For instance, some contracted wasteland to reclaim and farm it, while others contracted barren hills to plant trees or established grain and agricultural processing plants. After years of working away from home, they had broadened their horizons and were naturally unwilling to remain content with simply tending their own small plots of land.

At this time, the price of steel rebar plummeted, as did the prices for cement and timber. The costs of various raw materials were all in free fall.

International crude oil futures crashed, and stock markets around the world tumbled. Domestic stocks plunged, and the Hong Kong stock market experienced a sharp decline.

The hardest-hit stock belonged to a domestic company listed in Hong Kong called Taobao. It had gone public in 2007 at 13.5 Hong Kong dollars per share, at one point reaching a high of 41.80 Hong Kong dollars. But now, Taobao's share price had already fallen below eight dollars. Yi Anguo knew that it would continue to fall—below seven, six, five, and even four dollars, eventually hitting a low of 3.4 dollars per share.

Affected by the sharp decline in Taobao's stock price, the share prices of other internet companies listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange also plummeted. In fact, it could be said that the stock prices of internet companies were plummeting globally.

The worst-hit sector, however, was bank stocks. The market capitalization of China's four major banks had fallen by sixty-five percent. But this wasn't the bottom yet, so Yi Anguo was in no hurry to enter the market.

Chen Ting was in Jian'an City in Xijiang Province, conducting an investment survey. She also investigated Nanzhang, the provincial capital. Huafeng Group planned to establish Huafeng Industrial Parks in both Jian'an City and Nanzhang City.

Xijiang Province was a major exporter of labor, and as the provincial capital, Nanzhang held a strong appeal for people throughout the province. Therefore, the Huafeng Industrial Park in Nanzhang would be massive, designed for a scale of at least one hundred thousand people.

Jian'an, on the other hand, was just a county-level city with a population of less than one million and little appeal to a migrant workforce. The Huafeng Industrial Park established there would be smaller, with a preliminary design for 30,000 people. The Huafeng Industrial Park to be built in Yi Anguo's hometown township would be even smaller, with a maximum capacity of 10,000 people.

The decision to invest in two industrial parks in the Jian'an area was entirely for Yi Anguo's sake. If his hometown hadn't been in Jian'an, Chen Ting would not have considered building an industrial park there, let alone investing in Xijiang Province at all.

However, upon hearing that Yi Anguo had invested in BYD and that Hua Xing Technology Company had reached a strategic partnership with them, assigning a portion of the Hua Xing smartphone OEM business to BYD, Chen Ting immediately grew unhappy and called Yi Anguo.

"What exactly do you mean by this? Didn't you say you were going to entrust the entire Hua Xing smartphone OEM business to our Huafeng Group?" Chen Ting demanded unhappily. "Why did you turn around and give a portion of the business to BYD? Aren't you going back on your word?"

"How have I gone back on my word?" Yi Anguo retorted. "Hua Xing smartphones are already sold out. Customers are lining up and have to wait several days to get one. Many of them are getting impatient and buying the iPhone 4 instead."

"Huafeng Group's production capacity simply can't keep up. What do you want me to do? Am I supposed to wait for you indefinitely?" he continued. "You can't even satisfy the domestic market right now, let alone the international one. We can't just wait for your production capacity to catch up before we expand internationally, can we?"

"What can I do? We're already trying our best! This situation will gradually improve; the current difficulties are only temporary," Chen Ting explained. "No one knew at the beginning that Hua Xing smartphones would sell so well."

"We're already increasing our investments, building new industrial parks, expanding our production scale, and partnering with other enterprises to boost output."

"But now you're partnering with BYD to assemble your Hua Xing smartphones. What happens later when our industrial parks are built, our production scale is expanded, and our capacity has improved? If there aren't enough orders for us then, what will Huafeng Group do?"

"Huafeng Group is the company you started from scratch, and it's meant to be passed down to your son. You can't just wash your hands of it!"

"Don't worry, there will be more than enough orders. I'm just afraid you won't be able to keep up. Even though I've given some orders to BYD, it hasn't affected Huafeng Group's production. As long as Huafeng Group's capacity can meet the demand, I will definitely prioritize giving the manufacturing contracts to you," Yi Anguo assured her.

"That's more like it. For a moment there, I thought you were betraying me and your son!" Chen Ting said, finally pleased.

"While I will definitely give Huafeng Group enough priority orders, the quality must be guaranteed. If quality issues arise, I won't rule out canceling our cooperation," Yi Anguo added.

"There definitely won't be any issues with quality. I will personally oversee the quality of the contract orders for Hua Xing smartphones. You can rest easy on that front," Chen Ting said confidently.

Huafeng Group was, at its core, a contract manufacturer. It relied on producing goods for its clients and had no brands or products of its own; it didn't conduct any research and development, nor did it sell anything directly. If it couldn't secure enough manufacturing orders, the factory's capacity would be underutilized. Workers would have no work and would have to be put on leave, and without shifts to work, they couldn't earn overtime pay.

A five-day, eight-hour workweek with weekends off, relying only on basic pay, was not enough to retain workers. Who would be willing to stay for just that minimal wage every month?

For the average worker, such a schedule was an impossibility. It wasn't that they didn't want that kind of life; it was because the entire reason they left home to work was to make money. A five-day, eight-hour week might be comfortable, but it didn't pay enough. The base salary was simply too low.

So, the average worker could only rely on overtime to make a decent living. If they weren't given overtime, they couldn't earn enough money, and if they couldn't earn enough, they wouldn't stay. If factories could raise their base salary enough so that workers could earn more without overtime than they did with it, the workers would surely be happy. The problem is, while the workers would be willing, the employers would not.

For a contract manufacturing firm, labor is a major cost to consider. If labor costs become too high, they lose their competitive edge.

This is also why, more than a decade later, many large, labor-intensive enterprises gradually relocated from Shenzhen to inland cities. Many moved directly to less developed Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and India. The labor in these places was cheaper than in China. Back in the 1990s, China had relied on its own cheap labor to attract a flood of foreign investment, turning the country into the "world's factory" and the "hub of manufacturing," where countless goods were produced and then sold worldwide.

The profits earned by domestic contract manufacturers, however, were meager, often relying on squeezing the wages of migrant workers. As these workers' wages slowly increased, the fees the manufacturers received for their services did not rise proportionally, causing their profit margins to shrink. To survive, they had no choice but to move their enterprises to places with cheaper labor in Southeast Asia, using lower personnel costs to secure higher profits.

If they didn't want to move, their only other option was to transform their business model—shifting from producing OEM products for other brands to manufacturing their own branded products to earn higher profits. Some companies managed this transformation successfully, while others failed in the attempt, ultimately going bankrupt or being acquired.

In the second half of 2008, during the financial crisis, many factories and businesses closed down, leaving a large number of industrial buildings vacant.

After securing the contract from Hua Xing Technology Company to assemble Hua Xing smartphones, and with an additional two billion Hong Kong dollars in funding from Hualong Investment Company, BYD moved quickly. They acquired several factories, integrated their operations, and brought in the most advanced production line equipment, achieving remarkably high efficiency.

On July 14, Apple officially announced that sales of the iPhone 3G had broken one million units in just three days, significantly surpassing the launch sales of the Hua Xing smartphone. The commercial success of the iPhone 3G allowed Apple's executives to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

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