Chapter 287 – Military to Civilian, Civilian to Military (1/2)

General Shen and Hou Haitao looked at each other and sighed. Feng Yu really had no intentions to join the military.

Actually, General Shen was really here to meet Feng Yu along the way. The main reason why he was at Bing City was to speak to Hou Haitao. Hou Haitao was also looking forward to General Shen.

Bing City Aviation Factory was formerly a military factory, and it was manufacturing fighter jets. The Aviation Factory was considered one of China’s earlier military factories. But after the last reform, the Aviation Factory was converted to a civilian factory.

It was from then onwards, Bing City Aviation Factory started its automobile project. The Aviation Factory had thought that they would make some profits by incorporating their jet engines technologies into automobile engines.

But they were located too close to FAW, and the cars they produced were nothing special and the sales were not as good as they expected. Although they did not make any losses, they did not make any profits either.

The Aviation Factory then started to manufacture small aircraft and wanted to make profits from those. But the sales were not good.

If it wasn’t for the humidifiers, the Aviation Factory might even turn their helicopters into civilian use helicopters to make ends meet.

The main reason for Aviation Factory’s woes was lack of planning and ability to adapt to the market changes. They do not know how to produce products to meet the needs of the consumers. Even with superior technologies, if they do not know how to market their products, they would not make any profits.

But the Aviation Factory was considered not bad. Many military factories that were converted to civilian factories were bankrupted. Even if the factories were not bankrupt, they were a burden to the local government. There were many such instances in Feng Yu’s past life.

Feng Yu really despised the leaders of this era. They had the technologies and manufacturing capabilities of a military factory, but they do not know how to make use of those capabilities to make money.

Look at the US and the Soviet Union, these countries were exporting their weapons. They made money by selling their obsoleted weapons, and they could still keep their newest technologies and even cover their cost of developing those technologies.

China leaders insist on not selling weapons. They felt China was a peace-loving country and they should not be selling weapons. The countries surrounding China, like Malaysia, j.a.pan, Korea, etc. were all talking about China’s threat to the region. You think by not selling weapons, those countries will not believe China is a threat to them?

Since China was considered a threat to those countries no matter what China does, why not just ignore them? Many of these leaders do not understand this.

Those countries will group together and try to stop China’s growth.

The reforms of those military factories to civilian factories were converting 2/3 of the factory to produce products for the civilians. But how many of these factories could survive? There were less than 10% of these factories that survived. These factories do not know how to make use of their military technologies on civilian products.

As such, there was a weird phenomenon in China. Whenever a popular product appears in China, there will be similar products from different brands. End up, all factories did not make any profits and suffer losses together!

Initially, the Aviation Factory’s conversion was not considered successful, but it did not make any losses. It was only from two years ago, the Aviation Factory made profits. That was because of the humidifiers, and later, the factory bought an ultra-high power electric furnace. With the furnace, the Aviation Factory made some technological breakthroughs and lower their helicopter’s cost of productions.

The leaders from the top start to notice the Aviation Factory again and felt that Hou Haitao was quite capable. Soon, Hou Haitao surprises them again by getting some Soviet Union’s aircraft engines technologies. These technologies were crucial to China.

But the Aviation Factory does not have sophisticated research facilities, and that’s why Shenyang Army gave an order to take the technologies and engines away.