Chapter 530: Very Powerful People

Interviews are open to anyone famous, and this format is freer than forum discussions, allowing one to express one's thoughts more clearly.

Because you're speaking alone, no one influences you; on forums, opponents affect you—when your thinking lags, you're easily led astray, leaving you little room to think.

There's also a time limit, your words are restricted, and you have no time to reflect.

Just like Jack Ma listening to him, it sounds very reasonable, substantial—but later, upon reflection, it's nonsense.

An interview is different—you can speak slowly, clarify your thoughts gradually, no one interrupts you, no one leads you astray.

In a room filled with artistic atmosphere, Liu Qiangdong sat face-to-face with a CCTV host for an interview.

Liu Qiangdong said directly: "Jack Ma is a big fraud—he's an excellent speaker, full of passion, always framing issues at the highest level: humanity, nation, society—never willing to discuss things plainly and directly with you."

"Then what kind of person do you think the Principal is?" the host asked, taking the opportunity to press further.

"Him!" Liu Qiangdong paused, then said: "The Principal seems very down-to-earth; what he says is closely tied to reality, and he prefers to view problems from a lower level—for example, we still have many impoverished people, creating more opportunities for them—that's good."

I haven't interacted with him much; I don't really know what kind of person he is or what he's done.

But I know he's definitely not a bad person—why? Because I feel he constantly talks about the bottom strata and the poor, even if it means offending people like Li Yanhong and Jack Ma—he's definitely not bad."

The host had never heard this viewpoint before.

It means: offending high-level people while thinking of the low-level ones makes you not bad.

Later, Lei Bus also participated in an interview, in nearly the same setting—Lei Bus still smiled warmly, still looking that naive and innocent.

"To be honest, this forum left me drenched in sweat. One segment, the host asked me: What's Xiaomi's future development goal?

I said I hope within five to ten years, Xiaomi has a chance to become the world's number one in the mobile phone industry—I thought I was being quite conservative. Then the host asked an Apple executive, who replied: 'It's always easy to say.'

What he meant was: why don't you try it yourself? In such a large setting, I even felt embarrassed.

At that time, the Principal was also in the audience—the Principal is a very powerful person, who in just a few years reached number one in the film industry and spread our films abroad.

He said this: Don't overthink it—just do it. What if you succeed? That remark was quite inspiring, because when you have nowhere to retreat, the worst that can happen is failure and returning to square one."

Lei Bus spoke these words with some excitement.

He couldn't say it on stage, but now, in the interview, he could express his feelings and emotions from that moment.

Host Yang Lan smiled and asked: "How do you evaluate Jack Ma and the Principal?"

"They're both very powerful people—powerful to the point of being terrifying. Jack Ma is the most successful among our new generation of entrepreneurs—truly remarkable.

On the day Alibaba went public, I believe countless entrepreneurs across China stayed up all night watching Alibaba's IPO process—we were immensely proud that a Chinese person created an IPO miracle."

I founded Kingsoft in 1988; Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent were all founded around 1999—about ten years later. I'm practically a grandfather in this industry.

When the internet arrived, everyone thought we were outdated, marginalized, obsolete—the psychological imbalance was severe."

Lei Bus was explaining why he felt inadequate when facing Jack Ma.

Indeed, he had been in the game long enough, yet newcomers did better—this psychological gap was enormous.

"At first I thought we weren't smart enough—I told myself Jack Ma is ten thousand times smarter than me; I wasn't hardworking enough. But later I found Jack Ma wasn't even harderworking than me—he seemed to travel the world daily, while we worked 24/7. I felt deeply discouraged.

Finally, I realized the problem was we didn't go with the tide—we didn't hit the right point. Once I understood, I asked myself: How can I win the next ten years? And I realized: mobile internet is the future."

Lei Bus now speaks much more fluently; earlier, during the forum discussion, he was stiff and hesitant.

"What about the Principal?" the host asked.

"The Principal gives me a sense of great power—he's never intimidated by anyone, which I deeply admire. I've looked into his history: from founding Jade Rabbit in 2010 until now, it's only been four or five years—about the same as Xiaomi's founding period.

Compared to Huayi, Bona, Guangxian, his company is over ten years younger, yet the Principal turned a company with zero foundation into industry number one in just a few years—and took it global. That's truly remarkable." Lei Bus sighed.

"You're also very powerful—you've built a much larger industry," the host said.

Xiaomi is indeed stronger than Jade Rabbit.

"No, no, no—not like that. This is vertical comparison. You must compare horizontally: when the Principal founded Jade Rabbit, he had zero foundation. When I founded Xiaomi, my bank account had billions sitting there."

Hearing this, host Yang Lan chuckled—this guy was surprisingly honest, saying things like this outright.

Meaning: his starting point was high, Fang Hong's was low.

"The nature of the film industry guarantees it can't grow large—it's a high-investment, long-cycle, high-risk project. The market size is fixed—how big can it possibly get?"

Lei Bus paused, then added: "Every industry has competition, but the Principal defeated rivals in his field and became number one—he's the top in his domain. I'm not—I'm still number three, so there's still a gap between us.

But achieving industry number one, going global, and bypassing so many political and cultural barriers—that's extraordinary.

Cultural products are different from our physical products like phones—they involve countless issues: what each country forbids, what can't be filmed, fear of hurting national sentiments—there are so many problems.

Phones, of course, require consideration too, but not nearly as many.

The outside world is vast—we've only just begun laying out our overseas strategy, while the Principal may have started overseas planning years ago—he saw clearly what his future would look like years ahead."

Lei Bus's evaluation of Fang Hong was high—he clearly noticed him and studied him seriously.

When he spoke of the Principal, he seemed relaxed; when he spoke of Jack Ma, he grew heavy—because the Principal never pressured him, while Jack Ma put immense pressure on him.

"Do you think the Principal will one day surpass you—in assets and industry?" the host asked.

"It's hard to say—it depends on how Chang'e Technology develops later. If it improves, solves its losses, and finds a new revenue stream, it's possible.

But the future is unpredictable—markets change instantly, people's thoughts shift constantly—I don't even know if I'll change my own mind later."

Lei Bus smiled as he said this.

Although he could see market trends, he couldn't see what others thought or how they'd develop.

They only saw the broad direction.

Chang'e Technology is currently in deficit; Bilibili, Toutiao, and Xiaohongshu aren't enough to support a truly large enterprise.

Gaming is a good revenue source, but gaming remains second-tier—it can't reach the top level.

In our country, no top-tier company relies solely on gaming—the largest is NetEase. Tencent claims to do gaming, but it's really doing capital.

It acquires global gaming companies through capital, and uses social traffic to distribute games from other countries.

Its own actual products have a very small audience.

Li Yanhong and Zhang Chaoyang also had interviews. Li Yanhong said: "I don't enjoy dealing with people—I prefer sitting in front of a computer, focusing more on technology."

He spoke gently, with a faint "gentlemanly" aura—he looked very cultivated.

He's good-looking, handsome—among all these big bosses, he's the most handsome, and also the most learned.

He graduated from Peking University, got his master's at New York State University; unlike Jack Ma, who went to Normal University; Fang Hong went to Beijing Film Academy—one's a teacher, one's a filmmaker.

Regarding the Principal's repeated attacks on him in forums, Li Yanhong said: "Some people have a more confrontational personality. If I meet someone like that, I might show it, but it's hard for me to become friends with such people—I just ignore them."

That means he won't become friends with Fang Hong—such people lack character, but he's magnanimous.

Fang Hong says his actions are problematic; he says others have personality problems—changing the subject.

You do something like that, yet don't let others speak?

Fang Hong also gave an interview, in a nearly identical room, facing Sa Beinan.

The two sat facing each other, cameras shooting from their sides, white fill lights above their heads.

Sa Beinan asked: "During this forum, I noticed an interesting phenomenon: when you debated, Jack Ma talked about air quality, water, food, and so on—I was confused, what does that have to do with phones or movies?"

"It has nothing to do with it, because Jack Ma doesn't make phones or film. I can say this—he doesn't understand phones, or the movie production process. If he doesn't understand, how can he discuss it with you?"

"So he changes tactics, shifts perspective, criticizes you from above. He refuses to place himself on the same level as Lei Bus and me—he must discard this level entirely and view the issue from a higher one."

"In fact, these two things are completely unrelated." Fang Hong said.

This refers to when Lei Bus said phones are people's "intimate companions," and Jack Ma countered with vague notions about air, food, and humanity's need for a better environment.

These have nothing to do with phones—they're just obfuscation. Lei Bus was misled and didn't rebut at the time.

Sa Beinan smiled and asked again: "At the forum, I noticed that when you spoke with Jack Ma, you said you increased ordinary people's income; he said his businesses created many jobs behind the scenes. How do you view this?"

"It's a lie. He used to say Taobao created ten million jobs; now he says twenty million. But many of those are delivery workers—would delivery workers not exist without Taobao?"

"If you follow his logic, Apple's global supply chain wouldn't have created hundreds of millions of jobs? It's completely unrealistic—it's just slapping gold leaf on his own face."

Fang Hong confronted Jack Ma without mercy.

In fact, Ant Forest later was also a lie—the state had already been building protective forests in the northwest for decades, just without publicity.

But after Ant Forest appeared, they loudly claimed credit for it as their own achievement.

"So I hope people think with basic logic—don't parrot others, don't believe everything they say just because it sounds reasonable."

"Leaders stand too high to understand; we're at the bottom, on the front lines—we can judge business phenomena by direct experience: simple, did you make money? Did your wallet get fatter?"

"If your wallet didn't get fatter, who took your livelihood? That's the truth." Fang Hong said again.

(End of Chapter)