How a Chinese businessman became the largest supplier of pyrotechnics in the US

I have worked with many manufacturing companies in china. One of my vendors grew from 1 container a day to over 5 right now in thr course of 3 years. I know this because i have seen the US port data.

He is perhaps the most cutt throat person i have ever met in my life. When i read this article about Mr Ding, he reminds me of him

One time i had a meeting with him at a covention. We talked about different specs for products for an 40 foot container order. As we started talking, another one of his clients who did 2xs or more business we did stopped by at the booth.

I kid you not but he told me to go fuck off right then and there in mandarin. There was only one extra seat and I occupied it. He had the most dead pan serial killer eye expression i have ever seen. We were just having a nice light casual conversation in english talking about spec clarifications one second before.

We still did business with him because you cant argue with the quality of goods he brought. His trade records were impeccable and spoke for themselves.

I've worked with high level execs before in the states. But I have never seen someone stab me in the back right in front of me so fast before.

The mentality in China on the exec level is so different.

What I'm reading is a monopolist is immune from scrutiny because everyone is afraid of the monopolist bankrupting them by cutting them out of supply from the monopoly. Further through a network of shell corporations, we learn the truth of the monopoly is obfuscated.

What's good about this?

>On Feb. 14, 2008, in Foshan, a city in southern China, 15,000 cartons of fireworks spread across 20 warehouses mysteriously exploded in the middle of the night, creating a tremendous blast that damaged windows and doors a half-mile away. Surprisingly, no one was seriously hurt.

>Before the explosion, companies could ship fireworks out of numerous ports, fireworks industry executives said. But after the explosion, Chinese authorities quickly cracked down, requiring almost all of the pyrotechnics to be moved out of Shanghai. And, perhaps most significant, to ship fireworks, companies now needed to obtain special permits, the executives said.

>Only three were initially given out by Shanghai’s Maritime Safety Administration to transfer fireworks onto container ships there, several fireworks and shipping executives said. Of those three, Ding was the only recipient who could move his vessels through the Shanghai port for export to the United States, according to Liu Jihua, owner of Hunan Hongguang Logistics, a Liuyang company that specializes in shipping to Southeast Asia.

Stuff like this is all over China, and they were even more extreme during the time of mandatory export licensing and "export tariffs"

This could be a story about Google and Facebook rigging the digital advertising industry, and everyone would say, “great business tactics, it’s not a monopoly for XYZ reasons. It enables free service for users.” etc etc.

As a story about a Chinese businessman, this starts to get the scrutiny it deserves. I’d love to see journalists shed some light on monopolistic behaviors in the US. Frankly, we’d all benefit from the review.

On a side note, if you are ever near the national convention for The Pyrotechnics Guild International, Inc.[1] and like fireworks, then it is an event that does a pretty impressive show to demonstrate their wares during their convention.

1) http://www.pgi.org/convention/

The author and somebody he quotes are both awfully hung up on how "insiders call him Mr. Ding." Since that's his name, that is not remarkable whatsoever. In China the family name comes first, from Lee Jun-Fan (Bruce Lee / Mr. Lee) right on down to Chan Kong-Sang (Jackie Chan / Mr. Chan).

Imagine: "Mr. Smith -- that's what those of us in the know tend to have this wacky idiosyncratic habit of calling him -- controls all the mayonnaise distribution on the West Coast."

The immense power of vertical integration at its finest

I think I don't understand this article. The container share graphic shows that Huayang market share is 2/3rds of traffic, but the numbers in all the rest of indicate that Huayang is a monopoly. 2/3rd is a lot but doesn't seem monopolistic to me.

It's also interesting that the article goes in depth with detail (because of data availability perhaps?) from the US side of the trade, but very light on detail (and full of implications) about stuff going on in the China side.

Why can't other companies start, which produce fireworks?

Does this explain why every vendor seems to have exactly the same stuff? I feel like when I was a kid, there was a lot more variety, and going to different stands you'd see different stuff. In my town of ~8000, there are going to be four or five firework stands, all with exactly the same stuff for exactly the same prices.

A question that is somewhat on topic: does anyone have any articles or books on the vertical integration of some car manufacturers in the past where they had raw iron ore come in one side and cars roll out the other? I would be interested in other industries as well.

I'm surprised this is a surprise to anyone that does business with Asian, African or South American companies. Anyplace that has high levels of corruption has businesses and Govt hand-in-hand. Isn't this the whole point of accumulating Govt power. If there was no way to extract value from it, no one would care about running for office.

In 5 years we'll all be watching drone light shows anyway