Top Biz News
Fugitive Yang sets out his vision for the future
By Li Fangfang (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-11 08:00
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Hundreds of visitors to last year's Auto Shanghai 2009 were dazzled with a waltz-dancing performance beside a Zhonghua Motor's Brilliance FSV car. Behind the scenes Yang Rong, the carmaker's former board chairman, yearns to return to China but remains a fugitive in the United States. [Agencies] |
He had originally planned to retire in 2010 having achieved the ambitious target of helping to foster 100 billionaires and 1,000 millionaires through his enterprises in China. However, he didn't accomplish those aims and as the new year dawned. Yang Rong is making a fresh start, in the automobile industry.
The former board chairman of Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd and one-time third-richest man in China, who fled to the United States in 2002 following economic and legal disputes with his local government, is now planning a big move - starting a new auto brand to produce new-energy vehicles both in the US and China.
In his grand blueprint, Yang will establish six manufacturing bases in the two countries, with three of them, including vehicle and engine production, in China.
The total investment is estimated to be 66 billion yuan for the Chinese arm and $10 billion in the US. The vehicles will be powered by a combination of gasoline, electricity, a combination of the two and compressed-natural-gas.
"We will plunge 40 to 45 billion yuan into the first phase of the China bases, which will have a capacity of 3 million engines and 1 million vehicles," said Yang. "The first model will roll off the production line in 2012, and the annual output of our green vehicles in China will reach 3 million units by 2020."
His project in the US, under Hybrid Kinetic Automotive Holdings Ltd, has received official approval from the government of Alabama, with the right to use 30,000 mu of land for free and some tax-favorable policies.
Yang's plans for China are attractive to local governments and provide good grounds for possible cooperation. In the next eight years, his auto kingdom, with its production capacity of 3 million units and output value of 1 trillion yuan, will generate tax revenues of 100 billion yuan and provide 100,000 jobs with an average yearly income of 100,000 yuan.
Wang Chuantao, CEO of Yang's auto enterprise Zhengdao Automobile Co, visited more than 10 cities in China late last year to discuss the proposals with local authorities.
Wang has signed a framework agreement with the government of Shenyang, Liaoning province, where Brilliance is located and registered, to set up a 1 million powertrain systems production base, with an investment of 10 billion yuan.
Wang said Zhengdao will also consider other places such as Tianjin, Changchun, Hefei and Shantou as well as two other cities in Liaoning province.It looks like Yang, who brought Brilliance to a listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 1992, the first Chinese enterprise to go public in the US, is going to shake up China's automobile industry with his ambitious but detailed proposals.
Zhong Shi, an independent auto analyst based in Beijing, thinks that Yang's return to China's auto industry is not a mission impossible.
"Yang is a man that ignores all rules and never toes the corporate line," he said. "To him, anything is possible. When the Chinese automakers focused on 100 percent local production and research and development behind closed doors a decade ago, Yang started to bring talent and technologies from abroad to Brilliance."
"Yang is a vigorous man with plenty of guts," agreed a former Brilliance executive under Yang who is now a technology expert in the auto industry. He declined to be named but added, "If Yang really wants to do something, he never thinks of failure."
The expert told China Daily that Yang was always looking forward and had a long-term perspective. "When he managed Brilliance, he introduced many international technology standards and technologies to the Chinese enterprise. He was also the first in China's auto industry to poach talent from the US auto industry, in the 1990s, a move that Chinese automakers only started doing in recent years.
"If Yang had not left Brilliance, the automaker would assuredly be the leader of China's auto industry now."
