“Thief” is Dong Mingzhu’s fixed label for the company Midea and entrepreneur Lei Jun. It has been more than two years since Midea and Lei Jun were labeled by Dong Mingzhu.
In December 2014, at the "2014 China Business Leaders Annual Meeting", Dong Mingzhu was full of firepower. Regarding the strategic cooperation to be announced by Xiaomi and Midea, she commented angrily: "Midea stole Gree's patent. The court ordered you to pay me two million. Two liars together are a group of thieves." This caused an uproar in the public opinion.
Of course, Dong Mingzhu’s “thief theory” did not stop Midea and Xiaomi from joining hands. As soon as Dong Mingzhu finished speaking, Midea officially announced that it would introduce Xiaomi Technology as a strategic investor for 1.26 billion yuan, with a shareholding of 1.288, so that Xiaomi could nominate a core executive to join Midea's board of directors.
As leaders in the business world, Dong Mingzhu and Lei Jun have quite a lot of intersections. They are both famous entrepreneurs working in Zhuhai and both are representatives of the National People's Congress. In terms of time and location, they are almost the same. Overlapping, but the two just lost "harmony" and became enemies who despised each other. What caused this situation has to start with the "1 billion bet" between Dong Mingzhu and Lei Jun.
In December 2013, at the CCTV "China Economic Figure of the Year" award ceremony, Lei Jun, the winner of the annual figure award, said that if the sales of Xiaomi model beat Gree within 5 years, he hoped that Dong Mingzhu would compensate herself 1 yuan; Dong Mingzhu said that if defeated, he would be willing to bet 1 billion. Lei Jun’s confidence stems from the fact that Xiaomi uses the Internet, while Gree is still a traditional company.
At the time of the bet, there was no direct competition between Gree and Xiaomi, but since the 1 billion yuan bet, Dong Mingzhu has never let Lei Jun go. Now the two are more complicated and subtle, because Gree has also started to make mobile phones.
Mobile phones are Xiaomi’s largest and most important business, and they are also Gree’s next important business segment. But there is a huge gap between the two. Lei Jun has made mobile phones very popular. He once occupied the first place in the Chinese market and is still in the top five. However, Gree mobile phone is tepid and has become a worry for Dong Mingzhu. Gree has been making mobile phones for four or five years, but the thunder is loud and the rain is small. Gree and Xiaomi have never competed with each other, but now they are facing each other and fighting with real guns. Although Gree Mobile Phones is not yet Xiaomi's rival in terms of scale, Dong Mingzhu's personality of never giving up until she achieves her goals means that she and Lei Jun may be enemies for the rest of their lives.