Chapter 81: The Qilin and the Hezun

If you buy a horse’s bone for a thousand gold, you mustn’t stop at just one bone—you must attract more renowned horses to come.

For Dongling High-Tech to break through the encirclement of foreign brands, it must establish a top-tier laboratory to support its technology department.

To cultivate a top-tier laboratory requires not only massive R&D investment but also a continuous influx of elite talent—both are indispensable!

The foundation Li Dongling plans to establish will launch two awards: the Qilin Award and the Hezun Award. The Qilin Award will reward students at Hanxi Jiaotong University and Pingyang University who need assistance, including living subsidies for struggling students and scholarships for high-achieving ones.

If the Qilin Award runs well, it will eventually expand to more universities nationwide—this step allows Dongling High-Tech to make initial contact with China’s top university talents; we don’t expect to draw them all into our fold, but even attracting a portion will be enough!

This is the lowest-cost, most effective way to recruit talent—otherwise, why would overseas giants be so eager to donate to universities? Beyond tax avoidance, recruiting talent is their primary goal, and it’s a method with low investment and high returns.

If you give scholarships to a thousand geniuses and attract a hundred of them, and if one among those hundred becomes an industry giant, the money spent will have paid for itself tenfold!

Take another example: whether IBM or Lenovo computers, both love donating computers to schools—it’s also a form of promotion. It may take ten years or longer to see returns, but it’s guaranteed not to lose money.

Those who first encounter a computer brand through a donated machine will, when they grow up and buy computers, naturally think first of that same brand they first used.

Scholarships and computer donations both require time and cost, but one day they will bear fruit!

As for the Hezun Award, it targets graduate students, PhD candidates, professors, and others who have already produced academic achievements.

Like the Qilin Award, the Hezun Award’s purpose is to recruit more elite talent for Dongling High-Tech, and its goal is even more direct and pure: if top-tier geniuses are willing to collaborate with Dongling High-Tech and produce significant results, Dongling High-Tech will award them the Hezun Award—and winners will receive massive cash prizes!

In the future, Dongling High-Tech will aim to make the Hezun Award one of the most prestigious academic honors in the world—whether through hype or praise, it must create the perception that whoever wins the Hezun Award is China’s top academic giant.

In life, people care only for fame and fortune—no one can escape this. The most skilled hunters often appear as prey themselves; instead of exhausting effort to recruit talent, better to let the giants come to you!

If the Hezun Award succeeds and creates the public perception that winning it means becoming the number-one figure in academic research, drawing countless heroes to compete for it, the benefits to Dongling High-Tech will be unimaginable.

Nothing in this world comes for free—you must pay to gain, especially in research, where there are no shortcuts. This is an industry built on constant trial and error; having geniuses can drastically reduce those costs—Dongling High-Tech needs more geniuses!

When Li Dongling announced plans to establish a foundation and award the Qilin and Hezun Prizes, Han Qianyi’s eyes lit up—if these two awards were established, it would be absolutely beneficial to Hanxi Jiaotong University: not only could Dongling High-Tech recruit talent, but Hanxi Jiaotong could also use the awards to lure more talent to itself.

“Hanxi Jiaotong University fully supports these two awards,” Han Qianyi said with a smile.

After Han Qianyi and the other university leaders left, only Li Dongling and Liu Youguo remained in the room. Liu Youguo, still excited yet uneasy, asked, “Aren’t the prize amounts too high?!”

“The research industry needs this funding, and researchers need Professor Liu as a role model. People live on hope—even if that hope is faint!”

China’s research industry has now sunk to near its lowest point—even military R&D units lack funding, let alone other sectors.

“Professor Liu’s team must receive this prize money—the joint laboratory needs a benchmark to emerge!”

Li Dongling said directly: this prize money, like the pole planted at the gate, is the first step in promoting the Hezun Award—it must be disbursed, or no one will believe in it.

“Professor Liu, Dongling High-Tech has new R&D projects requiring your support for our technology department.”

Dongling High-Tech has many upcoming projects—mini radios, car radios, and others—all requiring assistance from the joint laboratory.

Liu Youguo readily agreed to everything Li Dongling proposed; faced with the massive prize money about to be awarded, he had no complaints—even if he had to work like a beast for the joint laboratory.

Tan Minghua and the other team members accompanying Liu Youguo also had no complaints—they were still students, and this prize money, even the smallest share, would amount to tens of thousands of yuan, equaling years of outside income—what more could they want?

When news spread that Dongling High-Tech would award Liu Youguo’s R&D team a million-yuan prize, it instantly swept through the entire laboratory, and rumors began circulating across Hanxi Jiaotong University.

This million-yuan prize, for China’s nearly silent research industry, carried an impact no less powerful than a nuclear explosion.

The media hadn’t reported it yet, but in Xi’an’s dozens of universities and research institutions, the news was already spreading like wildfire.

Chen Tao, current head of Dongling High-Tech’s technology department, had previously worked at the Xi’an Electronic Engineering Research Institute; when he was poached with a high salary, it caused a stir—but nothing compared to the impact of directly awarding a million-yuan prize.

The Xi’an Electronic Engineering Research Institute had a cooperative relationship with Hanxi Jiaotong University; even half its staff were Hanxi Jiaotong graduates, some of whom were directly trained by Liu Youguo—it would be strange if they weren’t affected.

“Did you hear? Liu Professor’s team received a million-yuan prize from Dongling High-Tech!”

Two Hanxi Jiaotong graduates at the institute whispered to each other.

“I heard—it’s really true? That’s a million!”

“How much money has Liu the Old Man’s electronic pet project made for Chen Tao’s company? I heard from a classmate in the provincial industry bureau that the Japanese foreign exchange earned so far is already enormous.”

“A million-yuan prize equals about a hundred thousand U.S. dollars—I heard engineers who went to America start at tens of thousands of dollars a year.”

“That’s true. With Liu the Old Man’s skills, if he went abroad, he might earn even more. But Liu Professor and Chen Tao were lucky to meet Dongling High-Tech.”

“Do you think our institute will ever collaborate with Dongling High-Tech on a project?”

The two whispered, feeling envy toward Liu Youguo and Chen Tao, and began to hope their own institute might also land a piece of the pie.

Once the news began spreading, it couldn’t be stopped—even without official reporting, the story was already circulating across China’s top universities and academic circles.

Until Hanxi Jiaotong University’s internal publication, the “Hanxi Jiaotong University Journal,” confirmed the matter in print.

Although it didn’t explicitly name Liu Youguo’s team as the recipients, it still reported the fact and acknowledged it!

“Our R&D team, in cooperation with an external research institution, achieved a major breakthrough and received a million-yuan prize. After submitting a portion to the university, the remainder will be distributed among the R&D team.”

This is an era of mass entrepreneurship: a unit developing nuclear submarines started producing cream with high-speed centrifuges—everyone who tasted it said it was great; a fighter jet design team invented washing machines; a radar production team sold fans with a seventy-year lifespan—these product lines were perfectly matched.

Compared to that, Liu Youguo’s team, by contributing part of the prize money to Hanxi Jiaotong and keeping the rest for themselves, was already remarkably conservative compared to those R&D units switching industries.

After Hanxi Jiaotong acknowledged the prize, media reports exploded, and within days, every researcher in China had heard this shocking news—the first time many realized research could actually earn money.

Whether these researchers would flock to Hanxi to join the Dongling High-Tech–Hanxi Jiaotong joint laboratory remains uncertain, but this news planted a seed in the hearts of China’s researchers, especially the top technical talents: joining the joint laboratory or Dongling High-Tech might bring unexpected rewards.

This seed may not sprout for a long time, but one day, it will bear fruit.

While the research industry buzzed with debate, Hanxi media reported that Dongling High-Tech had launched the Qilin and Hezun Awards, drawing widespread attention.

The Qilin Award would be a scholarship, but the Hezun Award attracted particular interest—especially after Liu Youguo had just received a massive prize—many researchers speculated whether the Hezun Award’s prize money would match the amount given to Liu Youguo.

“Are you really going to invest this much into the foundation?!”

In Pingyang, in Dongling High-Tech’s office, Yao Luoying, who was helping draft the foundation’s regulations, couldn’t help asking again when she saw the scale Li Dongling planned to invest in promoting the Qilin and Hezun Awards.

(End of Chapter)