Background
Ni Runfeng was born in 1944, China.
润峰 倪
Ni Runfeng was born in 1944, China.
Ni went to the Dalian Institute of Technology in 1962, majoring in mechanical engineering and graduated in 1967.
After graduation in 1967, he began work as a structural designer for Changhong, which is located in the city of Mianyang, in Sichuan Province, Southwestern China. Since the late 1960s the enterprise had gone through quite a transformation. In 1982 Ni joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) and two years later he was named deputy director. Sensing the pulse of economic reform, Ni took the company out of the defense industry and into televisions, reforming the state-owned enterprise along market lines with such novel ideas as employee bonuses. Under Ni, Changhong grew to be the biggest TV maker in China.
Thanks to Ni’s efforts, TV sets became affordable to average families in China. TV was no longer a luxury item, in part because of the price-cutting war that Ni led. In the mid- 1990s, the TV price war became fierce, dragging many CRT tube manufacturers into turmoil. Slashing prices was Ni Runfeng’s claim to fame and he has been called ‘China’s Matsushita’ (after Panasonic’s founder). Ni has cut prices three times since he has been with the company. ‘Changhong depended on price-cutting to succeed, but price-cutting is not its only means,’ he once said, ‘in the long term, management and technology are the two fundamentals that allow companies to survive’ (Asiaweek, 1999). When it comes to management, Ni is famed for his acute market strategy and his ability to quickly translate ideas and information into innovative products.
Ni was a pioneer in the conversion of state-owned companies into well-run private businesses, and under his leadership, Changhong grew to become a billion-dollar, token public enterprise. The property rights reform in China entered a critical period between 2000 and 2003. Some state-owned companies started to go public while the state still owned the majority controlling stake in the business. During this period Ni was eager to take on North American markets, especially the US market.
However, Changhong’s aggressive expansion both domestically and internationally, and its lack of contemporary management concepts and global experience, meant that Ni did not fully evaluate the risk in setting strategic plans for developing the brand in the new markets, and the company ran into serious deficit. Specifically, Changhong experienced a two-year legal ordeal with its sole agent, APEX Digital. The lawsuit in dispute of US$468 million losses with the California-based company triggered the involvement of the local government. As a result of complex intertwined political and governmental regulations, Ni, in his 60s, stepped down with regrets from the leadership of Changhong in 2004.
In 1982 Ni joined the Communist Party of China (CPC) and two years later he was named deputy director.