Shiqiang Song, Slkor: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of Shenzhen Huaqiangbei (Part II)
Slkor Shiqiang Song
Shenzhen Huaqiangbei is a world-class electronic information hardware distribution center formed due to demographic dividend, market dividend, policy dividend, geographic advantage and other economic factors when mainland China undertook the world’s third major industrial transfer. Huaqiangbei Museum defines Huaqiangbei as “No.1 Electronic Street in China; the Land of Global Technology & Fashion”. Huaqiangbei is a business center with many people, money, companies, goods, information, resources, opportunities and efficiency, and is the symbol of the achievements of China’s reform and opening-up and Shenzhen’s economic development.
What people take delight in talking about Huaqiangbei is the “billionaires” spawned in Huaqiangbei. During the period from 2020 to 2022, the shortage of goods and price increases gave birth to many more of them. Huawei Hisilicon Hi series, ST and GigaDevice’s MCU, Texas Instruments’ analogue components, Xilinx’s FPGA chips, Slkor’s SiC MOS tubes and Kinghelm’s signal connectors were in short supply and their prices increased significantly during this period. The reasons for the shortage are as follows: firstly, due to the lockdown during COVID-19 pandemic, the demands for smart phone and tablet PC erupted because adults worked at home and children took classes online, these products all need electronic components; secondly, the demands for some smart terminals and electronic parts and components increased significantly, e.g., the demand for smart door locks surged at the time, like smart phones, they all need the under-screen fingerprint lock chips, all of a sudden, a lot of capacity of the fabs was taken up; thirdly, due to the U.S. sanctions, Huawei’s orders took up a lot of capacity of TSMC for stocking, squeezing the space of other chip manufacturers; fourthly, the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, which need more chips than fuel cars, seriously impacting the industry chain. These situations in combination caused the serious shortage of goods and a big price hike as a result. The distributors and traders in the circulation links were reluctant to sell and hoarded goods, and terminal manufacturers stocked goods, which, in turn, fueled price increases. Many bosses at Huaqiangbei seized the opportunity to earn a lot of money. Many of my friends became billionaire, they bought luxury cars and house and often invited me to Huaqiangbei to drink to celebrate their success.
Slkor Shiqiang Song on Huaqiangbei’s Next Decade
But the price increases hurt some of small terminal manufacturers. A factory specializing in R&D and production of photovoltaic energy storage inverters owned by one of my fellows from Sichuan located in Bao’an District Fuyong Sub-district, went to bankruptcy due to this wave of price increases. It also caused damage to the industrial ecology, shaking the customer base which the small businesses at Huaqiangbei rely on. After all, “With the skin gone，to what can the hair attach itself?”
After more than three decades of rapid development, the business model at Huaqiangbei made not much progress, but China’s economic development model and social patterns have quietly changed significantly. During rapid economic growth, we have no sense of crisis. Huaqiangbei has low barriers to entry, no pricing power, no competitive barriers, low efficiency, no bargaining power in upstream and downstream, bosses usually make ends meet and wait for opportunity for speculation to make quick money. The opportunity for speculation is over, they encountered ever low tide this year, the goods hoarded by huge investment in the past several years now can only be sold by luck. Bosses are thinking about changing jobs, frictional unemployment occurs. Some bosses have been out of the game completely, and structural unemployment occurs. The bosses showing off their luxury cars, houses and watches in the past two years went to Singapore for sunshine because their companies have no business. Some other bosses, who used to work at daytime to make money and take training courses at night to learn, went to the Hongfa Temple to pray for blessings because of the depressed market.
So Huaqiangbei still have a future? Where should Huaqiangbei go from here? I think that as long as the SMEs at Huaqiangbei think diligently, analyze rationally, and keep pace with the historical development trend and comply with the laws of economics, they still have chance.
1. The industry still in the ascendant
The disruptive new technologies that drive the Kondratieff Waves have not yet emerged, and existing technologies and markets are still developing. In recent years, the development of AI, meta-universe, Microsoft ChatGPT and Huawei Pangu language model is still in the ascendant. Electrification, informatization and digitization need electronic components. Ranging from warships and missiles to smart door locks and Bluetooth headsets, from smart Apple phones to Kinghelm Beidou GPS navigation and positioning parts, they all need chips. According to the data from China’s General Administration of Customs, chip import in H1 2023 amounted to USD 162,609 million. According to incomplete statistics, the value of the electronic components imported, produced, processed, consumed and exported in mainland China each year is about USD 400 billion, the market capacity is large, product varieties is rich and industrial penetration rate is high, so there are still opportunities in the industry.
Huaqiangbei is a distribution center for electronic components and intelligent hardware, with annual sales of more than RMB 240 billion. With the support of the huge domestic market, and the geographical advantages thanks to Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, there is a lot of room for survival and transformation adjustment time. Huaqiangbei also has resources accumulated for many years. Professor Akita from Kanazawa University is my friend. He came to Huaqiangbei every time when he came to China to understand the industry trends and to have a look at the new products. He rented a house at Guanlong Village, Xili because there is a direct bus to Huaqiangbei!
Huaqiangbei Museum positioning Huaqiangbei as “No.1 Electronic Street in China; the Land of Global Technology & Fashion”
2. The general trend of replacement by homemade products
The level of the semiconductor industry is a sign of national strength. Leading in the chip field will create advantages in science and technology, economy, politics, military and many other fields. China is currently lagging behind Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea due to its late start, low investment of resources and insufficient support of national strength, but it is also the largest consumer of ICs and has a huge market volume, so domestic semiconductor enterprises have a bright future, and the general trend is replacement by homemade products. The vast majority of high-end chips used in China are imported, the self-sufficiency rate is less than 20%. Although this is a bottleneck, it is a great opportunity for the development of GD, Slkor, Silan, Kinghelm and other strong and forwarding-looking domestic enterprises.
Domestic semiconductor enterprises are developing rapidly and shortening the gap between China and Europe and the United States. They have reached the world’s advanced level in terms of assembly and test, their chip design capabilities are not bad, and the gap between them and international manufacturers lies in EDA tools and IP kernel. Huawei Hisilicon was ranked in the top ten chip manufacturers before being sanctioned. Because of the lack of Dutch-made ASML high-end lithography machines and the supporting cutting-edge technology talent, and the international advanced level there is a large gap in chip manufacturing between domestic chip manufacturers and international ones. In the fields of supporting materials and equipment, e.g., EDA software, high-purity silicon wafers, photoresists, special gases and target materials, there is a large gap and a large arbitrage space. Long-term growth and development will be achieved by hard work.
There are lots of offices and agents of IC factories around the world in the buildings around Huaqiangbei and at Chegongmiao and Nanshan Science and Technology Park near Huaqiangbei, and procurement and sales networks covering the world. They constitute Huaqiangbei’s channels and ecology. If making good use of them, Huaqiangbei will thrive again! Both Slkor and Kinghelm emerged from Huaqiangbei, having the gene that has the courage to fight, having been on the fast track to development. Slkor has opened two directly-owned stores in Huaqiangbei, and Kinghelm has placed a large antenna connector ad banner in Huaqiangbei!
3. Advantages of private enterprises
Vendors working hard at Huaqiangbei are characterized by small, fast and nimble. Their business sense is sensitive, they work hard and never say die, many of them got rich with the help of the rapid growth of China’s economy.
The Pearl River Delta and Shenzhen are paradises for private enterprises. As of the end of 2022, there are 2,379,000 private enterprises in Shenzhen, accounting for 97 per cent of the total number of enterprises in the city, contributing 55.9% of Shenzhen’s GDP, and 62.1% of Shenzhen’s imports and exports, and about 70% of Shenzhen’s tax revenue. Shenzhen Municipal Government promulgated 31 Regulations concerning private enterprises on July 19, 2023, which was dubbed by netizens “issuing document instead of handing out money or coupon”. Both the central government policies and the public opinion also showed goodwill to private enterprises. The society has gradually reached a consensus that SOEs are suitable for developing projects that stabilize the fundamentals of the economy and provide public services within the scope of the planned and command economy, characterized by high resources occupation rate, large scale, long cycle, slow payback, with low efficiency, lack of innovation, rampant corruption, lack of competition or weak competition and other drawbacks, while the private sector has such advantages as low resources occupation rate, more innovation, high efficiency, high vitality and incentives, suitable for developing the areas that require continuous innovation and have fierce market competition, but it faces the problems such as operating beyond the boundary and out-of-control supervision. In terms of job creation, for every one percentage point of GDP created, SOEs create 1.85 million job opportunities, while private enterprises create as many as 6.36 million. Huawei, BYD, Tencent and Kinghelm are all representatives of private enterprises in Shenzhen. With SOEs as economic ballast, private SMEs can develop rapidly and efficiently innovate to find new growth points and promote technological innovation and social development. Shenzhen is the city where private enterprises develop best, leading in efficiency, innovation, market response and growth rate. For decades, state-owned auto makers adopted the “market for technology” strategy, giving up market access tickets and market share, but haven’t grasped the technology yet. On the contrary, BYD, Xiaopeng Automobile, Geely Automobile and other private enterprises win victory in terms of both technology and market.
BMW 4S Store Replaced by BYD 4S Store
“Carbon Neutral” and energy storage battery is the hot spots in these two years. The global energy storage battery shipments reached 142.7 GWh in 2022, an increase of 204.3% over the previous year. CATL, BYD and SUNGROW POWER accounted for 80% of the global market. As long as the Russian-Ukrainian war continues, the new energy market will keep soaring. These outstanding private enterprises are competitive in the international market. They defeat the rivals with their wide range of products, of which the supporting electronic components are competitive products of Huaqiangbei. Given Shenzhen’s environment of rapid development, a favorable atmosphere for private enterprises and the fighting gene, both Huaqiangbei companies and Huaqiangbei will develop as long as they find the industries that can grow.
4. Transformation and upgrading of Huaqiangbei companies
As aforesaid, opportunities and challenges co-exist in Huaqiangbei. Challenges include the arrival of the “Lewis Turning-Point” of Chinese population; the room for using the generation gap of Western technology management to earn profit is narrowing; the economic development from China’s southeast coast to the northwest China is approaching the Hu Line (Heihe-Tengchong Line); trading Internet platforms are squeezing the survival space for Huaqiangbei companies; and customers reduce due to the fourth international industry chain migration. Huaqiangbei has resources, opportunities and big economic scale, but there are more than 100,000 small companies with serious homogenization and dispersion of resources, there is no leading companies and comprehensive competitiveness. Huaqiangbei must properly deal with these weaknesses before it has the opportunity to usher in a second wave of growth. Huaqiangbei need to develop theoretical research, promote entrepreneurship, carry out organizational and management innovation, business model iteration and technological innovation to make breakthrough. Huaqiangbei companies also need to integrate resources and expand their scales to expand in the upstream and downstream for strategic vertical development.
Slkor and Kinghelm advertisements in Huaqiangbei
4.1 New tools and new trends
To develop, Huaqiangbei must study new theories and master new tools to adapt to new trends. The Internet is a very efficient new tool. The underlying logic of Internet marketing is attracting viewers on Internet platforms first, developing tailored products according to their characteristics (user profiling) and selling them. Slkor’s strategy is promoting its development with new products, new technologies and new material R&D. Slkor also found out a set of methods suitable for Internet marketing. For example, “Slkor” brand promotion and penetration, and new Slkor products IGBT modules and power management chips sample delivery and small-volume sales are more efficient!
Selling products according to Internet theories is also an efficient way. Tom Xu, whom I got acquainted with in Huaqiangbei, published a book “Private Domain Traffic”, teaching fans to get traffic to sell products. He is now an influencer, reaching his pinnacle of life at a young age, often driving a Maserati sports car to invite me to dinner. Douyin account “Tom Zhang Selling Chips” was quite hot. It is said that Tom Zhang, dubbed as “Huaqiangbei Flashy Tycoon”, showing off his Bentley and Rolex Submariner Green, could earn RMB 50,000 yuan per hour in his live streaming. I heard that he stopped live streaming and began to invest in a media company. He becomes a beautiful legend in Huaqiangbei IC circle. I finally found a phenomenon that men with the English name TOM are quite powerful. So I want to let the male colleagues of Slkor and Kinghelm be renamed TOM so that they can get rich quickly and I will also get rich!
4.2 Promoting entrepreneurship
Huaqiangbei’s success is mainly because of mainland China’s reform and opening up, the third international industrial transfer, and the convergence of resources from Hong Kong, Macao and Southeast Asia to the Pearl River Delta, as well as the entrepreneurs in Huaqiangbei who are brave and bold. Huaqiangbei culture and entrepreneurship are characterized by braveness and boldness. First of all, the bosses in Huaqiangbei need to transform from the self-employed to entrepreneur before they can continue to develop, pursuing the “entrepreneurial spirit” advocated by the economist Friedrich von Hayek. Mr. Xiao Zhixing, a famous scholar, believes that entrepreneurs are a group of passionate people who are not satisfied with the status quo, they are even paranoia, they are innovative, adventurous, aggressive, resilient, tenacious, perseverant, and never say die. Their passion is driven by three factors: first, they work hard for a better life for themselves and their families; second, they want to be more successful than others; third, they are pursuing their own initial beliefs and lofty ideals. A few business tycoons I know from Chaozhou-Shantou region are actively helping students and repairing their ancestral temple to reflect the value of life. It seems that these three drivers match with Maslow need-hierarchy theory, which are in line with human nature.
These are the cases of the bosses around me, and the spirit is also the core of the long boom of Shenzhen Huaqiangbei.
4.3 Organizational and management innovation
Vendors and electronic components distributors in Huaqiangbei are family-based, usually operated by less than 5 people, even only one person, typically husband and wife with the help of a sister-in-law, the larger ones are operated with the help of sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law and young nephews. The business model is simple, the organization and management are not complicated, and many bosses are not good at management. What is urgently needed now is to improve the bosses’ thoughts and perspectives, break the old business model and expand company scale to gain competitiveness.
Zhang Junjun (right) on behalf of Slkor Awarding License to Agent
To achieve these goals, what is necessary is systematic learning at work, rather than learning coaching techniques or feeding employees on illusions or stirring up them. Ma Yingfeng, dubbed as “Huaqiangbei Ma”, after obtained the dealership of Royalohm capacitors from Shenzhen Kingsource, seriously improve his company’s internal management and team building, even able to provide customers with technical support and other services. A business will grow if it can provide more value. One of my friends Lao Huang trapped in Huaqiangbei model. Last year, he became an agent of Slkor. With the guide and systematic support of Slkor, he has a valuable brand, a stable supply chain, guaranteed quality and a stable customer base, and his team have hope. Now the monthly sales of his company are nearly RMB 1 million, and repeat order rate is 90%. Lao Huang grins from ear to ear every day.
4.4 Business model iteration
There is indeed someone in Huaqiangbei who got rich by speculation. However, a well-operated business must have steady profitability, instead of windfall. It is scientific development planning, reasonable product matrix, resilience and risk resistance that Huaqiangbei entrepreneurs need to think about and gradually achieve.
Charlie Munger said that to make more money, you need to delay gratification, research thoroughly an industry and stick to it in a long run. Huaqiangbei bosses want to make quick money, business model design and “money-making” method has evolved accordingly, and now the evil consequences occur. According to statistics, 20,000 new trading companies were established in Huaqiangbei in 2019-2022, while the prices of capacitors, resistors, MCUs, MOS tubes, digital and analogue devices increased consecutively in Huaqiangbei. The owners of these companies all are speculators who saw others making money by speculation and run into the market. The employees of these new companies are composed of former employees of other companies, former owners of fast food restaurants in Huaqiangbei, nurses and restaurant receptionists who have various relationships in Huaqiangbei. After hoarding speculation was over, they unfortunately became scapegoats with a pile of goods unsold. The final winners are the veterans who do the business for more than a decade and know the industry cycle. They have emptied their inventories at high prices and played in golf course.
Arising from Huaqiangbei, Kinghelm and Slkor have been marching towards the core of the value chain. We focused on product R&D for more than a decade, promoted the development of the companies with new materials, new technologies and new products. The two companies have become high-tech companies having their own R & D centers, production bases, and competitive products. Branding, promotion and marketing, organizational systems, supply chain management, customer service, legal and risk control, knowledge engineering, standardization and process management, training and development of talent, corporate culture and ethics contributed to our achievements.
4.5 Technological innovation and value core
Huaqiangbei has a tradition of innovation. SEG Plaza’s breakdown sales and the small counter rental of the previous Huaqiang market can be regarded as a business model innovation. In the era of copycat mobile phones, dual-card mobile phones, reverse charging, long time standby and other technologies were developed on the basis of MTK solutions. Unfortunately, only a minority of the companies kept developing and became companies with systematic competitiveness.
By virtue of the hardware advantage of Huaqiangbei, Longhorn, Hasee, TP-LINK and other companies arising from Huaqiangbei made breakthroughs in terms of both technology and business by integrating systems with software in large scale to reduce the marginal costs of software quickly and adopting the strategy “using hardware as the price driver and software as the value driver”.
There is another development model in Huaqiangbei. Longsys, Kinghelm, SUP Meilong, Hottech, Slkor, and Hua Guan Semiconductor expanded to the upstream of the industry chain. The companies adopting this model have the right to pricing and control over the supply chain, and they can also accumulate knowledge engineering and research and develop new products to keep iterating. At the top of the value chain, they have more chips when gaming with the upstream and downstream. Although it is hard at the early stage, there will be a long-term stable income at the late stage. Longsys has gone public, which is the optimal development path for SMEs in Huaqiangbei.
5. Manager’s dilemma and breakthrough
In recent years, the domestic and foreign economic and political situations have undergone significant changes. The development of Huaqiangbei has been hindered. Since the roads in Huaqiangbei was closed for building the subway in 2016, Huaqiangbei experienced a slump until 2023. High-end talents necessary for the development of Huaqiangbei are insufficient, the companies in Huaqiangbei have no industrial strategic depth, high rents force away the fast-growing companies with large scale, the leading companies cannot provide sufficient support, small companies are fragmented without core competitiveness, there are no big companies matching with the commercial scale of Huaqiangbei, there is no shopping mall that can attract people in Huaqiangbei, the government’s industrial guidance policies are not in place, the overall innovation is insufficient, the city’s urban planning falls behind, Internet platforms rise with the characteristics of decentralization, and buyers’ dependence on Huaqiangbei and other problems have been exposed, which can be seen from the vague positioning given by the Huaqiangbei Museum!
At the early stage, Huaqiangbei was a spontaneous market, and its success was driven by many elements of market economy converged unintentionally. At the current stage, it is the top priority to play the role of “active government”, research the core business elements of Huaqiangbei, and then optimize the resources allocation of market economy, guide SMEs to carry out technological innovation and business model transformation, help improve the overall quality of the bosses in Huaqiangbei, help the SMEs in Huaqiangbei to expand their scale, and help Huaqiangbei regain popularity. When will popularity and wealth return to Huaqiangbei?
Shortage and outflow of high-end talents is a big problem. The bosses of SMEs in Huaqiangbei are the first generation of winners in Shenzhen, but now they are at loose ends because of business model iteration and intensified competition. There is no official development seminar, training, policy, or financial support from the Futian District government. Huaqiang Group and SEG Group, the “Huaqiangbei duo”, reduced to landlords who try every means to increase rents. Companies have to leave Huaqiangbei when they develop to a certain extent. They failed to use the advantages of the industry chain to help companies grow into outstanding ones.
There is the “No.1 Electronic Street in China” and dozens of professional markets in Huaqiangbei, which attract people to Huaqiangbei during working hours on weekdays, mainly hardware engineers, purchasers and industry-related practitioners. “Huaqiangbei Business Circle” serves the surrounding residents and tourists, attracting people for Huaqiangbei during holidays and non-working hours. In addition, there are nearly 300,000 people working and living in Huaqiangbei for a long time. The huge and stable traffic is the basis of the prosperity of Huaqiangbei! Commodities, people and malls are the carriers of information and transactions. Without traffic and car parks, Huaqiangbei will not be a business center anymore! The attractiveness of the Huaqiangbei business district is decreasing, there are no star vendors like “Wanjia Department Store” and “Women’s World”, the scale and attractiveness of Jiufang Commercial Plaza and Century Link Mall is not enough, the old infrastructure and lack of operational capacity also cannot match with Huaqiangbei’s commercial volume. WORLD·COCO Park, MixC, Coastal City and other business districts suck away the consumer power. The government should use measures such as introducing leading companies in the industry chain and building first-class shopping malls to address these situations!
Leading companies of the industry chain not only drive the growth of local GDP, but also boost the development of various segments through the control of the supply chain and cultivate a batch of talents. Kodak have reshaped Rochester, NY, the city in which it is located. Kodak founded the University of Rochester, an excellent hospital system, and a museum. We can draw the same conclusion from Foxconn Zhengzhou, Henan Province and Huawei Xi’an, which employed large quantity of local college students! The Shoping Mall concept originated from the United States. The peak sales of shopping malls accounted for 35% of the total retail sales. Shopping malls can meet everyone’s needs. Wanda Plaza, MixC and other famous brands are the first choice for improving Huaqiangbei’s brand positioning, commercial scale and the city operation capability. Apple flagship shop, Huawei AIOT and other new business models can also be introduced to attract people to Huaqiangbei and consume!
Huaqiangbei Sub-district encourages the transformation and upgrading of the existing properties. But they don’t have foresight and unified planning. The parking difficulty, poor small traffic circulation and other problems are not solved. Huaqiangbei also faces the competition of South China City Electronics Market and Dongguan Fenggang JD Electronic City. Huaqiangbei introduced the electronic trading center of CECport, explored the headquarters economy model, and introduced Huaqiangbei Mi Home offline shop and DJI flagship shop. However, these initiatives have no effect on the huge Huaqiangbei. There is a lot of work to be done to vigorously use the financial resources of the central district Futian and the advantages of Hong Kong to support the excellent high and mid-end electronic companies in Huaqiangbei, attract the outstanding companies leaving Huaqiangbei to come back to Huaqiangbei and introduce leading companies in the industry chain with strong driving ability!
6. Spillover effect in Huaqiangbei and GNP concept
There will be a spillover effect when Huaqiangbei develops to a certain stage. Talent, brands, technologies, capital, models, and concepts will be exported, spread and copied. SEG plazas emerged across China a few years ago. Here I want to discuss GNP (Gross National Product), i.e. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plus net factor incomes from abroad, mainly overseas incomes from capital, technologies, management, labor remuneration, which is the main feature of internationalization. We have to learn from Japanese and South Korean companies, which encountered similar difficulties as we do now. Due to natural resources and market size and other endowments, Japan’s former richest man, Uniqlo’s owner, Mr. Tadashi Yanai, moved the focus of business overseas to hedge against the low desire domestic market. A few years ago, Uniqlo opened 866 shops in Greater China, more than 813 shops in Japanese market. Uniqlo’s revenue in Greater China is nearly RMB 28 billion in 2022. I know Uniqlo because of the sexual scandal, and I ever bought casual trousers in Uniqlo Huaqiangbei shop. Samsung’s overseas mobile phone sales are much higher than its domestic sales. Transsion, G5 and One Plus arising from Huaqiangbei successfully expanded overseas market. Transsion Holdings (688036.SH) released its semi-annual financial report on August 28, 2023, recorded revenue of RMB 25,029 million with a year-on-year growth of 8.31%, net profit of RMB 2,102 million with a year-on-year increase of 27.10%. Transsion mobile phones with AI beauty technology improves the recognition of the selfies of African users. That’s why their products are popular in Africa.
Huaqiangbei Shiqiang Song believes that Huaqiangbei is a thoroughly tempered node of the international electronic information hardware supply chain, and its semiconductor industry chain covers the whole world, connecting with the overseas market in all aspects. The electronical components and parts are characterized as small volume with high value, high standards and accurate models, and easy storage and transportation. The merchants in Huaqiangbei used to serve customers around China, now they can serve the customers from Southeast Asia and even the world. It is natural for the companies in Huaqiangbei to expand overseas markets.
Vietnam, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries obtained many low-end production capacities of the manufacturing industry by virtue of their low labor costs and other advantages. China’s manufacturers are also actively expanding overseas markets. TP-LINK, T&W, Longhorn, Hottech, SDG, and Skydragon has built plant in Shenzhen-Hai Phong Economic Cooperation Zone of Vietnam. Recently, a large number of Chinese enterprises have started investing in Mexico and South America. These enterprises are upstream and downstream customers of Huaqiangbei. Companies in Huaqiangbei can take the opportunity to expand overseas markets.
Internet trading platforms such as hqew.com, lcsc.com, ickey.cn, and ichunt.com are equivalent to a virtual Huaqiangbei in the Internet space. Customers can find and purchase the products they need online. These platforms all have their overseas version. International platforms such as digikey.cn and mouser.cn, together with international integrated platforms such as alibaba.com aliexpress.com and Amazon, all can support transactions around the world. In addition, current information technology, digital technology, and translation software make it so easy to sell products abroad. My friend in Chengdu, Brother Wei, whose English is poorer than mine, uses iFLYTEK translation software to arrange for four Pakistani female employees to sell their “Henglitai” microwave RF devices, vying for the market share of Kinghelm products.
Introduction of Huaqiangbei business expert Shiqiang Song
7. Refinement, dissemination and inheritance of Huaqiangbei culture
We sincerely hope that Huaqiangbei will revive or even get a rebirth, but we also have to face up to the reality of westward shift of Shenzhen’s economic center and lack of economic support factors. After all, Huaqiangbei is only a dot in the vast history of human development, materially prosperous Huaqiangbei sooner or later will fade away. What we have to do is to refine the spirit of Huaqiangbei, sublimate Huaqiangbei culture, make them disseminated and inherited and become a valuable asset for us and future generations.
Huaqiangbei spirit is venture and innovation. In those years, forced by poverty and the call of wealth, Huaqiangbei immigrants stayed with the courage to venture, and developed with innovation and hard work. These qualities were sublimated into Huaqiangbei culture, which is venture, innovation, resilience, and keeping exploring. Without culture, Huaqiangbei has no soul and Huaqiangbei’s future is meaningless.
I often wonder if there will be a song, a paragraph of text or a video recording the timeless memories of Huaqiangbei? Like the Shanghai Bund, when the song begins, “Wave Run, Wave Flow ……”, it will evoke people’s love and longing for the old Shanghai, and we will think of Xu Wenqiang and Feng Chengcheng.
The Huaqiangbei Museum is now in operation, and Huaqiangbei has had a spiritual home. I personally collected a lot of information and data about Huaqiangbei and wrote a lot of articles on Huaqiangbei. Xie Jiapeng, a fat writer whom I call “Huaqiangbei Xu Zhiyuan”, often lingers in Ms. Han’s “Chip Time” cafe, and he seems arty when he stirs the coffee with his big hairy hand in the shape of an orchid finger under the misty light, making us believe that Huaqiangbei has culture, even the Little Brother Wei graduated from the highest education institution Peking University also came to support Huaqiangbei. Huaqiangbei Sub-district has created cultural brands such as Dancing Lion Celebrating Spring Festival and Huaqiangbei Science and Technology Art Festival, adding cultural features to Huaqiangbei. A bowl of Teochew rice noodles in an alley of Huaqiangbei, a single bill from a delivery guy, braised meat balls in brown sauce served on the first floor of Shanghai Hotel, and the blurred lights of Futian South Night Market will be our beautiful memories!
I hope Huaqiangbei will become better and better and continue to flourish for many generations to come!
Biography of Mr. Shiqiang Song
Mr. Shiqiang Song is a researcher of private economy at the Economic Development Center of the State Council, a member of the electronic information expert pool of the China Association for Science and Technology, and an expert in Huaqiangbei business research. Mr. Song was the CEO of a listed international real estate company, and now he invests and manages Shenzhen Slkor Semiconductor Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd. (www.kinghelm.com.cn). Both Slkor and Kinghelm are national high-tech enterprises, owning dozens of original invention patents and software copyrights. At present, Slkor is one of the Chinese semiconductor companies developing rapidly and steadily. The company’s vision is to become the “leader in semiconductor industry”.
“With Slkor, BDS is connected”. Starting from the development of BDS GPS antenna, Slkor has developed and produced RF microwave antennas, RF jumper cables and electrical signal connectors to embrace the intelligent digital era of the Internet of Things. Mr. Song has a high reputation and influence in the semiconductor and BDS positioning and navigation industry. Mr. Song has been working in the electronics industry for many years and is constantly striving for a better business environment in Huaqiangbei, in the hope that Huaqiangbei will become a window of reform and opening up and a symbol of Shenzhen’s economic development and continue its glory.
