Chapter 707: 11 Billion, 400,000 Square Meters of Land! Everyone's Stealing, Why Single Me Out?

In a top-floor office at Zhuxianzhuang Science and Technology Park.

After listening to the terms Meng Yuanzhi offered, Chen Yansen smiled and shook his head. He leaned back and said unhurriedly, “Mr. Meng, Xingyuan Technology was just founded, and we haven’t even settled on an office location yet. There’s no rush. It won’t be too late to talk again once we’ve sorted out the preliminary preparations.”

‘Wait until the preparations are complete?’

‘Will Luzhou even have a chance then?’

Meng Yuanzhi was no fool. He knew instantly that Chen Yansen wasn’t impressed with his offer, so he immediately upped the ante. “Five hundred thousand square meters of industrial land, free to use for fifty years. Corporate and value-added taxes will be waived for the first three years, with a seventy percent discount for the following three. The loan limit will be raised to eight billion yuan.”

“Mr. Meng, to be frank, Jinling and Green City have made similar offers—and theirs are even more generous.”

Chen Yansen replied in a flat tone.

In truth, no matter what Meng Yuanzhi offered, he had no intention of immediately accepting a deal from anyone.

Even a child knows to shop around for candy; a businessman should be no different.

“Jinling?”

Meng Yuanzhi’s brow furrowed instantly, and he was deeply displeased.

‘For the past two years, Wumaqu has been getting closer and closer to Jinling. Everyone says Chucheng is Jinling’s backyard. Isn’t this a blatant slap in the face to Luzhou?’

‘It’s common knowledge that he’s always taken great care of the surrounding ‘little brothers.”

‘Take Mi Lake, for instance. He was so worried it would be left out in the cold that he’d simply swallowed it whole.’

‘But even after all that, why were they still not satisfied?’

‘Chen Yansen is a Huian native. What right does Jinling have to come and poach our resources?’

The more Meng Yuanzhi thought about it, the more furious he became, though he could also understand Chen Yansen’s concerns and perspective.

‘Who wouldn’t want the best policies for land and funding?’

At this thought, Meng Yuanzhi sighed and said slowly, “President Chen, I’ll arrange for the staff in charge of investment attraction to visit you in Xucheng to discuss the details.”

“No problem. I’ll be expecting them.”

Chen Yansen agreed readily.

Besides Meng Yuanzhi, the heads of the Central Bureaus in Green City, Hu City, Jinling, Shencheng City, and other places had all said the same thing.

‘Actually, the first choice is to establish Xingyuan Technology Headquarters in the Yangtze River Delta. The industrial chain there is mature, equipment and material suppliers are concentrated, the talent pool is abundant, and the infrastructure is well-developed.’

‘The second choice is the Pearl River Delta. Market demand is high and logistics are efficient, but its foundation for wafer manufacturing is weak.’

‘After that come places like Jiang City, Chang’an, and Rongcheng, but their supply chains are slow to respond and talent retention is poor.’

‘Because of the lower salary levels, the turnover rate for chip engineers is over 25 percent, with most of them leaving for the Yangtze River Delta or the Pearl River Delta.’

‘And as for Luzhou?’

‘In 2013, it had absolutely no foundation in this area.’

‘Future semiconductor companies like Jinghe, Changxin Memory, Fuxin Micro, and Zhixin had not yet been established. It would take a joint push from the Big Fund and the local Central Bureau for the first signs of development to emerge.’

After hanging up, Chen Yansen muttered to himself, ‘These guys are quick to jump on the bandwagon. The Big Fund just launched, and they’ve already sniffed it out and come running.’

As for which city to ultimately choose, he already had his own set of criteria.

‘First, he’d see who offered the most funding. Then, who offered the most land. Finally, he would have to examine the supporting infrastructure, the concentration of the industrial chain, the talent pool, and transportation conditions.’

‘Choosing the right location would save a huge amount of time and effort.’

‘This couldn’t be rushed!’

Chen Yansen put down his phone, turned on his computer, logged into the data backend, and began to review the previous day’s business and financial data for each project.

Including replying to emails and approving contracts, the whole process took no more than twenty minutes.

After finishing his work, he closed the backend window and casually clicked on the desktop link for Toutiao.

“Sohu Video Issues First Response: Rumors of Merger with Penguin Video Are False; Exclusive Partnership Agreement Signed with Huayi Brothers.”

A faint smile touched Chen Yansen’s lips. ‘Looks like Zhang Chaoyang is extremely bullish on the long-form video sector. Not only did he reject Penguin, but he also didn’t hesitate to spend a fortune to secure the exclusive film and television rights from Huayi Brothers.’

The second news story was that dozens of video websites, including Penguin, Sohu, and LeTV, had launched a “Joint Action Against Online Video Piracy.” They planned to take legal action and deploy technical countermeasures against Kuai Bo and Qian Du Video.

To put it bluntly, these platforms had spent tens, even hundreds of millions on video copyrights, only for Kuai Bo and Qian Du Video to freeload off them without so much as a word. They were clearly taking everyone for a fool. Who could tolerate that?

When they had met a few days ago, Zhang Chaoyang had complained about Li Yanhong’s shameless behavior and mentioned that he had already sued Qian Du three months prior.

This move was obviously on a much larger scale, with dozens of companies filing a joint lawsuit. The smarter targets would likely use the safe harbor principle to absolve themselves of responsibility, but any who were slow on the uptake would be in deep trouble.

With so many companies joining forces, the core objective was to take down Kuai Bo and Qian Du Video.

He couldn’t care less whether Kuai Bo lived or died, but he didn’t mind adding more fuel to Qian Du’s fire.

He had previously ordered someone to collect evidence of iQiyi siphoning its users’ bandwidth. He had held off on releasing it, waiting for the perfect moment.

And as it happened, the timing was now perfect.

Chen Yansen pulled up the Cloud Ship chat interface and gave Liang Bo a few instructions.

Half an hour later, a report titled “iQiyi Steals User Bandwidth” shot to the top of Toutiao’s trending news list.

Immediately after, a storm of discussion erupted on Weibo.

“For real? iQiyi is a huge company, after all. Would they really do something like this?”

“Those bastards! I just tested it. Even when my TV is in sleep mode with the screen off, it’s still uploading at 3 MB per second!”

“My wireless internet plan is metered by data usage. Can I sue them for this?”

“That son of a bitch Ma Wenteng! All he does is pull this kind of crap!”