The Red Torch

In 1987, Bu Yunfeng, the young and hot-blooded deputy captain of the inspection team at the Liancheng Industrial and Commercial Bureau, was assigned by his superiors to investigate the municipal boiler factory. The boiler factory had suffered losses year after year and had no value worth preserving. But taking various impacts and policy restrictions into account, the municipal government worked actively to coordinate a solution. Experts proposed merging the factory in its entirety into the municipal explosion-proof equipment factory. However, the latter's cadres and workers fiercely opposed the decision, believing that the municipal government's attempt to “rob the rich to help the poor” could very well drag them down!

After learning the facts, Bu Yunfeng supported the explosion-proof equipment factory's objections. He reported the matter to the leaders of Liancheng's municipal government and engaged in a heated argument with the experts. He believed merging a struggling factory into a profitable one would not solve the problem of keeping businesses afloat. Instead, it could easily drag the profitable factory into the red, creating a vicious cycle.

Deputy Mayor Ding Yichen deliberately gave him an impossible assignment, ordering him to take over as director of the boiler factory and clean up the mess!

From a guardian of the law to the head of a state-owned enterprise!

Twenty-five-year-old Bu Yunfeng never expected his position to change so suddenly. It was only on his first day in the job that he truly understood how difficult it was to run a business.

Seizing the opportunity presented by the country's major infrastructure development, he decisively shifted production and launched research and development projects for excavators, cranes, heavy-duty transport machinery, and more. With all-out efforts to overcome technical challenges, the dying old factory finally came back to life.

Bu Yunfeng, Song Zixuan, and other young people of the new era strove forward in the surging tide of the market economy. Through all their ups and downs, they became a precious glimpse of the countless ordinary people caught up in the transformations of a great era.

After weathering thirty years of hardship, Shanhe Heavy Industry completed its strategic global industrial-base layout, the “Big Dipper Formation,” in 2015. It was officially renamed Shanhe Investment Group and was honored with a place on the Fortune Global 500.