Recently, Huichuan Technology released the transcript of its chairman Zhu Xingming’s 20th anniversary speech on the official micro blog, with more than 20,000 words of content. It’s well worth reading and covers 5 areas. The core answers a question: What changes has Huichuan undergone in the past two decades? And what are the regularities behind these changes?

The current market value of Huichuan Technology is 160 billion yuan, and its revenue has increased from 11 million yuan in 2004 to 23 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of more than 1,400 times. Huawei is one of the most successful enterprises for entrepreneurs.

Zhu Xingming also highlighted the photovoltaic inverter business that had been given up, after China’s second, but gave up in 2016, which is the biggest mistake in the history of Huichuan strategy, and missed the great opportunity of the era. This business sunshine power supply achieved 15 billion yuan of income, even the latecomer Guruiwatt, last year’s income also achieved 7 billion yuan. That’s how it feels in reality.

 

On December 23, 2023, when Huichuan Technology ushered in the 20th anniversary celebration, the company’s chairman Zhu Xingming’s annual speech arrived as scheduled.

The following is the transcript of Zhu Xingming’s speech:

After watching the 20th anniversary promotional video of the establishment of Huichuan Technology – “A letter to 20 years ago”, I do not know whether everyone has been touched? This letter brought me to tears three times. The first time, when I and the team together to complete this copy, I was alone in the office, emotions such as welling up, can not help but burst into tears; The second time, our photographer finished the first draft of the film, and I was alone in the studio watching the work. Again, I

was deeply moved and tears came to my eyes. For the third time, watching this video live today, I fought back tears.

I know that this letter cannot be sent in the physical world, but I sincerely hope that in the world of consciousness, it can be sent to everyone’s heart, including myself, every employee who participated in the creation of Huichuan, and those who have left Huichuan. Today, I hope it reaches you, too.

The letter is emotional, and next, I will present a more rational content: In the past 20 years, how has Huichuan undergone changes? And what are the regularities behind these changes?

Huichuan, since its birth in 2003, has gone through 20 spring and autumn. In formulating this speech, I thought hard, trying to find the most accurate and profound words to describe the current state of Huichuan and its twenty years of development. Finally, I found it – it was “breakout.”

 

In 2003, we bravely set foot on the road of entrepreneurship, at that time, the Chinese industrial control market was almost monopolized by foreign brands. However, through 20 years of unremitting efforts and persistence, we not only achieved a breakthrough in the Chinese market, but also determined to continue to challenge the global market in the next 20 years.

After defining “breaking through” as the narrative theme, how to choose the appropriate dimension and construct the narrative structure to comprehensively deconstruct and thoroughly sort out the practice of breaking through in Huichuan from dozens to tens of thousands of people in the past 20 years has become the key to designing the speech. After a lot of hard thinking and a lot of back and forth, we finally decided to go back to the two conversations in 2003 where we found the inspiration for the answer.

 

Back in early 2003, I had a conversation with a foreign friend in Nuremberg, Germany. My partner asked me, “Why do you want to start a business when you make millions a year as an executive in an American company?” In Europe, it’s Incredible for someone like you to start a business, Incredible!” I told him three things that were the assumptions I started the business with:

First, China has soil. China must be the fourth big automation market after the United States, Europe and Japan. Because where the manufacturing industry is developed, there must be good soil for the growth of automation companies.

Second, China is in need. At that time, China was experiencing a jump from imitation to independent manufacturing, and the great development of manufacturing must have a demand for localized excellent parts manufacturers, which provided a broad space for our growth.

Third, resources are guaranteed. I chose to start my own business at the age of 36, with the resources and experience I have accumulated to ensure that I can do things well and create value for clients.

Based on these three assumptions, I firmly told my German friends that I would return to China to start a business. What they thought was impossible, we have now achieved.

These three assumptions are actually two kinds of assumptions, the first and second are assumptions about The Times – China has soil, China has needs; The third is the value assumption – we have resources. I find two clues here – times and values.

 

One night in the early spring of 2003, an old friend said to me earnestly by the lake: “Mr. Zhu, I think it is very difficult for you to succeed.” How you lead the founding team of 18 people to go long-term is an impossible task!”

However, I replied, “Although I am a novice entrepreneur, I firmly believe that I can do three things: first, be kind to others, which is what my parents taught me from a young age; Second, the pursuit of fairness, although absolute fairness is difficult to achieve, but we must strive for it, because it is the cornerstone of human relations; Finally, half a step ahead, I will always become the company’s most dedicated person, my dedicated purpose is to be half a step ahead of colleagues, leading everyone’s thoughts. If you can do these three things, I don’t believe that the team can’t bring it up!” This conversation, in fact, is about humanity, the founders of the company’s initial deep assumptions about human nature, interpersonal relationships and growth.

Reviewing two conversations 20 years ago, I found the latitude of analyzing the three keywords of times, value and humanity.

Therefore, the outline of my speech today is: Breaking through China, times, values, humanities, breaking through the world.