Chapter 192 The Internet Begins with Internal Informatization

There is a saying in Hong Kong's business community that "it is easy to shake a mountain, but difficult to shake a piece of land."

But there were Chinese businessmen who wanted to take over Hong Kong Holdings. In 1987, a new Chinese financial consortium led by Li Chaoren joined forces to shake up Hong Kong Holdings.

However, accidents happen all the time. The soaring Hong Kong Hang Seng Index suddenly plummeted.

As the stock market crash has come again, the business community in Hong Kong is terrified and is in a state of panic. They are like a bodhisattva crossing a river, unable to save themselves, so how can they have the courage to get involved in a takeover war?

In addition, some people advised them not to drive out all British capital, so they had no choice but to call off the plan, thus wasting the last chance to acquire Hong Kong Holdings.

If the Chinese financial group led by Li Chaoren in the previous life had been more decisive, they would definitely have been able to take over Swire Properties.

Shortly after Liu Zhicheng met with Simon Keswick, the mainland officially notified the British Empire that the documents for Hong Kong had been prepared.

The meaning is very clear. If the British Empire does not come to the negotiation table, the mainland will unilaterally implement the plan on the grounds that the British Empire is not cooperating with them.

The British Empire had no choice but to compromise and accept the proposal and begin preparing for negotiations.

When the Keswick family received the news, they suddenly launched an attack at the Jardine Matheson board of directors and dismissed Newbijn as chairman of the board.

At this point, Simon Keswick officially took over Jardine Matheson, and then invited Boswell to start the reorganization of Jardine Land.

At the same time, he also sent people to conduct secret negotiations with Liu Zhicheng and the ship charter king on the sale of Hong Kong Electric and Hong Kong Voice.

What surprised Liu Zhicheng was that Simon Keswick asked Liu Zhicheng whether he could acquire shares in the property in the new round of negotiations.

Liu Zhicheng was overjoyed and said on the spot that he could negotiate the transfer of Swire shares.

However, Jardine Matheson proposed that the transfer of HK Electric and HK Electric should be discussed first so that they would have funds to restructure Jardine Land.

Although HK Electric is under Jardine Matheson, HK Electric is a subsidiary of Hong Kong Swire. If HK Electric is sold first, the value of Hong Kong Swire will be greatly reduced.

Considering that it is not possible to own two power companies at the same time, and the Hong Kong Telephone Company will definitely be reorganized into Orange Technology.

Liu Zhicheng had no choice but to nod in agreement with the country's approach of taking things one step at a time.

The negotiations on the Hong Kong issue were a protracted process. It was not until 84 that a basic consensus was reached and a draft agreement was signed.

That was when the Keswick family began to withdraw, and it was also a good time for acquisitions. Moreover, the cross-holdings between Hong Kong Land and Jardine Matheson would be resolved.

At the end of December, after several rounds of friendly negotiations between the negotiation teams of both sides, Shanfeng Investment signed an agreement with Hong Kong Electric and Charter King signed an agreement with Jardine Land.

Orange Technology spent HK$14.1 billion to acquire 38.8% of the shares of Hong Kong Telephone Company, becoming the largest shareholder.

Similarly, the charter ship king also became the largest shareholder of Hong Kong Electric.

When these two pieces of news came out, they shocked Hong Kong and all the Chinese people applauded.

.........

When PCs began to become popular, network applications were not yet mature, but large-scale computerized office work had already begun, greatly improving office efficiency.

When network technology began to mature, these scattered stand-alone machines were connected together by the network.

After several years of planning by Liu Zhicheng, Orange Technology has already possessed many underlying Internet technologies.

Since Orange Technology’s own PC was launched on the market, Liu Zhicheng has been promoting computer office work in his companies.

Therefore, R&D personnel, company management positions, and positions that require a lot of text processing are all equipped with computers.

Liu Zhicheng has many companies and several R&D centers, which require close information exchange with each other.

Liu Zhicheng could not be satisfied with these simple computerized office tasks. Only by achieving information exchange could office efficiency be further improved.

Therefore, Liu Zhicheng planned to connect all the computers together to form a computer network to realize internal informatization.

Since Orange Technology introduced LAN technology from the United States, it has basically mastered it after continuous testing.

Of course, this network construction is currently limited to Liu Zhicheng’s enterprises in the Chinese community.

Yuen Long Industrial Park, Liu Zhicheng came here today to inspect the construction of the intranet.

"Mr. Huo, how is the computer networking project in the industrial park going?"

"Mr. Liu, the construction has been completed and the operation is stable." Huo Haiqing replied.

After saying that, Huo Haiqing started demonstrating to Liu Zhicheng using the computer on his desk.

Liu Zhicheng nodded with satisfaction. Now that he had his own 'internal Internet', he had to consider security and transmission.

"Mr. Huo, the purpose of establishing this intranet is to improve office efficiency. You should think about the file transmission problem.

And regarding network security, not everyone can access every computer at will.”

It’s hard to understand even if Liu Zhicheng talks too much, so he can only give some general suggestions and leave the rest to professionals to study.

"Okay, Mr. Liu."

"In addition, my business is decentralized. You should first implement internal informatization in each office area. As for the connection between office areas, you still need to apply to the Hong Kong government."

Because the construction of the backbone network requires construction in the city and involves large-scale municipal construction, it must be reported to the Hong Kong government for approval.

"How is the situation with providing internal information construction for schools in Hong Kong now?" Liu Zhicheng asked again.

"Now all the major universities in Hong Kong have reached an agreement. After all, this project does not require them to take a penny, so of course they are happy to do it."

Ever since Liu Zhicheng came up with the idea of ​​starting from a small LAN and then building a large LAN, Liu Zhicheng instructed Huo Haiqing to contact various universities in Hong Kong to build LANs for them free of charge.

"How long will it take to complete the full construction of the local area network for companies and universities?"

"Mr. Liu, it will take another two months to complete everything."

"Yeah." Liu Zhicheng nodded and continued to ask, "How is the negotiation for purchasing the supercomputer going?"

The development of the Internet can be roughly divided into two stages, before and after the emergence of the World Wide Web.

The first stage focused on network construction, while the second stage focused on commercialization, and information networks began to develop towards applications.

The large-scale commercialization wave of the Internet appeared after the 90s, and it is only in the 80s, mainly focusing on network construction.

At this stage, the investment in Internet infrastructure is mainly for academic institutions and research institutes to start building their own internal information networks.

Then, they will set up their own regional network in the region, and then apply to join the international Internet dominated by the United States.

Liu Zhicheng's Internet construction is basically the same routine. Liu Zhicheng is now investing in Internet construction, and he is not afraid of others coming in to share a piece of the pie, because Hong Kong is too commercialized and pays too much attention to the investment return cycle.

Liu Zhicheng invested in building a regional network in Hong Kong, but saw no return at all.

The investment in building a regional network is huge, and the technical reserves must be quite rich.

Moreover, the construction of this project requires the laying of optical fiber, which involves large-scale municipal construction, and the application procedures are very cumbersome.

Therefore, Liu Zhicheng plans to use supercomputers to advance the entire project.

Then, the supercomputer will be opened to all universities in Hong Kong, allowing them to apply to the Hong Kong government for permission to build a backbone network.

"Mr. Liu, we initially had several rounds of talks with Cray Inc. in the United States. They dared to ask for 3000 million US dollars for a supercomputer with a computing speed of billion times.

Because their price was too high, we never reached an agreement. Later we turned to mainland China, and their price was only 780 million US dollars. "

Since 1976, when Cray launched the first supercomputer that could perform 2.5 million calculations per second, the era of supercomputer commercialization has officially begun.

Moreover, Cray is the world's most famous supercomputer manufacturer, occupying more than half of the global market.

The computer that cost 1000 million US dollars would cost 3000 million US dollars. Liu Zhicheng was a little unhappy when he heard about it.

He instructed Huo Haiqing and others to try to quote from the mainland, but he didn't expect that it would succeed.

Although the mainland's economy is relatively backward, it is still very strong in some top scientific research fields.

Due to the needs of scientific research, the mainland has invested heavily in supercomputers.

In the 70s, the computing speed of large computers in the mainland exceeded 100 million times per second. In 78, it exceeded million times per second.

These are enough for Liu Zhicheng to use in Hong Kong, and also provide strong support for the economic development of the mainland.

"Well. Then let's find a place in Hong Kong with convenient electricity supply and arrange construction as soon as possible." Liu Zhicheng instructed.

Now that CLP is controlled by Liu Zhicheng, and nuclear power construction with the mainland has been put on the agenda, it is no longer afraid of being strangled by others.

"Mr. Huo, you should also send people to study supercomputer technology during this construction period. We can't let others always hold us back on supercomputer technology."

Supercomputer technology itself is of great value to Orange Technology.

Future data centers, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies will all involve supercomputer technology.

Moreover, supercomputers are national treasures and represent the pinnacle of computer technology.

The research and development of supercomputers is a very complex system. To build a supercomputer, we must constantly adopt the latest technical architecture and make various technological breakthroughs.

If Liu Zhicheng wants to delve deeper into the computer industry, he can't be like someone else, who is clearly an assembly plant, but disguised as a technology company, using national sentiment to reap profits.

This supercomputer construction is an opportunity for Orange Technology, an opportunity to learn quickly. Of course, mastering technology is definitely not that fast.

"Mr. Wang, the Hong Kong dialect has been obtained. The construction of the regional network backbone will be mainly based on the Hong Kong dialect. You are responsible for applying for construction." Liu Zhicheng continued to instruct.

The construction of this regional network was entirely invested and constructed by Hong Kong Voice. Relying on this backbone network, Hong Kong Voice can naturally apply for a network provider license in the future.

"Okay, Mr. Liu." Wang Xingfa nodded in response.

"Mr. Wang, Mr. Huo, Hong Kong Hua Company is a listed company. Network construction is a huge black hole. Therefore, Hong Kong Hua Company will only be a network provider for Hong Kong in the future.

Therefore, in the future, the supercomputer center will be built by Orange Technology and provide technical support to Hong Kong Dialogue. "

From now on, the roots of the Internet will be in Orange Technology, and services will be provided by Hong Kong Dialect.

"Also, how are the chess and card games that I asked you to develop last time going?" Liu Zhicheng asked again.

"Mr. Liu, you have developed more than a dozen board and card games and have started trial play on our local area test network," Huo Haiqing reported.

"Yeah." After listening to this, Liu Zhicheng started looking for games on his computer.

These games should have a platform to provide services to the Internet, so as to stimulate the participation of Internet enthusiasts.

In addition, intelligent programs should be developed to participate in human-machine battles.

Liu Zhicheng is a complete layman when it comes to computer hardware and software. In his previous life, he just used it to kill time when he was slacking off at work.

I had no choice but to tell them my ideas one by one and let them research and develop them, and at the same time lay out the future of human power intelligence.

"Also, you should learn more from the United States about the construction of the Internet. They are now very successful in North America and have developed mature methods.
We should appropriately bring their routines to Hong Kong to reduce our mistakes.
Only by gaining a foothold in the Chinese community in Southeast Asia can we move onto a bigger stage. Therefore, the internal information construction of Shekou in the mainland must also be accelerated. "

If you plant a seed, it may take root, sprout, bloom and bear fruit.

Going to the Shekou factory to lay out internal information technology is to plant a seed for the mainland's Internet.

“Also, aren’t we and the relevant institutions in the Mainland currently researching program-controlled telephone exchanges?
I suggest we continue to work with them on network switches and strengthen our voice in the network space.”

Liu Zhicheng paused, took a sip of tea, and continued, "Now that we have our own paging station technology,
We should strengthen cooperation with the mainland, establish a joint venture paging station, promote our own pagers, and seek to occupy the market. "

Since the cooperation with the mainland in research and development, the pager has officially produced results, and the mainland has also delivered the research results.

With the scientific research results, Liu Zhicheng would definitely ask to convert them into "money".

Only in this way can there be a steady stream of funds invested in research and development, forming a virtuous circle.

"After you go down, you need to make a detailed plan for the construction of the supercomputer center and the Hong Kong City Local Area Network. Then we will go to the Hong Kong government to apply for it together."

As for the prospects, they will certainly gloss over them in passing, and only exaggerate the investment costs to discourage interested parties and prevent the Hong Kong government from asking for exorbitant development costs in this regard.

With supercomputers, there will be supercomputer centers, and thus root servers. With internal informatization, there will be the foundation of the Internet.

Once the educational network of Hong Kong University and the internal networks of companies under Shanfeng Investment are connected, it will form a city Internet, a large local area network.

Then, if we provide Internet services to all Hong Kong citizens through Hong Kong telephone lines, wouldn’t that be everything?

Hong Kong is too small, and the most likely places for Liu Zhicheng to expand his Internet ambitions are Macau and the mainland.

When the Internet in Hong Kong is basically formed, Liu Zhicheng will personally go to their homes to promote the Internet to them.

The current application of the Internet is actually very narrow, mainly revolving around communication between computers.

The most common ones nowadays are email, electronic bulletin board BBS and instant messaging.

Now Orange Technology has no shortage of research talents. It has its own local area network and has to develop these application software by itself.

(End of this chapter)