Private enterprises have now become an important part of China's economy, and provisions for the protection of private property have been written into the Chinese Constitution. But if we cannot look at the past rationally from a future-oriented perspective, the baggage of the past will always affect the present and the future, and strengthening the protection of property rights will always be empty talk.
Liu Yuanju
Because Li Yimin, the former vice chairman of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (ie Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group, a wholly state-owned company in Guangzhou), repeatedly accepted bribes from Chen Hongdao, chairman of Hong Kong Hongdao Group, according to The final ruling of the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission was that the license contract signed between GPHL and Hongdao Group regarding the use of the Wong Lo Kat trademark was invalid, and Hongdao Group was ruled to stop using the Wong Lao Kat trademark.
In 1997, GPHL leased the Wong Lo Kat trademark to Hong Kong Hongdao Group, and Hongdao Group authorized its subsidiary Jiaduobao Group to sell red cans of Wong Lo Kat in the country. After that, the two parties extended the contract several times, and the Wong Lo Kat trademark lease was extended to 2020. As Li Yimin's bribery scandal was exposed, procedural irregularities damaged the validity of the relevant trademark license, and a dispute between GPHL and Hongdao over the ownership of the Wanglaoji trademark began.
A Guangzhou Pharmaceutical employee said: (Guangzhou Pharmaceutical regaining the right to use the Wong Lo Kat trademark) is a bit like Hong Kong returning to the motherland. ?But is it really as proud and well-deserved as Hong Kong’s return to China, or is there a larger issue of justice behind the dusty history that deserves discussion?
The story of Wong Lo Kat quietly displays this intriguing history. Wanglaoji herbal tea was founded nearly 200 years ago during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty. By 1949, the Wang family was divided into two branches. A descendant opened herbal tea shops in Hong Kong and Macau, and registered the trademark Wanglaoji? The other branch stayed on the mainland.
In 1956, private enterprises began a comprehensive public-private partnership. Eight long-established private traditional Chinese medicine factories including Wanglaoji were merged. Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical Factory was renamed "Wanglaoji United Pharmaceutical Factory". In 1968, Wanglaoji United Pharmaceutical Factory was renamed Guangzhou No. 9 Traditional Chinese Medicine Factory, and Wanglaoji Herbal Tea was also renamed Guangdong Herbal Tea. In January 1982, Guangzhou No. 9 Traditional Chinese Medicine Factory was renamed Guangzhou Yangcheng Pharmaceutical Factory, and its products returned to the name "Wong Lo Kat". In December 1992, Yangcheng Pharmaceutical Factory was restructured into Yangcheng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Yangcheng Pharmaceutical).
In September 1997, Yangcheng Pharmaceutical merged with 11 other pharmaceutical and drug sales companies (all of which belonged to Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd.) to establish Guangzhou Pharmaceutical (600332, Guangba) Co., Ltd. (Guangzhou pharmaceutical industry). Later, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical was listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai, with Yangcheng Pharmaceutical as its core holding subsidiary. In March 2004, Yangcheng Pharmaceutical changed its name and rebranded as Guangzhou Wanglaoji Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
The Wong Lao Kat brand has since regained its vitality, which not only shows the tenacious vitality of national wisdom, but also shows the vicissitudes and sorrows of national capital in historical changes.
After the public-private partnership, private equity holders are paid a fixed interest rate of 5% per year, which is not only lower than profits, but also lower than bank deposit interest. In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution began, Wang Laoji and others changed from being "objects of transformation" to "objects of dictatorship". Their lives were not guaranteed, let alone fixed interest rates. In September of the same year, fixed interest payments stopped. The total fixed interest rate is paid over ten years and is equivalent to 50% of the total private equity capital. The policy was implemented after the Cultural Revolution, but the policy still stipulated that interest rates would be fixed until September 1966. A 1983 document stipulates: The assets of public-private joint ventures (including the houses originally approved for investment) are already owned by the state and should not be returned to the individual. This is an established policy of the party and the state and cannot be changed. ?This is treating policies in history as unchangeable facts. However, there is still room for discussion as to the scope of the policy and whether it is effective for trademarks.
Brands and trademarks are concepts of Western economics based on intellectual property and scarcity. From the perspective of political economics theory, trademarks and brands are neither material, nor participate in the production process, nor are they means of production. They do not create value in the sense of political economy, and they do not participate in exploitation. Therefore, even if legal issues are not discussed, exploitation must be stopped. From the perspective of political economy, the trademark Wong Lo Kat cannot be regarded as the means of production of capitalists. Just like the name of one's own study, it is a purely private property. The policy of seizing this brand conflicts with the theory of political economy.
To sum up, whether it is from the perspective of legal legitimacy or the non-asset nature of trademarks from the perspective of political economy, the legal possession of the Wong Lo Kat trademark should not be deprived. Therefore, GPHL has never legally owned the Wong Lo Kat brand. What's more, this brand has been regarded as the brand of Stinky Laojiu and abandoned. If from 1956 to 1997, Yangcheng Pharmaceutical Factory had a value-added effect on the brand during its operation and used it as a reason to own the brand, then this reason also exists for Jiaduobao Group, and it is more powerful. After all, it is Jiaduobao Group. Duobao made Wong Lao Kat well known to everyone.
In fact, even if the brand belongs to Guangzhou Pharmaceutical, it has never been owned by the whole people. Although the stock price of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical is now rising, and although ordinary shareholders also hold stocks, most of the profits are nothing more than huge public expenses for state-owned enterprises and high salaries and shareholdings for managers.
Furthermore, the legal process of converting private shares into state-owned shares has not been completed. State-owned enterprises transformed from private enterprises will have legal loopholes and risks during restructuring, auction, and bankruptcy. Even if you can rest easy at home, there are great potential risks in other parts of the world, and this is the same for other so-called century-old state-owned enterprises. In fact, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical has already encountered this dilemma. As early as 2002, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical reached an agreement with Hong Kong Wanglaoji, which is run by descendants of the Wang family who left the country at that time, to lease the right to use its overseas trademarks. But in mainland China, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical takes it for granted that Wanglaoji is its trademark, although it has never had legal procedures.
Following this line of thought, there seems to be a glimmer of hope to bring justice to history by using the dispute over the Wong Lao Kat trademark to bring about the dispute over the secret recipe. Wong Lo Kat is divided into two parts, one is flourishing after normal spread, and the other is forced to hand over the secret recipe under high pressure. From a human perspective, it is self-evident which secret recipe is more authentic. Since on the eve of the establishment of the cooperative and before the property was returned to the public, farmers would cut down trees to sell timber and kill cattle for meat, could it be that the secret recipe handed over by the Wang family's descendants in mainland China has not been modified at all?
Private enterprises have now become an important part of China's economy, and provisions for the protection of private property have been written into the Chinese Constitution. But if we cannot look at the past rationally from a future-oriented perspective, the baggage of the past will always affect the present and the future, and strengthening the protection of property rights will always be empty talk. Without good property rights protection, entrepreneurs will lack confidence in long-term prospects and only seek profits from short-term actions. Virtual economic bubbles, weakness of the real economy and other phenomena will occur.
In this regard, protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the descendants of the Wang family in mainland China is like the tree Shang Yang built to win the trust of the world. It not only demonstrates the country's response to private property rights, but also foreshadows the choices we will make. road. This will ultimately determine our prosperity and development.
(The author is a project researcher at Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law)