"Once your engines can be self-sufficient, we'll part ways on good terms right away."
Director Tan's final remark left both Li Ye and Lu Zhizhang speechless. Even Lu Zhizhang could not help being tempted.
Because the terms Director Tan offered were not only exceedingly sincere, but also perfectly matched the spirit of "mutual assistance" among state-owned enterprises in the seventies and eighties.
The predecessor of the Light Vehicle Company had freely provided the complete production blueprints for Beijing 130 to more than a hundred enterprises across the country, allowing countless small and medium-sized automobile factories to survive because of the 130.
And now, Director Tan was merely asking the Light Vehicle Company to purchase his engines at "cost price." He would even send experienced technicians to help with research and development, and they could part ways at any time with a single clap.
What else could that be but mutual aid between brother units?
But Li Ye did not believe in such "selfless assistance."
Because decades later, he had seen far too many cases of people grabbing small gains only to suffer huge losses. He also knew Director Tan's true purpose: to increase production capacity as quickly as possible and seize the lead in forming an industrial scale.
Perhaps in Lu Zhizhang's eyes, the concept of industrial scale was still somewhat vague. He only felt that Director Tan's "cost price" was remarkably righteous.
But Li Ye knew that once Director Tan's products achieved scale, even if his own Kamaz engine development succeeded later, he would still fall behind Director Tan—perhaps even sink into the predicament of being one step slow, then slow at every step.
Take the rare-earth industry, one of China's greatest strengths decades later. It had actually built up its product scale through "cost-price" tactics.
Who would have