Once the brakes were pressed, the brake pedal brackets of all three snapped like triplets. Netizens across the country exploded. Some asked who is gambling with consumers' lives to save costs? Some said Huawei is typically killing people for money? Others said that anyone with a shred of humanity would not produce such garbage cars.
As you know, the greatest feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics is that if you can't solve the problem raised by people, you solve the people who raise the problem. So, some started attacking Dongchedi, claiming it was a violent test, using over 400 kilograms of force to intentionally press the pedal from the side. Damn, even Mike Tyson couldn't snap it, right? Unless it was actually the Incredible Hulk.
Soon, someone debunked this, saying that 4,589 Newtons was the number at the instant the camera switched, and the tester only pressed down with about 160-plus kilograms. Huawei has always been arrogant; it's like the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau opening a shop. In the statement issued by HarmonyOS, they said the brake bracket exceeds national standards and they would offer a free upgrade for users, but the entire document never mentioned a recall. What more do you want? Even our recall ambassador would never recall defective cars.
However, Dongchedi's test video was mysteriously taken down. Some netizens also reported that their posts appeared normal, but the view count was always zero. At this moment, unexpectedly, the People's Daily published an article saying four departments joined forces to say no to "instant-made" cars. Damn, what's going on? The People's Daily has become the people's daily. Many praised the People's Daily for speaking like a human this time, after all, there have been too many "instant-made" products in China over the years.
Instant-made milk, melamine, instant-made chicken, instant-made housing, instant-made medicine, instant-made meals, instant-made vaccines. But there are also those who wash the floor for Huawei; they are really trying hard, even scolding the People's Daily, saying it is stigmatizing national enterprises, and even using Mao Zedong's words to counterattack, saying the People's Daily can only be considered a second-rate newspaper. This generation of netizens is hard to manage. I woke up and scrolled to see netizens saying that a new fitness project has become popular nationwide: pressing the brakes. The first brake-pressing exercise competition has begun. This is the brake-pressing of a Rolls-Royce.
This is the brake pedal of a Bentley, this is the brake pedal of a BMW, this is the brake pedal of an Audi, this is the brake pedal of a Mercedes-Benz, this is the brake pedal of a Hongqi, this is BYD, this is Xiaomi, this is Toyota, this is the brake pedal of a three-wheeled motorcycle, this is the brake pedal of a toilet water gate, and this is the brake pedal of Huawei's Maextro. The one most suitable for braking is Cadillac. Once you're done braking, go straight to a foot massage parlor, sir, why not sign up for a membership card?
Netizens these days are hard to handle. Faced with the mockery of the masses, Maextro produced a third-party inspection report, claiming that their test results were qualified. But those in the know discovered that their test wasn't done while driving, with a sudden emergency brake, but rather by removing the pedal parts and placing them on testing equipment, like offerings on an altar. The Jingdezhen porcelain was carefully placed on the platform, and they pressed down gently at two centimeters per minute—two centimeters per minute, pressing gently, gently, I am coming.
Without taking away a single cloud. What the fuck? A snail can crawl nine centimeters per minute, and you only do two. Dongchedi tests at a speed of 100 km/h, slamming on the brakes to zero, while you press down gently at a speed slower than a snail. This is called shifting concepts, swapping beams for pillars, opportunism, and playing tricks. Now let's analyze what a rogue enterprise is.
Patriotic Huawei, conscientious Huawei, is truly full of bad records. In March 2019, Huawei released the P30 Pro phone, claiming it could take larger and rounder moon photos than competitors. But Wang Yuekun, a senior contributor at Ifanr, questioned that the moon was photoshopped in. He photoshopped a pair of underwear onto a moon image to test it, and it ended up photographing the underwear as the moon, complete with clear craters on it.
What? If even underwear can be photographed as the moon, then can Zhu Bajie be photographed as Chang'e? But Ifanr fired the contributor immediately. However, three days later, a Zhihu user tested it with a blurry moon image, and the phone really did turn the blurry moon into a clear lunar surface, confirming that Huawei's clear moon images were drawn by algorithms. Only then did Huawei respond, saying the moon mode is an AI detail optimization, but it doesn't replace the original image. You use AI to calculate a clear moon, yet claim it's a clear moon captured by your own phone, and you even pressured people to get someone fired. Is your background really from the Heavenly Palace?
Although Samsung also used AI to recognize the moon two years later and was questioned by Korean netizens, Samsung's attitude was calm and didn't cause anyone to lose their job. In 2024, a Huawei phone user took their newly purchased Huawei foldable phone to Harbin, only for the phone to freeze and the inner screen to leak fluid. They had bought screen breakage insurance and were still under warranty, yet they were still asked to pay a 499 yuan service fee. And after the warranty expired, just replacing an inner screen cost 7,399 yuan. Some people put the phone in the car and heard a cracking sound of glass, and when they looked, holy shit!
The phone screen was shattered and leaking fluid. This isn't a foldable phone; it's a brittle popsicle! Later, it was discovered that Huawei had only written in a very inconspicuous place at the very bottom of their official website: please do not fold the phone in an environment of minus five degrees or lower, but they don't tell you this when you buy it. By the way, Samsung's foldable phones can be folded 30,000 times at minus 20 degrees.
Then there is the Yunchun Expressway incident, where a Huawei AITO M7 that had been bought for only three months rear-ended another vehicle at 115 km/h and caught fire. The hidden door handles didn't pop out, the doors wouldn't open, and all three people in the car died, including a two-year-old child. The family asked, what about the automatic braking you advertised? Huawei shirked responsibility, saying the automatic braking was produced by Bosch, so don't come to Huawei if something goes wrong. But Bosch immediately stood up and declared that the car was not equipped with their system and it had nothing to do with them. That is Huawei: when selling goods, it's Huawei; when counting money, it's Huawei; when something goes wrong, it's someone else.
It is truly said: silent when there is trouble, but eager to welcome spring when there is none. Yet half a year ago, Yu Chengdong was still bragging, calling it a road tank with a Xuanwu body, mocking other car companies for their poor AEB automatic safety test results. As usual, after the incident, Huawei deleted posts everywhere and suppressed negative news reports. The patriotic enterprise Huawei is indeed very patriotic, but it does not love the people of this country.
In 2007, the new Labor Contract Law was about to take effect. According to the new law, if an employee worked for a company for ten consecutive years, the company could not just fire them at will. But Huawei dared to force nearly 7,000 old employees who had worked for eight years to voluntarily resign before the new law took effect, and then re-apply for their positions. After being rehired, they could only sign short-term contracts of one to three years, and their previous years of service were wiped out. Sly! So sly! Huawei, your name is Sly.
Besides being sly, it's also inhumane. Wei Yanzheng originally gave up a high-paying job at a British telecommunications research institute to return to China and join Huawei. However, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and returned to his post to work for Huawei after surgery. Later, the cancer cells spread, and he had an amputation. But while he was on sick leave, Huawei tricked him into signing a temporary contract, and then used this temporary contract to fire him.
The insurance company paid 200,000 yuan, while Huawei's severance compensation was just over 25,000 yuan. At the moment Wei Yanzheng was most helpless, Huawei kicked him out of the house. A little over a month later, Wei Yanzheng passed away at the age of only forty-one. Sly, inhumane, and vicious. Li Hongyuan worked at Huawei for twelve years. When his contract expired, Huawei did not want to renew it according to the Labor Contract Law. They pretended to agree on a severance compensation of over 300,000 yuan and had a department secretary transfer it to Li Hongyuan from a private account.
Then Huawei reported it to the police, accusing Li Hongyuan of extortion, and had him locked up for 251 days. If you don't want to renew the contract or pay compensation, you shouldn't throw someone into jail! This shows that Huawei has no concept of human rights; yet, while lacking human rights, they claim to be very patriotic. Yes, they love the country but not the specific people within it. Fortunately, Li Hongyuan secretly recorded the negotiation, and not a single word in it was a threat to Huawei. Later, his family filed a lawsuit, and the procuratorate decided not to prosecute. After being locked up for 251 days, he was only compensated 107,000 yuan. This is truly vicious.
Huawei's plagiarism and theft are even more shameless. In 2003, Huawei not only plagiarized the router source code of the American company Cisco, but even copied the typos, vulnerabilities, code Easter eggs, and abbreviations of the experimenters written by Cisco programmers exactly as they were. Later, when Cisco brought the evidence to Ren Zhengfei, Ren only replied with two words: "Coincidence."
With coincidences reaching this level, it's no wonder netizens feel that Meng Wanzhou's resemblance to Mao Zedong is also quite a coincidence. In 2014, a Huawei engineer snuck into Team Bell's Seattle laboratory and snapped off the finger of their test robot; this isn't even called stealing anymore, it's robbery. It's just like the line from Mr. Lao She's "Teahouse": "Nowadays we don't smoke opium anymore, we've switched to heroin."
In 2018, Huawei borrowed diamond glass samples from the American company O-Hara to imitate mobile phone screens, promising to return them in 60 days, but secretly shipped them back to China to perform reverse engineering using lasers. After reverse engineering, even aliens should stay away from Huawei, because if things go wrong, you, the alien, might be pinned down by Huawei for reverse engineering.
They imitated and plagiarized. Huawei is invincible, fucking awesome! In December 2020, the American surveillance research institute discovered that Huawei had developed a Uyghur facial recognition system; the cameras could automatically identify Uyghurs and trigger an automatic alarm. As for what happens after identifying a Uyghur and triggering an alarm, you know.
Once the news broke, the famous French football star Griezmann immediately announced the termination of his endorsement partnership with Huawei. Many Chinese people are proud that Huawei is rich, but can this money give you a single cent? Huawei is indeed rich, paving the way with gold! Because they are so notorious, American universities dare not accept their money, so they secretly sponsored a scientific research award from the Optical Society of America, quietly giving away one million US dollars to scientists every year without daring to leave their name! Doing good deeds without leaving a name—what are you trying to do, Comrade Lei Feng? Everyone understands.
Ultimately, this move prompted an investigation by the US Congress. As for third-world countries, Huawei was even more blatant, directly bribing high-ranking officials of the Algerian Telecommunications Bureau with 10 million US dollars, resulting in a ten-year prison sentence. Huawei fans always think they are very patriotic and have high emotional intelligence, but their IQ is very low; their brains are not even as good as a cauliflower.
Fans always thought Huawei's self-developed chips were the best in the world and were deeply proud of it. But when a Canadian chip analysis company dismantled Huawei's most advanced Ascend 910B chip, it turned out to be from TSMC. It turns out Huawei bought TSMC chips by going through a Chinese company called Sophgo. As a result, eleven companies under Sophgo were blacklisted by the United States. Huawei, you've dragged your Chinese brother companies into a pit! Are you being patriotic or sabotaging the country?
It is truly a record of evil deeds! By incomplete statistics, over these years, Huawei has faked moon photos, made "crispy" ice cream, forced 7,000 employees to resign via screen prompts, refused to help old employees in distress, sent employees defending their rights to jail, burned people to death in their cars, sent strikers to the police station, plagiarized even the typos, stole and robbed openly, bribed officials, secretly funded scientists, and played "matryoshka" with chips. What a sin! What a sin! It's impossible to finish listing Huawei's crimes in one breath without stopping to catch your breath.
Yet, all these years, Huawei has remained unscathed. Whoever criticizes Huawei gets besieged or even sued. Why? Because Huawei says, "I am patriotic." Wu Jing only said, "I am patriotic, I am innocent," but Huawei says, "I am patriotic," and whoever criticizes me is guilty.
Patriotism is a simple human emotion, but when someone shouts in your ear every day that you must be patriotic, it proves they don't want to reason with you. How did this "patriotic artifact" called Huawei shout about being patriotic to you? In November 2018, when Huawei's Mate 20 Pro went on sale, many users woke up in the middle of the night, opened their eyes, and wow, oh my, there's a ghost!
Turning on the light, they realized it was the edges of the screen of this new Huawei phone glowing with a faint green light. This is the famous "Green Screen Gate." Huawei claimed it was a normal optical phenomenon and that you could continue using it by turning up the brightness. The screen is green, and they tell you to turn up the brightness, just like telling you to add more oil when your car is leaking oil. Is your logic from "Jurassic Park"?
When this group of consumers went to defend their rights and posted about it, a flood of accounts suddenly swarmed into the comment section, besieging the device owners who were fighting for their rights. How much dirty money did they take from Apple? Smearing national industry, traitors and running dogs. Buying a mobile phone should have been a consumer choice, but buying a Huawei phone turned into an act of patriotic political vetting. The company selling the phones stubbornly sold itself as the nation itself. To understand such exaggerated tactics, we have to start with the name Huawei. Ren Zhengfei said that when he registered the company back then, he looked up and saw a large sign on the wall that read "Zhonghua Youwei" (China has promise / action), and thus Huawei came to be. Mr. Ren has such a big-picture vision.
Yet Mr. Ren's grand narrative infected the entire Huawei system. In May 2019, because of violations, the United States placed Huawei on the Entity List, banning the sale of chips and technology to it. Logically speaking, when your supplier has a problem, you should look for a lawyer, alternative solutions, and new suppliers. But Huawei looked to history instead, digging up emotional appeals from the depths of the past. The president of HiSilicon, Huawei's chip company, sent a letter to his employees in the middle of the night.
Today is the choice of history, and thousands of HiSilicon sons and daughters have embarked on the most tragic and epic Long March in the history of science and technology. The darkest days are the days when every ordinary son and daughter of HiSilicon becomes a hero of the era. Only in towering giant waves do true heroes show their colors. What on earth are you doing, acting so bitterly resentful? If you truly love the country, do your job well and stop engaging in sneaky, underhanded things while puffing up your lats and gluing on lion-brand chest hair to perform patriotism? This is just like Sun Yang, you are kidnapping the country!
Ren Zhengfei held up another photo showing a Soviet plane from World War II. The fuselage was riddled with holes like a sieve, yet it managed to fly back. He said, "Our Huawei is this plane, repairing itself while flying, striving to fly back." Huawei also added the caption: without being riddled with scars, how can one have thick skin? Ancient heroes go through many trials, if you make mobile phones, just make mobile phones, why pretend to be a poet? As someone from a Chinese literature department, I feel this poem is written so poorly; poetry cannot be written like doggerel.
The crucial point is that the plane held up by Mr. Ren was discovered to be photoshopped. Expressing patriotic sentiment with a photoshopped plane is so awkward! But Huawei's sales strategy has always been that buying Huawei is patriotism. When Meng Wanzhou was arrested for smuggling for a rogue state, Shenzhen's Mongate Technology issued a notice in support of Huawei, stipulating that employees who buy Huawei get a 15 percent subsidy, while those who buy Apple are fined 100 percent of the market price, valid for three years. What the fuck?
This is illegal and criminal, violating human rights, you know? Another company in Xi'an stipulated that using an Apple phone would result in a half-year performance bonus deduction, buying Huawei would be rewarded with 100, and buying a domestic car with 1,000, while driving an American car would still result in a half-year performance bonus deduction. Capital Brewery in Jiangsu issued a notice giving a 30-day deadline to switch to domestic mobile phones, with subsidies for buying Huawei and dismissal for using Apple. But this company had a registered capital of 10 million, paid-in capital of zero yuan, zero insured employees, and zero online store sales. Even a ghost company came to express its patriotism; this kind of love is truly creepy. There was also a company in Baicheng, Jilin, that simply refused to let people with Apple phones enter the door, with violators being fired. When a reporter asked why, the legal representative replied, for no particular reason.
Mobile phones are no longer mobile phones, but have become tools of political vetting. Under this wave of patriotic offense, in the second quarter of 2019, Huawei captured a record 38 percent of the Chinese market share, truly a terrifying record! From then on, Huawei phones were also called patriotic machines. In 2023, CCTV even bestowed a supreme title on one of its new phones, calling it a steam engine. Moreover, a chant suddenly began to circulate online: when you walk past a Huawei specialty store, please consciously stand at attention and salute; this is the greatest respect for a national brand.
There also appeared wave after wave of videos saluting Huawei, and a saying went that you don't have to buy Huawei, but when passing by a Huawei specialty store you must bow, bow. Holy shit, is this a mobile phone shop or Mount Heimu? Are you selling phones or joining a cult? Patriotism is great, but it shouldn't be turned into mental illness by you guys! Actually, in my opinion, saluting and bowing still show a lack of sincerity and insufficient patriotism; you might as well kowtow and burn incense. Transform the mobile phone shop into an ancestral hall, where passersby must make merit offerings, and mobile phone buyers must perform three kowtows and nine prostrations before they can invite home this divine artifact of patriotism—the Huawei phone.
If Uncle Li were to add layer upon layer upwards, that would require kowtowing the Tibetan full-body prostration, kowtowing and kowtowing, all the way from Shenzhen to Tiananmen, with a bloody head to truly show the true colors of patriotism. However, when Huawei's eldest princess Meng Wanzhou was arrested, Canadian police searched her and found she was carrying the Apple phone, Apple computer, and Apple iPad trio, with only one Huawei phone. You call this contradictory? In court, Meng Wanzhou herself admitted that she is a permanent resident of Canada and has two luxury mansions in Vancouver, one worth 4.2 million and the other 12.2 million US dollars. You couldn't earn this amount of money in a lifetime.
Huawei's patriots, you could never earn this, but this did not hurt the hearts of Huawei's patriotic fans, the Huafans. When Meng Wanzhou was rescued by China and brought back home, sitting on a government state chartered flight and landing at the Shenzhen airport, the provincial governor and mayor greeted her in person. Clad in a red dress, she was the lighthouse of faith. If faith has a color, it must be China Red. Faith is red, the phone used is Apple's, the house is in Vancouver's, and the cards are Maple Leaf's. This foreign friend also sang together with the Chinese crowds welcoming her.
Ren Zhengfei, Mr. Ren is a seasoned veteran who understands human nature. He immediately smoothed things over, saying: 'Our family is also quite fond of Mr. Ren now, saying that no matter what, they love Huawei, saying they love Huawei phones.' But Mr. Ren, why is it that using an Apple phone easily invites attacks from your internet trolls? Why does criticizing a Huawei phone easily make one a traitor? Actually.
Using a product to criticize Apple or Huawei is perfectly normal; praising Apple or Huawei is also perfectly normal. Do not elevate it to a political level. For example, in 2019, a netizen on Weibo said their Huawei P30 exploded, and was immediately cursed as a traitor. Some even lectured him: 'China and the US are at war right now; even if Huawei has problems, you shouldn't say it.' In the end, he had no choice but to delete the post.
In other countries, this is a product quality issue; in our country, it is an issue of 'us versus the enemy.' At the end of 2020, Huawei launched HarmonyOS 2.0, and the whole internet cheered that China finally had its own mobile operating system. As it turned out, when foreign tech media took it apart, it was basically Google's Android inside. Many parts just had the name 'Android' changed to 'HarmonyOS'—'Hongmeng' (HarmonyOS) is both confusing and deceptive—even the pop-up error messages were identical to Android's. So, your patriotic soul was wearing American underwear!
Thus, we witnessed an unprecedented business model: when selling goods, they are the nation; when collecting money, they are a company; when trouble arises, they are being framed by others. If you buy from them, you are a patriot; if you defend your rights, you are a traitor.
Chinese merchants playing the 'patriotic card' has a long history; it really didn't start with Huawei. It wasn't even played so openly back then. Starting in 1905, boycotting foreign goods became a standard feature of Chinese national movements, just like now. Back then, there were many boycotts of foreign goods, and merchants like Mr. Ren used patriotic marketing to sell their own goods. Historian Feng Xiaocai has told many such stories. For example, the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Company of that era: the company was a Chinese company, and the boss, Jian Zhaonan, was also Chinese, but he had acquired Japanese citizenship in 1902.
When the May Fourth Movement arrived, his competitors seized on this point, cursing him as a 'dog traitor!' 'We must boycott Japanese goods!' Scared, Boss Jian hurriedly renounced his Japanese citizenship and brought in people like Li Yuanhong and Wang Shizhen as shareholders. You see, patriotic merchants are never simple; there must be high-ranking officials behind them, exactly the same as now. They played the patriotic card heavily and came up with a catchy slogan: 'Chinese people, please smoke Chinese cigarettes.' Isn't that the same as 'Chinese people use Huawei phones' now? Isn't it the same?
Business was extremely booming! There has never been a shortage of patriotic masses on our land. During the May Thirtieth Movement in 1925, Boss Jian even donated 100,000 yuan to the striking workers. 100,000 silver dollars back then was not a small amount, right? And he profited greatly from the movements of boycotting foreign goods and supporting workers' strikes. His son recalled that every time an anti-imperialist movement occurred, our business would flourish, and it would repeatedly save us from crises. Just like now, by boycotting Japan, the US, and the EU, patriotic merchants will make a fortune.
Back then, the most popular towel on the Shanghai market was the 'Iron Hair' brand, which was a Japanese product. Sanyou Industrial Co., Ltd. in Shanghai was a Chinese company. To expand their business, they specifically made a domestic towel called the 'Triangle' brand towel. In the year of the May Fourth Movement, China's Sanyou Industrial Co., Ltd. placed an advertisement in the newspaper with the headline 'Business warfare can defeat military warfare,' meaning that defeating Japanese goods in the marketplace could save the country just as well as defeating Japanese soldiers on the battlefield.
At that time, the cultural level of the Chinese people was low, so the slogan was very straightforward: 'Triangle brand towels defeat Iron Hair brand towels.' When the Chinese people thought about it, using Japanese towels during the May Fourth Movement was shameful and embarrassing, so they flocked to buy the Chinese-made Triangle brand towels, and felt they had 'saved face.' The famous national entrepreneur Liu Hongsheng was originally a comprador for the British-run Kailuan Mining Administration, but when the May Fourth Movement came, everyone went on strike to boycott foreign goods and foreign factories.
Liu Hongsheng was very clever. While secretly letting his subordinates continue to deliver coal to foreign factories, he started his own match factory. Matches were called 'foreign fire' back then—things from foreigners. Liu Hongsheng promoted that Chinese people should make their own matches, established the Great China Match Company, and became the famous 'Match King.' However, his ending is thought-provoking. In 1949, he fled to Hong Kong, and half a year later, he was persuaded by Chen Yi's people to return to Shanghai. When the 'public-private partnership' came, he had to hand over his 20-million-plus industry to the state.
A few months later, the old man was heartbroken and died of a heart attack. Relying on the state to get rich, and finally giving the family business to the state, it can be considered as getting what he wished for. Today's merchants who play the patriotic card heavily will definitely end up like Liu Hongsheng: relying on patriotism to get rich, and finally having to donate the money to the state. What is shockingly similar is that those merchants learned to use patriotism to 'borrow a knife to kill someone'—if they want to fix a competitor or deal with an enemy, they borrow the hands of patriotic students to report them for selling Japanese goods, or loudly publicize that the competitor's company has foreign capital.
A hundred years later, students taking to the streets to paste slogans has evolved into patriotic netizens posting online. Back then, Chinese merchants would rip the trademarks right off Japanese goods, slap Chinese labels on them to pass them off as domestic products, and make a killing. This craft still has its inheritors a hundred years later. For instance, Chen Jin, a professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, bought a batch of Motorola chips, hired people to grind off the Motorola logos with sandpaper and files, stamped them with the Chinese Hanxin No. 1, and embezzled 100 million RMB in state subsidies.
Patriotic students who went wild on the streets smashing elevators and putting up patriotic slogans also faced a small dilemma: to promote patriotism, you had to buy domestic goods, but the capital came from the merchants, the goods were bought on credit from those same merchants, and the profits went straight into the students' own pockets. Even more absurdly, the goods some students sold had neither trademarks nor manufacturers, leading some to suspect that these were simply confiscated Japanese goods with the trademarks ripped off, sold by the students themselves to line their own pockets. Look at that—patriotism really is a business.
By the way, how can a boycott of foreign goods not involve beating people up? Patriotic students in Xuzhou dragged out shop clerks selling foreign goods to parade them through the streets, forcing them to shout "I am a traitor." Students in Jiangyin erected a humiliation monument, carving the names of non-compliant merchants and their goods on it to leave them infamous for eternity. Cheng Chengyuan, a paper shop owner in Ningbo, snatched his inspected Japanese goods back from the inspection team, resulting in not only a beating but also being forced to wear a tall dunce cap while paraded through the streets. Patriotic organizations in Hubei laid down the rule that whenever a profiteering merchant was exposed, all their goods would be confiscated, and the stamp of a subjugated slave would be branded onto the merchant's face.
Ah! A subjugated slave, how dare you sell foreign goods! In 1920, students in Chongqing tied up a merchant named Zhuo Yuncheng, painted his face black, stripped him of his clothes to parade him through the streets, and set fire to 20,000 silver taels worth of goods in his shop. You see, any patriotic movement is basically accompanied by smashing, looting, arson, and humiliation; not a single one is ever missing.
History always repeats itself. More than ninety years later, on September 15, 2012, during anti-Japanese protests in Xi'an, a patriotic youth named Cai Yang smashed through the skull of a Japanese car owner named Li Jianli with a U-lock. The absurdity is that the more you boycott Japanese goods, the better they sell. For example, the two years with the fiercest boycotts of Japanese goods—1919 and 1925—were precisely the two years with the highest Japanese exports to China. 1919 was the May Fourth Movement, and 1925 was the May 30th Movement; both were the vanguard years of anti-imperialist boycotts of foreign goods.
As soon as the momentum of this movement passed, Chinese merchants heavily restocked, and the pent-up demand of the rich all returned at once. The ones who invariably suffered were the common people, because once foreign goods were boycotted and competitors disappeared, domestic cotton yarn actually became more expensive than Japanese yarn. Japanese sugar could not enter Xuzhou, and white sugar skyrocketed from 160 wen per catty all the way to 260 wen. Can you imagine how high prices could surge without Apple or Samsung phones, or with Huawei and Xiaomi? Can you imagine how high prices could surge without imported cars, without BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Li Auto, Huawei, and BYD? And the quality would inevitably drop. Therefore, boycotting foreign goods is worse than boycotting stupidity.
Over a hundred years have passed, the costumes have changed several times, but the play remains the same. Why? Because China has never had true commerce; merchants must attach themselves to imperial power. All the land under heaven belongs to the king, and the subjects of the land are the king's ministers. If you are not loyal to the monarch and patriotic to the country, how can you do business? Musk's business competes on innovation, Jack Ma's business competes on loyalty, Jobs competed on ideas, and Ren Zhengfei competes on the leadership's perspective. Although East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea also have a history of protecting their domestic patriotic brands, it has never been as exaggerated as yours. In
These foreign car companies are doing research, doing real work, and apologizing. What are some of your car companies doing? Let's take a look at the bullshit they've been spouting all these years. Let's put it this way: Porsche's factory is definitely not as good as JAC's. You just need to press a button, and all the networks in the United States will be cut off. Porsche is the benchmark of the previous era, and the 9 will definitely be the benchmark of this era. Why is Huawei so fucking awesome? Defeating Silicon Valley, defeating Israel, defeating South Korea, defeating Japan. Let's see if the Li Auto L9 is worthy of being the best family SUV under 5 million yuan? Come on, the ET9 is the best car of this era. Whether it's under 5 million or 10 million, among the cars actually on the market on this planet, it is the most powerful SUV, and there is no other. Everything he has, I have; I can do everything; and everything I have, he can't do. Is there any justice left?
Is there any law left? Hey, did the guard at the mental hospital, Old Zhang, forget to close the gate again? Did you take your medicine on time? Is the dosage correct? But President Li is also right, in the future, cars can cook; Tesla, do you have that? In the future, they can also do laundry; Tesla, do you have that? Seres has a toilet under the seat; Tesla, do you have that? We can even jump; Tesla, do you have that? Can a Rolls-Royce jump three times in a row? Lamborghini, can you even jump once? Where is Maybach? Where is Porsche? And Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Volvo, who else? Who else? As for whether it smells to have a toilet in a small car, that's not important. Will installing a washing machine on the tires affect driving balance?
Not important. What is the point of closing the car door like doing Tai Chi for the elderly? Also not important. Safety, stability, sustainability, whether it's plagiarism, as well as price, maintenance, and after-sales service, are all not important. What's important is that others don't have it, and we are 'far ahead', 'far ahead', 'far ahead', 'far ahead', 'far ahead'. We continue to lead, leading our peers by more than 50%. I always see some Chinese car companies saying they are 'far ahead', and only after seeing this did I understand. Oh, you meant this kind of 'far ahead'? I love it the most.
Our downstairs supermarket's kiddie ride industry has been hit hard by you guys. You are very funny at professional things, and very professional at funny things. In fact, the most important thing about a car is safety, not all the bells and whistles. Zunjie says the Zunjie S800 has a comprehensive test mileage of 15 million kilometers. What is the concept of 15 million kilometers? It means you could travel between the Earth and the Moon 19 times.
Even if one car runs 1,000 kilometers every day, it would take 15,000 days, which is 41 years and one month. And 41 years ago, Huawei didn't even exist yet. If Huawei is the sum of many cars participating in the test, then your calculation is just another form of deception. Actually, President Yu also knows that the most important thing about a car is safety, so he said the safety of this car is 'retaliatory'—meaning it's reinforced to become the safest in the world, and there is no other. But I didn't see reinforcement, I only saw retaliation. Yu Chengdong said that according to Huawei's quality standards, some car factories wouldn't be able to ship a single car. But what about this?
President Yu said the terminal output torque exceeds 18,000 horsepower. What is the concept of 18,000 horsepower? A BMW 5 Series is 258 horsepower, a tractor is 100 horsepower, an M1 Abrams tank is 1,500 horsepower, and the Harmony train is 12,900 horsepower. President Yu, the power of this one car of yours is equivalent to 70 BMWs, 180 tractors, 12 tanks, and 1.4 Harmony high-speed trains.
Driving this car really tests the driver; if you step on the gas a little too hard, you'll fly out of the Earth. It's a pity you guys aren't performing crosstalk if you can blow smoke to this extent. Below, please watch this popular crosstalk from the internet: People need encouragement, really awesome; hitting them, blowing smoke, blindly blowing smoke. Maximum horsepower 1,548, 0-100 acceleration 1.98 seconds.
Is it 2-second acceleration performance or 3-second acceleration performance? This is all meaningless, you know? Really, the important thing is safety. Playing drift with the Xiaomi SU7 is really satisfying. You think that drifting is because it's so awesome? I say that is the most stupid behavior. I said we must make the best mobile phone holder. A powerful heart doesn't need a mobile phone holder. This is the only sedan today that uses three-layer silver plating. Why can't you just make everything silver-plated? Hey, because it will, it will seriously weaken the mobile phone signal. Among performance cars in the city, its range is 'far ahead'. The phrase 'far ahead' is just something you can say casually. Under 500,000, under 10 million, under 500,000, under 10 million, under 500,000, under 10 million.
The best among true SUVs, among the cars already on the market, the most powerful performance, one of, no other, one of, no other, one of, no other. But I believe that this world will not always be dominated by the strong; latecomers always have a chance to make them never catch up, always have a chance to never catch up, always have a chance to never catch up, always have a chance to never catch up. This is fucking definitely causing trouble, right?
While Yu Chengdong and Lei Jun are still doing cross-talk and shamelessly hyping up low-end products, Musk's roast flew into the sky. Musk is going to drive it across the Snake River Canyon, and he said: Where we're going, we don't need tires. A country where a businessman can curse back and forth with the president is the only one with true freedom of innovation. He never says that buying a Tesla is patriotic, and the state never says that either. He represents only the dreams of humanity.
Well, he has everything that I have, I can do all of that, and I have things that he can't do at all. What's the point of bragging? Can he fly? Can you fly? Making this episode, I originally came to criticize, but in the end, I was made to laugh by them. I have no intention of denying the efforts and achievements of Chinese automakers; China's manufacturing supply chain is indeed the most complete in the world. But this is built on the hard work, bravery, and labor-intensive foundation of the Chinese people, without any high-tech breakthroughs in the true sense. Over the years, they have reaped the leeks under the guise of patriotic sentiment, putting all their efforts into involution, arrogant, domineering, and looking down on everyone.
So how long can the Red Flag keep flying? How long can the patriotic card be played? Of course, in the end, I can only quote a piece of positive-energy rhetoric: as a patriotic enterprise, even if Huawei is not perfect, it is still the only hope of national technology! As a compatriot, one must still support it and buy it a lot. If you don't buy it and he doesn't buy it, do you fucking expect me to buy it? Dismissed.