Chapter 145: Deploying Cao County

Huang He had a good reason for choosing Caoxian as the location for his northern server center.

Caoxian was situated right in the heart of the entire northern region. Of course, this referred not to an economic hub, but to a geographical center.

Back in the Shang Dynasty, Caoxian had once served as the capital for King Tang of Shang, though a subsequent flood forced a relocation of the capital. Later, the Zhou Dynasty also established its capital here, but upon discovering that Luoyang might be a slightly better choice, they packed up and left as well.

However, the superiority of Caoxian's geographical location was unquestionable. Measuring distances on a map revealed that Caoxian was situated at an exact, equal distance of 600 kilometers from the three major Chinese cities of Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai.

This distance happened to coincide with the optimal transmission speed limit of a single network cable. Consequently, establishing a network center in Caoxian would perfectly serve the entire northern region. (PS: Pure nonsense, please do not believe this.)

What's that? You ask what about the Northeast and the Northwest? That was not a problem either. At the very least, with the completion of the Caoxian network center, the network quality in those regions would inevitably improve. In the future, Huang He would certainly continue to expand his layout, ultimately forming a massive operational network covering all of China.

To be completely honest, both of those regions were currently too poor to warrant heavy capital investment from Boss Huang for network infrastructure. Fully covering the two most developed economic zones in China with network infrastructure was the wisest course of action.

No sooner said than done. Under Huang He's direction, the Jiangnan Group immediately contacted the Caoxian government. Upon hearing that the Jiangnan Group intended to build a network center in their county, the local officials naturally agreed with open arms and immediately began preparations to allocate land.

After all, in this era of nationwide investment attraction, Caoxian's performance record had been somewhat awkward. Now that a large-scale project was about to land, they naturally could not ask for anything better.

Therefore, Huang He flew to Shandong shortly after, drove directly to Caoxian, and finalized the network center layout plan after about a week of negotiations.

This plan was remarkably ambitious, divided into three distinct phases. The first phase involved occupying 100 mu of land to build a modern network center.

The second phase would expand the land area to 10,000 mu. While continuing to upgrade the network, they would also establish a comprehensive service zone named e-commerce. Although the people of Caoxian had no idea what e-commerce meant, it did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.

The third phase was even more grandiose. Huang He declared that Caoxian would be developed into a comprehensive internet research and development city, transforming it into another Shanghai, and so on.

The people of Caoxian simply treated this as hot air. Blathering costs nothing, after all; all Huang He needed to do was faithfully fork over the cash.

Boss Huang was certainly generous when it came to spending money. Although the government sold the land to Boss Huang at a premium price, the cost of land demolition and resettlement had to be paid out of Boss Huang's own pocket.

Fortunately, the population within this area was relatively small, and land in Caoxian was practically worthless. Boss Huang spent around 5 million yuan to clear out all the local residents, and construction teams moved in immediately. Just as Caoxian finished processing the policy procedures, the foundation for the network center was already complete, and construction of the main factory buildings was about to begin.

This speed once again shocked everyone in Caoxian. They could not help but sigh that this Huang He truly lived up to his reputation as a native of Wenzhou, and Wenzhou natives were indeed famous nationwide. Only such prompt action and execution could achieve this kind of development speed.

However, the awe-struck people of Caoxian had no idea that their Boss Huang was currently in a furious mood. The personnel he had dispatched to order servers and networking equipment from Compaq had informed him that Compaq would not be able to make any deliveries for the next six months.

"Why?" Huang He asked, baffled. "Haven't our previous collaborations with Compaq been extremely pleasant? Why won't they sell us servers?"

"Compaq has been acquired by Hewlett-Packard!" said Leng Zhimeng, who was in charge of procurement, with a helpless expression. "And one of HP's major investors is Masayoshi Son!"

"Masayoshi Son? No way, he shouldn't stoop to interfering with a company's normal operations over this!" Huang He said, thoroughly perplexed. Based on his understanding of Masayoshi Son, although the guy was quite ruthless, he was a very competent businessman and habitually refrained from interfering in the normal operations of the companies he invested in.

This was precisely why Huang He had the audacity to offend Masayoshi Son. In Huang He's estimation, Masayoshi Son would never do something as foolish as making Compaq refuse to sell servers to him—turning down money was simply not his style.

"I don't know the details, but that's the reality. Compaq says their server orders are booked all the way through the second half of the year. Even if we want to place a one-time order for servers worth 200 million RMB, they still can't meet our demand," Leng Zhimeng said.

"Could the server business really be doing this well?" Huang He muttered to himself. After all, ever since 2000, the growth rate of China's internet industry had been astonishingly fast, and it was quite normal for a server company's products to be sold out. Hadn't Compaq's inventory been sold out by him before?

Yet having a supply chain cut off for half a year straight was a bit too malicious. Up until this moment, Huang He still refused to believe that Masayoshi Son was pulling strings behind the scenes.

What was the actual truth of the matter?

Indeed, Masayoshi Son had nothing to do with it. Just as Huang He suspected, Masayoshi Son possessed a great deal of business acumen and had not meddled in these matters from start to finish.

However, some people under Masayoshi Son's command were prone to excessive cleverness. In September of the previous year, HP completed its acquisition of Compaq, and the biggest contributor behind the scenes was Masayoshi Son, who had invested in both HP and Compaq simultaneously.

When HP was brewing its plan to swallow Compaq, they approached Masayoshi Son and asked him to act as a middleman to broker the deal. True to form, the merger proceeded smoothly, and the two companies successfully finalized their acquisition plan.

This made everyone at HP extremely grateful to Masayoshi Son, and he instantly vaulted into the ranks of HP's major shareholders. Later, when they learned about Huang He through Masayoshi Son's secretary, the Greater China branch of the company decided to stall Huang He for half a year simply to let him experience the consequences of offending Mr. Son.

These were truly loyal and devoted lackeys; they took action before their master even uttered a command.

"Chairman, since Compaq won't sell to us, let's buy from someone else. I am already in contact with international heavyweights like IBM China, Oracle, and Microsoft China. We can still acquire the top-tier servers we need!" Leng Zhimeng said, waving her fist.

"What are their prices like?" Huang He asked with a frown.

"The prices..." Leng Zhimeng gave a wry smile. "The prices are naturally much more expensive than Compaq's—almost double. Otherwise, why do you think Compaq's brand sells so well in domestic markets? Isn't it just because they are the cheapest?"

"Well, even Compaq's prices are still quite exorbitant, and the maintenance costs are astonishing, running into the millions every single month, right?" Huang He said.

"Isn't that a matter of course? Everyone operates this way!" Leng Zhimeng replied instinctively.

"No, it absolutely shouldn't be this way. Server prices should never be this outrageous. Zhimeng, you don't realize this, but the money your brother-in-law worked so hard to make from blind boxes has all been poured into your network project. It's a bottomless pit. We can actually take advantage of this opportunity of building the new northern center to drive down server costs!" Huang He said.

"How do we drive them down?" Leng Zhimeng asked, puzzled.

"We buy domestic servers!" Huang He slapped his thigh and said, "Domestic ones are definitely cheaper, and maintenance will be much more convenient!"

"Don't, brother-in-law, please don't lose your mind. We can't buy domestic ones!" Hearing Huang He's words, Leng Zhimeng panicked and quickly tried to dissuade him.

"Why? I remember domestic servers have decent sales numbers too. For instance, that Inspur server brand ranks third nationwide in sales!" Huang He argued.

"Brother-in-law, small websites can indeed buy domestic servers because their scale is small and their data traffic is low. Cheap domestic servers can certainly support them.

"But we are different. QQ now possesses the largest and most extensive server demand in the entire country. Leaving aside whether domestic server manufacturers are even capable of producing servers of this scale, the key issue is that their quality is abysmal. A single server will run into trouble after just a few days of use and require constant maintenance!

"Those small websites constantly suffering from webpage crashes are the best example. But small websites can afford to crash because they don't have many users, and a crash doesn't matter much. Once our websites and products crash, it's a nationwide disaster. If we crash a few times in a row, the users we worked so hard to win over will all flock to QQ."

"Didn't you often lecture me that user volume is greater than everything else? Compared to user volume, we'd better stick to buying more expensive and stable foreign servers!" Leng Zhimeng said.

Leng Zhimeng's words might sound somewhat blindly worshipful of foreign goods and unsupportive of domestic industry, but that was indeed the reality of the entire sector at the time. It wasn't that domestic servers didn't exist, but their quality and flaws were simply too overwhelming. Large internet enterprises lacked the courage to use domestic servers, as they would crash often enough to drive anyone crazy.

"I see!" Huang He nodded, pondered for a moment, and asked, "Zhimeng, why do you think our domestic servers have these kinds of problems?"

"Ah... how would I know that?" Leng Zhimeng said.

"No, we have to get to the bottom of this issue!" Huang He slapped his thigh and said, "Go fetch Chen Shoufu for me and see if he understands this!"

Ten minutes later, Chen Shoufu came jogging over. When Huang He posed his question, Chen Shoufu replied, "If we're talking about technical and manufacturing reasons..."

"Flaws in technical design are definitely a factor. At the same time, there are issues with production quality control. Shoddy workmanship everywhere and the use of substandard components are common ailments of our domestic products!" Chen Shoufu answered very straightforwardly.

"Well, production issues can be improved and overcome, but technical issues are troublesome. Teacher Chen, do you know who the person most knowledgeable about servers in China is, and how to find him?"

"Ah... Chairman... why are you asking about this? Is someone going to build servers all by themselves?" Chen Shoufu asked instinctively.

"Exactly!" Huang He slapped his thigh again. "Since we can't buy them, we'll just build them ourselves!"