Li Ning's resource endowment became a curse, while Jinjiang's grassroots shoe factories ran ahead
Li Honggu says Li Ning is a company made of countless mismatches: its founder had no ambition for business, held resources no one could match, and those resources became a curse instead. Jinjiang's shoe factories were started by Minnan farmers pooling household funds, carried no baggage, and made decisions purely around the market — which over the long run let them walk more steadily.
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The argument · tap a timestamp to hear it
Jinjiang is not the Fujian version of the Wenzhou model
Fei Xiaotong summed up Chinese rural development into four models: Sunan had government leading farmers to start factories, Wenzhou relied on individual entrepreneurs, the Pearl River Delta relied on foreign capital plus labor doing processing and assembly. Jinjiang appeared last and is the easiest to underestimate. It was not individual entrepreneurs but township enterprises started by several families and friends pooling household funds, with a quasi-private-shareholding character: in 1979, when Lin Tuqin started Jinjiang's first shoe factory, he gathered 14 village households to buy in — these people were both shareholders and employees; in 1982, when they wanted to strike out on their own, they also split from the original factory into five factories. The money came from the Minnan-specific biao hui, sitting in a financial gray zone; many companies that later grew big raised their early money this way. The local government also put forward the "five permissions," permitting dividends, share-based fundraising, hired labor, and sales commissions.
— Huang ZiyiUnder the fake-medicine case, the government chose to kill the pests and protect the flowers
Jinjiang had two early quality crises. One was the "week shoes" and "street-crossing shoes": farmers didn't understand that shoes needed specialized glue, and used ordinary glue to stick soles to uppers, so they came apart after seven days — one consumer said they came apart just crossing the street. The second was the 1985 fake-medicine case: white sugar ground into powder, congealed into blocks, stuffed with white fungus to pass as granules, flowing through gray channels to hospitals, reported nationwide by People's Daily. Jinjiang goods became notorious, over a thousand ground-promotion salesmen were turned away, and some hotels threw their luggage right out the door. At the time, Fujian's first provincial party secretary, Xiang Nan, was very market-oriented — he expanded the Xiamen special economic zone's area and borrowed international loans to build Xiamen airport — and called Chendai's workshops "a flower of township enterprises," but for this he was criticized as too far left, made five or six self-criticisms within half a year, and then stepped down. On his way out he instructed the people handling the fake-medicine case: kill the pests and protect the flowers; when you pour out the bathwater, you can't throw the baby out with it.
— Huang ZiyiLi Ning's resource endowment became a curse instead
Jinjiang's shoe factories were all Nike's apprentices, but the first to develop the awareness of building a domestic brand was Li Ning. Li Ning founded the brand in 1990, collecting sacred flame beneath the snow mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and carrying it nationwide, with enormous impact; almost all Jinjiang brands' registration milestones came after that — Anta applied in 1990 and registered successfully in 1991, Peak was originally named Fengdeng and changed its name in 1990-1991, and 361° was previously called Bieke. But the two paths were completely different: Li Ning carried a national halo from the very start, and when performance doubled year after year in the mid-1990s it set the goal of spending ten or twenty years to put a Chinese brand in the world's number one position; the founder himself had no ambition for business and brought in professional managers, and as a result fell into crisis and internal friction again and again. Jinjiang brands were grassroots, carried no historical baggage, and made every decision around the market.
— Huang ZiyiThe family that gave away 51% hit every node right
In 1988, Ding Shizhong was not yet 18, a middle-school dropout, and he persuaded his father to give him 10,000 yuan to buy 600 to 700 pairs of shoes, then rode two days and two nights in hard seats to Beijing, becoming one of the first Beidrifters. Around the same time, Li Ning was wearing Li Ning-brand clothes carrying the Asian Games sacred flame in Beijing. Ding wanted to sell Jinjiang shoes into Xidan and Wangfujing, but those were powerful state-run department stores, and a 17- or 18-year-old kid from Fujian simply couldn't get in; it took him one or two years of grinding before he got a counter. Another easily overlooked point is his father, Ding Hemu: the only male heir in the family, his family was actually weak in the village — Minnan clans fought over land and factory buildings, relying on having many sons and on fists, and Ding Hemu didn't take part. He taught his son to give others more benefit in doing business: "give others 51% of the benefit, take only 49% yourself."
— Huang ZiyiInventory enough to clothe the whole nation for three years
Around 2000, Anta signed Kong Linghui and advertised on CCTV, becoming a hit overnight; on top of the Sydney Olympics, the men's football team reaching the World Cup, and the successful Olympic bid, the whole industry frantically signed spokespeople and opened stores, with the peak year opening close to 1,000 stores. Peak founder Xu Jingnan's metaphor was "riding an elevator": a person standing still in the elevator still rises, and everyone thought that after the Beijing Olympics they'd be on an even faster elevator. But two or three years after the Olympics the inventory crisis erupted: one manager described it as, even if Jinjiang's shoe factories stopped producing, the shoes in inventory would be enough to clothe the whole Chinese population for three years. The root cause was the dealership model of enfeoffment plus futures — ordering half a year in advance, the brand too far from the market, and dealers unwilling to share real sales data. Anta's response was to strengthen centralization, with Ding Shizhong personally touring stores like an emperor on campaign, covering 400 to 500-plus market points across China in the worst one or two years.
— Huang ZiyiThe book is missing Nike and Adidas as the coordinate system
Li Honggu's biggest criticism of the book is that it lacks an implicit thread: Nike's and Adidas's campaigns in the Chinese market actually determined, to a greater degree, the rise and fall of Chinese brands — they are the real coordinates. Huang Ziyi agrees, but explains that there's too little detailed material on Adidas and Nike's playbook, because multinationals have to go through procedures and discipline to accept interviews. Li Honggu also argues that Li Ning's problems cannot be explained by the professional-manager system: Li Ning is "a company made of countless mismatches" — he was not happy doing business, his resource endowment far exceeded everyone else's, yet it formed a huge gap with his vision and strategy, and the resources became a curse instead. And today, after Jinjiang brands got capital and acquired international brands, a new problem has appeared: how to tell a story of an international brand and yourself — "capital became their curse."
— Li HongguAnta's multi-brand: independent front end, shared middle and back office
Anta's FILA was learned. Li Ning was the first to be overtaken by Nike in 2003 and lose the market's number one spot, and was the earliest to try multi-brand; Li Ning's first professional manager, Chen Yihong, also did very well with KAPPA. When Anta acquired FILA, at first it likewise slapped FILA labels on traditional Anta products, and only after they wouldn't sell did it painfully start over: in organizational structure and process, keeping the FILA team absolutely independent from the Anta team to prevent mutual influence, then poaching a world-class team for design, moving toward fashion and trends, and doing DTC direct retail at the same time. Once that worked, Anta's multi-brand mechanism became: the retail end and the product design and R&D end each independent, sharing Anta's powerful middle and back office, including human resources, the contract-manufacturing system, and Jinjiang's industrial cluster. What Ding Shizhong now says repeatedly is: I don't want to make China's Nike, what I want to make is the world's Anta.
— Huang ZiyiOnce per-capita GDP passes $10,000, verticals take off
When Huang Ziyi interviewed Anta in 2021, an Anta vice president explained why it acquired Amer Sports, Descente, and Kolon: based on their research in European and American markets, when a country's per-capita GDP reaches $10,000, niche sports tracks begin to emerge — ice and snow, outdoor, hiking; at $20,000, these niche sports begin to flourish on a large scale. At the time of the interview, China had just crossed $10,000; now Beijing and Shanghai have already passed $20,000, and the national average is about $15,000, so these brands taking off may be a natural process. Where Anta is stronger than others is that it may, through a relatively advanced professional-manager consciousness, have been first to do market research and lock up these tracks.
— Huang ZiyiIn their own words · checked verbatim
It may have some pests, and that's normal. But we must kill the pests and protect the flowers, and when we pour out the bathwater, we can't throw the baby out with it.
它可能有一些虫害是正常的 但我们要除虫护花 然后倒洗澡水 不能把孩子也泼掉
Huang Ziyi32:25
I want to spend ten or twenty years — I want to put this Chinese brand in the world's number one position.
我要花十几二十年的时间 我要让这个中国品牌 坐上世界品牌第一的位置
Huang Ziyi37:27
Back then the company's growth was like riding an elevator — you stand still in the elevator, you do nothing at all, and you still grow very fast.
那个时候企业的发展就像坐电梯 就你人站在电梯里不动 你什么事都不干 都增长得非常快
Huang Ziyi52:30
Even if Jinjiang's shoe factories had stopped producing at the time, the shoes in their inventory would have been enough to clothe the Chinese people for three years.
哪怕当时晋江的鞋厂不生产 他们库存里的鞋子也足够中国人民穿三年
Huang Ziyi54:32
He got all the good resources, but for him the resources formed a curse.
他拿到了所有好的资源 但是资源对他来说的话呢 形成了诅咒
Li Honggu1:01:37
We have a survivor bias — what we see are the companies that survived; what we can't see are the many companies that died.
我们有一个幸存者偏差 我们看到的是活下来的企业 我们看不见的是很多死去的企业
Li Honggu1:03:39
I don't want to make China's Nike — maybe I once wanted to make China's Nike, but what I want to make now is the world's Anta.
我不要做中国的耐克 可能我曾经想做中国的耐克 但我现在要做的就是世界的安踏
Huang Ziyi1:22:53
Figures
| Number of households that bought in when Lin Tuqin started Jinjiang's first shoe factory in 1979 | 14 village households | 21:17 |
| Year Anta's trademark was formally registered successfully | 1991 (applied in 1990) | 35:27 |
| Money and purchase volume Ding Shizhong took on his first trip north in 1988 | 10,000 yuan, 600-700 pairs of shoes | 42:28 |
| Anta's revenue scale around 2003 | Over 100 million yuan, approaching 500 million yuan | 49:29 |
| Upper limit on new stores opened by a single brand in one year during the industry's expansion period | Close to 1,000 | 52:30 |
| Market points Ding Shizhong covered touring stores in the worst one or two years of the inventory crisis | 400-500-plus | 57:34 |
| Change in FILA's store count in China | From fewer than 50 to more than 2,000 | 1:12:45 |
| China's national per-capita GDP (around the Anta interview) | About $15,000 | 1:28:57 |
Glossary
- Three idles
- Jinjiang's local term for overseas remittances, vacant overseas houses, and surplus labor — the three raw conditions for starting a factory.
- Biao hui
- Mutual-aid lending in Minnan's acquaintance society, sitting in a financial gray zone, and the startup capital source for early factories.
- Five permissions
- The policy put forward by the Chendai and Jinjiang local governments: permit dividends, permit share-based fundraising, permit hired labor, permit sales commissions.
- Halfway-up-the-mountain theory
- When an enterprise reaches medium scale, if it can complete the modern-enterprise transformation it climbs further; if not, it may fall into the abyss.
- DTC
- The brand itself opening stores to reach consumers directly, bypassing layer upon layer of dealers.
- Flyknit
- Weaving an entire shoe upper from a single yarn, making sneakers light and breathable, upending the leather-upper paradigm.
How to listen
Founders and investors in consumer brands, manufacturing, or family-business governance; anyone who wants to know why Li Ning and Anta took different paths.
The Ding clan ancestral hall observations from 9:58 are more anecdote — fast-forward to the Nike contract-manufacturing line at 15:58.