Top of the Great Era

Chapter 2922 Shameful Waste

"What do you mean?"

For a moment Zhou Buqi thought he had heard wrongly.

Tang Binchen said: "A commercial committee of the European Union has launched an investigation into Helo. It is not verbal, but formal. They have sent a notice to the company. They told us to be prepared, and their investigation team may come next month."

"Are you serious?"

Zhou Buqi opened his eyes wide. This was completely contrary to the situation he currently had and some basic judgments about the European situation.

Tang Binchen said in a deep voice: "I didn't quite believe it at first. I thought it might be a misunderstanding or just a formality. But after contacting several people in the EU, I found that this was not a formality at all. This is real. They really want to launch an investigation. This is related to the EU's recent major digital strategy."

“Well, a digital single market.”

After Zhou Buqi came to the UK, he also received many invitations and notifications from the EU about the establishment of a single digital market in Europe.

This is indeed a major breakthrough.

If the EU really launches this mechanism, it will be a huge step forward for the development of Europe's economic structure.

Because Europe is too rich.

It has been developed for decades.

The general environment of laziness and unwillingness to work is very serious.

The so-called love of laziness and hate of work not only refers to the mental state of employees, but also the mental state of the enterprise.

Many large European companies have a history of several decades or even hundreds of years.

For example, Volkswagen, LV, Ericsson, IKEA, GlaxoSmithKline, Total, etc. are not only giants that dominate the market, but also world-class companies. After decades of extravagance, these companies are just like people, immersed in the good life of the moment and cannot extricate themselves. It is really difficult to change.

Therefore, European companies have encountered great difficulties in their digital transformation.

It's basically the same as Japan.

Everyone wants to maintain the status quo.

Not interested in changing it.

This isn’t just the tech industry.

The current European market can be said to be fully impacted by foreign companies. Those foreign companies, relying on more advanced digital management systems, can have lower costs and cross-spatial management advantages across many European countries.

With digital management, the product manager can sit in France and direct product updates in Spain, Portugal and Italy, through online meetings, video exchanges and real-time communication.

It not only saves the high cost of constant business trips in traditional cross-border management, but also greatly improves operational efficiency.

Therefore, Europe's economic structure must be reformed.

We must innovate in the direction of technology and digitalization. Only in this way can we keep up with the new era and survive the competition from foreign companies.

According to analysis by a data company, if the EU's single digital market is established, it can save the EU more than 5000 billion euros in market operating costs each year. With lower costs, European products will naturally be more competitive around the world.

Zhou Buqi was all too familiar with this.

Because in later times, the domestic economy also fell into a panic recession under the upside-down situation, and similar policies were introduced to deepen the construction of a domestic unified large market. The two are not similar, but exactly the same.

Zhou Buqi laughed and said, "Europeans are really slow to react. I think the biggest stimulus is Geely's acquisition of Volvo."

Tang Binchen said, "Yes, it's Volvo! You're so right. I found the Vice President of Commerce of the European Union and talked to him twice. He specifically mentioned the matter of Volvo. I was really stimulated. The impact of Europe on the United States is actually acceptable to those Europeans. After all, the United States is strong enough to attract global talents. What really made them feel enlightened was Volvo." Zhou Buqi smiled, "Yes, China used to be the worst student among the worst students. The big companies in Europe went to China to develop, and they were treated as VIPs everywhere. They could make a lot of money by just making some small gadgets. Now it's different, we are the host now!"

“We didn’t talk about macro issues, but mainly about the outstanding achievements in reducing costs and increasing efficiency.”

Tang Binchen has worked in Europe for so many years and has a deep feeling that the waste in Europe is too serious and too many social resources are thrown away like garbage.

A very important part of the domestic economic difficulties is due to the fact that state-owned enterprises have too many social resources but do not know how to use them. They would rather let them rot in the warehouse than lose them to the private sector and be charged with the crime of loss of state-owned assets. In Europe, most of the once large state-owned enterprises have been dissolved. The current economic difficulties are mainly due to social waste. They are used to a comfortable, decent and easy life and do not care about small things at all. They will just throw them away.

All waste of production materials will eventually be reflected in the price of the product.

The more waste there is, the higher the price will be.

The less competitive it is.

Diligence and thrift are traditional virtues in China for thousands of years. Such virtues give domestic private enterprises a huge advantage in competition.

  The less waste, the lower the price!

Tang Binchen said: "Volvo had been losing money for many years, and then it was sold to Ford of the United States, hoping to use the American way to lead Volvo out of the predicament. But Ford failed, and still could not solve Volvo's dilemma of high costs, and it continued to lose money for more than ten years. Ford had no choice but to sell it to Geely. Then came the shock to Europe. After Geely bought Volvo, it took only one year to turn losses into profits. The key strategy adopted was not to lay off a large number of employees, but to make adjustments to the management system and business structure, which greatly reduced operating costs."

Zhou Buqi is very familiar with this. When Geely wanted to acquire Volvo, it specifically sought his opinion and said, "There is no doubt that our domestic companies are the best in the world in terms of digital operations! The most typical example is Huawei. Huawei's entire digital system was bought from IBM. But now, in terms of digital management, who is stronger, Huawei or IBM? To be frank, IBM is not even worthy of carrying our shoes."

"Well, American companies also have serious waste. They are better than European companies, but not much better. If Europe wants to help local companies reduce costs and increase efficiency in digital construction, it is better not to choose the United States over China."

Tang Binchen doesn't like to look at business strategies from the perspective of political speculation. He is a science student and is not good at these things.

Zhou Buqi nodded. "That's very strange. The EU didn't investigate Qualcomm, but suddenly investigated Helo. What does this mean? Thirty-six strategies? Repairing the plank road in the open, but marching through Chencang in secret? Using us as a cover?"

"That's not clear. Anyway, after the notice was issued, it had a very bad impact on the company. Many people were very worried, which seriously affected the internal atmosphere and morale of the company, as if we had made some mistakes." Tang Binchen shook his head. "The specific situation is not clear at the moment. Aren't you going to participate in the EU event? Go and find out."

"They are investigating Helo, what are they investigating?"

"There are mainly two aspects. One is data privacy, to see if we have leaked user data."

"no?"

"No! We are very strict in this regard and the enforcement is strong."

"That's not a big problem!"

Zhou Buqi is still relatively relaxed. He subjectively believes that the EU's investigation into Helo is probably just a test of the waters for the US technology giants to see.

Tang Binchen said: "Some time ago, the media exposed that the sale of user data in the Internet industry is very popular, and the EU is very vigilant."

"Only amateurs should be wary."

Zhou Buqi deeply disagreed.

  These days, who can still protect personal privacy on the Internet?

It's simply wishful thinking.

Some companies that do evil do sell user data. This is not only common in China, but also in Europe and the United States. But in fact, even if Internet companies do not do evil, they cannot protect it well.

Setting up data centers locally for physical isolation is at most an excuse to attract investment to the local area.

The best way to protect yourself is to stay off the Internet.

Tang Binchen went on to say: "The second point is that many functions provided by instant messaging tools such as Helo bypass the operators. This will have a great impact on the economic benefits of operators. The EU may hope to find some solutions."

"Operators? That's impossible!" Zhou Buqi became serious and not so easy to talk to. "We must fully cooperate with the EU in protecting user privacy and do it to perfection. We must not give in to the operators! We can't let Europe's local protection hurt our core competitiveness!"