Samsung Empire: The Crisis of the Authoritarian Model

Samsung accounts for one-fifth of South Korea's GDP. This huge family-centered corporate empire has formed a top-down authoritarian system over the years. The advantage of this system is that it has strong execution and can concentrate resources to accomplish major tasks. The disadvantage is that it is rigid and repressive. If nothing goes wrong, it's fine. But if something goes wrong, it's a big deal. In the past decade, the South Korean people and government have been condemning the chaebol system, and have never stopped reviewing and restricting the chaebol corporate system with cross-holdings and circular investments.

The fate of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 mobile phone was settled this week, and Samsung Electronics officially stopped producing this flagship mobile phone. This was just over two months after the high-profile launch of the Note 7, and more than a month of the recall was full of twists and turns. The whole process of Samsung's response to the Note 7 explosion crisis can be regarded as a textbook example of the failure of large companies to deal with defective products. Samsung did not conduct a thorough inspection after the first batch of Galaxy Note 7 burned and exploded. Consumers can barely accept the first recall, but the second will bring huge losses to the company's brand, and consumers will equate Samsung's brand with unsafe. This crisis event has left Samsung in a state of panic. Credit Suisse and other institutions predict that the recall will cost Samsung $1 billion, accounting for 5% of its estimated net profit for the whole year. After the news was announced, Samsung's market value evaporated by $20 billion in two days, and investors suffered the largest two-day drop since the Lehman crisis. But what many people don't know is that Samsung mobile phones are just one of the businesses of Samsung Electronics' subsidiaries. Samsung is like an empire.

Samsung's huge tentacles

Samsung has always been regarded as the "best in the world" by Koreans. Headquartered in Seoul, this most important chaebol supports one-fifth of South Korea's GDP and carries the technological dreams of 50 million Koreans.

Samsung Life is the largest life insurance company in South Korea. Samsung C&T has built projects such as the Dubai Tower, the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Incheon Bridge, and the ENEC Nuclear Power Plant in the United Arab Emirates. In addition, it has made large investments in oil, natural gas, and new energy, and is responsible for South Korea's energy security. Samsung Heavy Industries is one of the world's top 10 shipyards. Samsung Techwin mainly builds aircraft (military + civilian), tanks, and armored vehicles. Samsung Group has 79 subsidiaries. Electronic equipment, shipbuilding, fine chemicals, oil, insurance, venture capital, hotels, medical institutions, properties, welfare institutions, economic research institutes... It can be said that 2012 and 2013 were its most glorious periods. In 2014, Interbrand, the world's largest brand management consulting firm, ranked global corporate value. Samsung ranked 7th with a brand value of US$45.5 billion, and the same was true in 2015. Family business, authoritarian system

At this critical moment of the "bomb gate", Lee Jae-yong, the third-generation successor of the Samsung Empire, officially took over. It is reported that Lee Jae-yong will form a collective management system with the current executive director Kwon.

Founder Lee Byung-chul: Educate and select talented people and set up a secretariat

In 1938, Lee Byung-chul, who was only 28 years old, invested 30,000 won to establish the Samsung Chamber of Commerce in Daegu, South Korea. At that time, the chamber of commerce had only a four-story building, with the office in the corner of the first floor and the rest of the space used as a warehouse.

When Samsung was first established, it was during the colonial rule period when South Korea was plagued by internal and external troubles. The sorrow of losing the country and the pain of war made Lee Byung-chul more eager for the prosperity of the nation. This seems to have determined the development history of Samsung's talent management, which has been a struggle history full of tests and innovations from the beginning. In the early days of the Samsung Group, the core of its business philosophy was talent. At that time, Lee Byung-chul emphasized three points: "career to serve the country, talent first, and reasonable pursuit." He said that he spent "80% of his life on educating and selecting talents", which shows how much he values ​​talents. In 1959, Samsung's secretariat was established under the leadership of Ryuzo Sejima, one of the "Three Staffs of Showa" in Japan, and Lee Byung-chul. At first, the secretariat was a "section" (equivalent to a department-level department in China) under Samsung C&T, with only 20 people, helping the chairman to handle daily affairs. In the 1960s, Samsung carried out a large number of mergers and acquisitions, acquiring Oriental Life Insurance (later Samsung Life Insurance), Donghua Department Store, Saehan Paper and other institutions, and established Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electro-Mechanics in 1969. In the 1970s, Samsung began to diversify its development, focusing on investing in heavy industry, chemicals and other fields. At this time, Samsung has developed into a diversified multinational enterprise. In the management of Samsung, Lee Byung-chul handed over all daily affairs to his subordinates and only made strategic decisions. At the same time, as a diversified company, Samsung's subsidiaries are spread all over the world and implement an independent management system. It needs a strong staff organization as an internal coordinator to collect information and make plans and adjustments. Therefore, Lee Byung-chul referred to the secretarial organization experience of Japanese chaebols such as Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo, and strengthened the functions of the secretarial office in 1972, making it responsible for auxiliary functions such as intelligence collection and analysis, planning, and daily affairs management. By the late 1970s, the functions of Samsung's secretarial office continued to increase, and it was also responsible for the company's daily operations, finance, planning, technology, security, marketing, personnel, investigation, supervision, finance, international finance and other affairs. Since the 1980s, the Samsung secretarial office in its golden age has become the most powerful intelligence analysis organization in South Korea. Lee Kun-hee: "Samsung New Management" and "Samsung Constitution"

On November 19, 1987, Lee Byung-chul passed away, and Samsung officially entered the Lee Kun-hee era, opening a new chapter in Samsung's management. In the following decades, Lee Kun-hee further developed his father's talent management philosophy.

After Lee Kun-hee became the chairman of Samsung, he announced the company's "second venture" at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Samsung Group in 1988. 1993 was a key point in the rapid development of Samsung Group. In other words, a great change took place within Samsung in this year. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Samsung Company blindly expanded its product line and quickly produced a large number of microwave ovens and other products for sale in the US market. As a result, there was an oversupply and a serious backlog of goods. In order to survive, the company had to sell its inventory at a discount. As a result, Samsung's products were cheap and low-end. In 1993, when Lee Kun-hee led Samsung's senior leadership team to investigate major foreign markets, they found that no one was interested in Samsung's products. This investigation had a great impact on the company's management team, and they began to reflect: the company must reform and change the previous idea of ​​focusing on quantity and neglecting quality. In order to achieve the survival and development of the company under difficult circumstances, Chairman Lee Kun-hee shouted the slogan "Everything must change except my wife and children", which kicked off Samsung's "New Management Movement". 1993 was destined to be a turning point in Samsung's fate. From February 18 to early August, large-scale "marathon" meetings were held in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Frankfurt and other places for six months, with more than 1,800 participants. The meetings lasted up to 16 hours a day, and participants often ate hamburgers instead of meals. Lee Kun-hee gave 48 speeches, which lasted more than 350 hours, and the content of his speeches was recorded in more than 8,500 pages. These meetings kicked off Samsung's "new management" and were recorded in Samsung's history. Lee Kun-hee launched a "new management reform" at Samsung. In 1994, his speeches around the world and his explanations on corporate reforms were condensed into a 50,000-word booklet "Samsung's New Management", which can be called the "Samsung Blue Book". The "Samsung Constitution" is the soul of the "Samsung Blue Book". Samsung regards the beauty of human nature, morality, etiquette, etiquette norms and behavioral norms as the "Samsung Constitution", the "fundamental law" of the company, and the "heavenly law" that every Samsung person must abide by.

In 1999, Lee Kun-hee abolished the secretariat and established the Structural Adjustment Department, but its role and status remained unchanged.

In 2006, the Structural Adjustment Department was weakened again, with staff reduced to less than 100 people. It was renamed the "Strategic Planning Office" and stripped of secretarial and operational functions. The secretarial group was transferred to the direct report of the chairman, and the legal group was transferred to the president's group agreement meeting, but it still retained the control over personnel and finance. Lee Kun-hee once positioned the secretarial office: "The office controls power, and the subsidiaries control finance", which means that the secretarial office controls the actual power of personnel appointments and dismissals, and the subsidiaries control financial and investment decisions. Therefore, the secretarial office staff are often entertained by the general managers of the subsidiaries. In fact, Samsung's power and finance are all controlled by the secretarial office, and the salaries of the secretarial office employees are also the highest in the group. The appointment and dismissal letters for promotions in the Structural Adjustment Department are usually inlaid with a piece of gold. For example, Kim Yong-cheol, the former legal group leader of the department, received a 75-gram piece of pure gold during his promotion to highlight his rising status. Although the name of the secretarial office has changed many times, Samsung still uses the name "office" internally, and often compares this "office" with the South Korean presidential secretarial office. In the organizational structure of the Samsung Group, the "office" is a symbol of honor and power. Regardless of whether it is called the secretariat, the structural adjustment department or the strategic planning department, they are all the core of the Samsung Group's triangular management system: the chairman lays out the long-term development strategy; the "office" designs plans, allocates resources and adjusts business; and the subsidiaries implement them. It can be said that in terms of function, the "office" is both the General Staff Headquarters and the Secret Intelligence Bureau, the Organization Department and the Supervision Department, the Ministry of Finance and the Development and Reform Commission. With its family as the core, Samsung has formed a top-down authoritarian system. Brilliance and stupidity under authoritarianism

Samsung's top-down authoritarian governance model is indeed a double-edged sword.

Under such a system, whether it is an individual, a business, or an entire organization, when it is prosperous, it can rise rapidly, and it will be prosperous and thriving, because such a system has a very high execution ability, can be connected in one breath, and has the style of concentrating power to do big things. But when it is stagnant, mediocre, or even depressed, undercurrents surge and lesions grow, because the entire immune system may have problems. Due to the suppression of such a system, nothing goes wrong at ordinary times, but when something goes wrong, it must be a big deal. Take Samsung's first business to top the world, flat-panel TVs. It was Samsung's willful behavior that led to its huge success. On the other hand, many Japanese competitors with even stronger technical strength had serious internal strategic differences and hesitation; external intrigues and mutual oppression eventually led to complete defeat. When facing a crisis, Samsung also has an extraordinary performance. In the 2008 financial crisis, Samsung quickly downgraded many legal person branches to non-legal person institutions that could not even issue invoices, and cut all unnecessary expenses. It sounds simple, but it is not easy for a giant company like Samsung. Countless precedents have shown that most companies have to drag things on until they are no longer able to do so or even go bankrupt and liquidate. However, Samsung has performed well so far and has not made any stupid moves.

Dialectically speaking, over the past decade or so, under such a system, as many successes as there have been, there must have been as many problems accumulated, because it does not naturally have the gene for self-correction.

Secondly, Samsung's entire business has reached a very critical node. In its group flagship company Samsung Electronics, the profits generated by Samsung's mobile phone business once reached about 90% of the total profits, and it was in its heyday. However, such a seriously unbalanced scenery itself is a huge crisis. Even without the explosion, Samsung's mobile phone market share has long been challenged and squeezed. In the important Chinese market, its market share once fell out of the top five. Although Samsung is also trying to develop new businesses, such as entering medical equipment. However, in this industry where European, American and Japanese companies have overwhelming advantages in technology, standards and market share, how much can Samsung do? How long will it take to make a difference? How much can it contribute to the entire group? Only God knows. In any business, people are the final decisive factor. Speaking of people, we cannot fail to mention Choi Ji-sung, the most dazzling star manager of Samsung in the past brilliant period. Choi Ji-sung is the actual operator who led Samsung's flat-panel TV business to defeat Japanese competitors and rank first, and is known as a market wizard. Later, when the mobile phone business suffered setbacks in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, he rushed to the rescue of the digital products business group, turning the entire business from loss to profit, bringing the mobile phone business back to glory, and was promoted to CEO in 2009. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, and he was dismissed in 2012 and took charge of the so-called future strategy and began to retire. Could it be that Choi Ji-sung is a microcosm, a direct witness and sample of Samsung's rapid transition from mediocrity to glory and then to gloom?

If the previous two Samsung crises were caused by external factors, then this crisis is ultimately caused by internal factors. Externally, there are also the condemnation of the chaebol system by the Korean people and the government, and the review and restrictions on cross-holding and circular investment. On one hand, there is a superficial business crisis, and on the other hand, there is a deep institutional trap. For Samsung, it is really a hot summer on the left and a cold winter on the right.

South Korea's family chaebols are facing frequent shocks and are heading towards decline?

In the 1960s, then-South Korean President Park Chung-hee offered 18 of the country's leading entrepreneurs a contract they couldn't refuse: join his development plan or accept life in prison. These business leaders were facing heavy penalties for tax evasion and kickbacks. This plan rapidly promoted South Korea's industrialization and gradually formed South Korea's unique economic phenomenon - family chaebols, which is almost equivalent to an economic model.

Recently, Samsung Group was caught up in the "mobile phone explosion scandal," Hyundai Motor workers went on strike, Lotte Chairman was suspected of corruption, and Hanjin Shipping has filed for bankruptcy... These prominent representatives of South Korea's family-owned chaebol companies hold the lifeline of the South Korean economy, but are now suffering from various shocks. Is the South Korean economy going to have big problems?

The crisis of the "Samsung Republic"

"Living in South Korea, you can survive using only Samsung products." An article in the New York Times vividly outlines the ubiquitous life scenes of South Korea's largest business group: "Wake up in an apartment built by Samsung C&T, turn on a Samsung TV, and check the weather forecast on a TV channel run by Lee Kun-hee's in-laws. On the subway, you can use your Samsung Galaxy smartphone to watch how the Samsung Lions lost the baseball game the night before. In addition, you can use Samsung's credit card to buy everything." In South Korea, you can often hear locals jokingly refer to the "Republic of Korea" as the "Samsung Republic" and Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee as the "Economic President."

However, such a powerful Samsung Group has recently encountered an unprecedented crisis. After the ambitiously launched Galaxy Note 7 was caught in the "explosion gate", Samsung had to announce the recall of 2.5 million mobile phones at the beginning of this month. On September 10, Samsung Electronics publicly advised users to stop using Note 7. Two days later, the company's stock price fell by 7%, and its market value evaporated by about US$28 billion compared with before the "explosion gate".

For the Korean economy, the impact of the Samsung incident is only part of the problem. Other large companies in the country have been involved in various problems recently. Dissatisfied with the company's failure to come up with a salary improvement plan, the labor union of Hyundai Motor, the second largest conglomerate in South Korea, decided to go on a full strike on the 26th. According to Yonhap News Agency, this is the first full strike by the Hyundai Motor labor union since 2004.

Also on the 26th, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office requested the court to issue an arrest warrant for Shin Dong-bin, chairman of Lotte, South Korea's fifth largest business group, who was suspected of embezzling 175 billion won (1,000 won is about 6 yuan). The prosecutors also plan to prosecute three other members of the Shin family without arresting them. The corruption inside the Lotte Group was initially gradually exposed due to the battle for inheritance between the Shin brothers.

Compared with the plight of Samsung, Hyundai and Lotte, which can only be described as a crisis at best, Hanjin Shipping's fortunes look even worse. At the end of August, the largest shipping giant in South Korea filed for bankruptcy protection, and the global shipping industry was plunged into chaos.

The successive failures of South Korean companies have attracted great attention in the international public opinion because they have one thing in common - they are all family-owned chaebols. They have strong strength, and their member companies often reach dozens, showing an "octopus-like" development trend. According to South Korean media reports, the turnover of Samsung and Hyundai Motor in 2013 accounted for 35% of South Korea's GDP; the combined market value of the two groups accounted for 37% of the total market value of the South Korean stock market. According to statistics from a South Korean research institute at the end of July this year, the sales of Samsung Group in 2015 were equivalent to 72.5% of the total budget of the South Korean government in the same year.

A series of problems have arisen in the Korean family chaebols, partly due to internal conflicts, such as disputes over management rights and improper selection of successors. According to relevant international research on family businesses, as the scale of this business model expands, it generally follows the development process of family-owned enterprises, family-owned enterprises, family-owned enterprises, and public companies. At the stage of family-owned enterprises, the rational person logic in economics may begin to surpass the family ethical logic, so the competition for monetary interests, status and honor will break through the constraints of ethics and lead to varying degrees of family civil war. The fuse of Lotte Group's current predicament is the battle for inheritance rights between the Shin brothers. The diving decline of Hanjin Shipping is related to the improper selection of successors.

In addition to the above problems, the excessive concentration of economic power and resources caused by the family chaebol model has a more serious impact. On September 7, former South Korean Prime Minister Chung Un-chan said in a speech at the National Assembly Hall that the total annual turnover of the four major South Korean business groups, Samsung, Hyundai, LG, and SK, accounted for 60% of South Korea's GDP. The domestic income distribution is seriously unreasonable, the dependence on specific large enterprises has increased, and the development of small and medium-sized enterprises has been seriously hindered, making the South Korean economy seem to suffer from "arteriosclerosis."

Moreover, the concentration of economic power and resources greatly increases the possibility of illegal and immoral behavior. On the one hand, a few families and individuals have greater ability and more resources to intervene in politics and influence public opinion; on the other hand, the closed nature of enterprises greatly weakens the supervision ability of external public opinion and law. It is worth mentioning that South Korea has a special organization that represents the position and interests of family chaebol enterprises - the Federation of Korean Industries. The Hankyoreh said on the 25th that the organization has been full of "political and business collusion" since its birth more than 50 years ago.

"The reasons for these recent events are ultimately closely related to the drawbacks of the family-run business model. Today, they are under both international pressure to change the industrial model and domestic pressure to increase corporate transparency," Zhang Xun, professor of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at South Korea's Chung-Ang University, told the author on the 26th.

In front of the chaebol, who will stroke the tiger's whiskers?

Negative news related to South Korea's family-owned chaebols has been bursting out, which makes people wonder whether these big companies are going downhill. Some domestic media asked, "With big companies encountering problems one after another, can South Korea survive?" On the 26th, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post published an article titled "Why the 'explosion gate' incident will affect Samsung as a whole", analyzing that the authoritarian management of the company has brought it efficient operation, but also buried the hidden dangers of this crisis, and believes that Samsung's future fate will be uncertain.

Compared with the worried expressions of the outside world, the mainstream media in South Korea seemed quite calm, even silent. Regarding the Samsung "explosion gate" incident, most reports chose to convey the relevant news in a conventional way, without exploring the reasons and problems behind it. For example, "JoongAng Ilbo" and "Dong-A Ilbo" actively reported that "Samsung advised users to stop using problematic mobile phones" and "will replace batteries from the 19th", emphasizing that the company "repeatedly apologized."

South Korea's mainstream media has always been friendly to family chaebols. The most famous "Eastern Chosun Daily" - Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo and Dong-A Ilbo - usually choose to report relatively light topics such as gossip surrounding these companies, avoiding the problems these companies bring to South Korea's politics, society, economy, etc. If a family chaebol has a major scandal, these conservative media sometimes simply don't report it, such as the "prostitute scandal" of Lee Kun-hee that broke out in late July this year.

Regarding the conservative media's positive attitude towards chaebol companies, a Samsung Group employee told me that, first of all, most of South Korea's print and 3D media are privately owned, and the huge advertising fees of Samsung and other groups are their most important source of income. Secondly, driven by patriotic sentiment, most conservative media reporters believe that if these companies suffer, the Korean economy will also suffer, so they should try to protect them. Thirdly, Samsung and other chaebol companies have made huge contributions to the Korean economy from the past to the present.

In addition, these large companies have done a very comprehensive and detailed job in public relations with the media. For example, as early as 1995, Samsung Group and LG Group established the "Samsung Press Foundation" and the "LG Sangnam Press Foundation" respectively. In the name of promoting the development of Korean journalism, they provided various subsidies to journalists from major Korean media, such as free opportunities to study abroad, free English and Chinese training courses, and publishing subsidies. Samsung and LG also invite relevant journalists to participate in large-scale dinners or so-called "Homecoming Day" social activities every year.

Of course, there are also media outlets in South Korea that dare to expose the problems of family chaebols. For example, the Hankyoreh newspaper once reported under the title "Note 7's 'abnormal fire' once again caused consumer dissatisfaction" that some people believed that Samsung Electronics' previous response was not positive enough. After the "prostitution scandal" was exposed, the media also reported extensively. In addition, the Kyunghyang Shinmun published an editorial that "a society that respects money and the rich has no future."

In South Korea, those who are willing and dare to criticize family chaebol companies are mostly civil organizations or smaller opposition parties like the Justice Party. In addition, there are media that are powerful but not as strong as conservative media, such as the aforementioned Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun, as well as online media Newstapa and Pressian. Hankyoreh once serialized a series of reports on "chaebol reform", criticizing the bleak reality that "0.1% of chaebols" heavily surrounded "99% of the common people". In addition, some scholars will criticize family chaebol companies.

They will stand on top of the pyramid for a long time

"South Korea's family-owned chaebols are a phenomenon that emerged during the country's modernization and rapid growth in the past, and there are historical reasons for this. Currently, these companies are evolving towards improving their management structure, but the changes are slow and lack continuity. However, this business model will not decline quickly in the short term," Professor Zhang Xun told the author.

Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that Samsung's authoritarian management model would make its innovation ability rigid, and employees' inability to challenge their superiors was also one of the reasons for the emergence of this "problem product". In the process of rapidly expanding its global business, Samsung found that it was struggling in a world dominated by the "Silicon Valley model". So earlier this year, Samsung has begun to adjust its management style - management signed a document promising to end authoritarian management, and the company no longer held employee summer activities to show "collective pride".

In addition to the fact that family chaebols will make internal adjustments according to the situation, the tradition of a few families being above the entire society seems to be deeply rooted in South Korea, unless there are major events such as wars and revolutions. Although there is fierce competition among these chaebols, marriages between some families have enhanced their ability to resist risks to some extent. For example, Choi Eun-young, the former chairman of Hanjin Shipping, is the niece of Shin Kyuk-ho, the honorary chairman of Lotte Group.

In addition, the depth and breadth of the connection between South Korea's family chaebols and the political world are beyond imagination. In addition to using illegal economic means to exchange for the cooperation of people in the political and judicial circles, they also hire lawyers to exploit legal loopholes, or hire retired senior judicial personnel into the company at high salaries to weave a protection network for the company. A judge of the Seoul Central District Court disclosed in a paper that from October to December 2006, among the 114 defendants who were convicted of fraud, embezzlement, dereliction of duty and violation of the Securities and Exchange Act in the first instance under the Specific Economic Crimes Act, 88.33% of the operators of large companies with an annual turnover of more than 10 billion won were sentenced to suspended execution, while the number of self-employed and small vendors was 11.1%.

The influence of South Korea's family-owned chaebols on public opinion is also one of the reasons why they will not decline in the short term, as can be seen from the attitude of the conservative media towards them.

In addition, South Korea's small and medium-sized enterprises currently do not have the strength to compete with chaebols. Zheng Shanxie, a former reporter of "Kyunghyang Shinmun", wrote in the Korean media "International News" earlier this year that after the financial crisis of 1997-1998, a group of emerging venture companies emerged at the end of 1999, which were once called "dark horses" in the stock market. But within a few years, these companies disappeared. In addition to their own business strategy problems, the chaebols absorbed the talents and creativity of emerging companies through their strong capital and organizational capabilities, which is an important reason, and the government also gave up the policy of supporting emerging venture companies in terms of capital and technology. Considering the voters, the government at that time wanted to get out of the financial crisis as soon as possible, so it did not have the patience to wait for the growth of emerging companies. In addition, American companies such as Microsoft and Apple are growing rapidly in the global market, and South Korea's small and medium-sized enterprises have less room for development. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises are currently facing financial difficulties, and South Korean banks tend to be more inclined to lend to large companies.

Of course, family chaebols also face the risk of failure, the most common reasons being the struggle for management rights and unbridled expansion. For example, starting from 1987, Hyundai Group, which had been the top chaebol company for 14 consecutive years, fell into chaos due to the succession struggle between the "princes" and eventually broke apart, leaving the top spot to Samsung Group of Lee Kun-hee. However, when the old family chaebol companies fall, the chaebols that were originally ranked lower or new chaebols will catch up. What changes is the ranking of the major chaebol companies, but what remains unchanged is the economic structure dominated by chaebols.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.