parentshiftbook Chapter 249 Brand Rise
Chapter 249 Brand Rise
When Interbrand released its Best Global Brands ranking this year, the top ten were always the same few names: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and McDonald's. These nine familiar faces from three continents have dominated the list for twenty years. No one can break in, because the companies that could have are already in the top ten.
This year's tenth place is new. It comes from Hangzhou.
Interbrand values the 402 brand at $102.8 billion. This marks the first time a Chinese brand has entered the global top ten.
The core assessment report has been widely cited by global financial media: 402 is not a consumer brand, but a brand of trust. Four billion people worldwide may not have purchased 402 products, but their communications, healthcare, energy, and transportation are all powered by 402 technology. This trust wasn't built through GG, but through countless seamless daily services. Interbrand's chief analyst, in an interview, gave an example: if 402 disappeared from the earth tomorrow, over three billion people globally would be unable to use mobile navigation, four hundred million would lose healthcare, and remote areas on two continents would revert to an era without internet access. The value of a brand can be calculated using many formulas, but the most intuitive formula is—take it away and see what the world loses.
CCTV produced a documentary called "From Hangzhou to the Stars and the Sea".
The documentary opens with precious early footage: five people and seven computers in an incubator. Zuo Cheng writes two words on a whiteboard: "Survive." The footage, filmed by Fang Ze with his phone, is low-resolution and the sound is intermittent. Zuo Cheng didn't turn around when he wrote those two words; the writing on the whiteboard is crooked because it's uneven. Chen Hao in the footage has more hair than he does now, Liu Wei is as thin as a bamboo pole, and Fang Ze wears a hoodie that covers half his face. Everyone looks to be under twenty, but there's a shared light in their eyes.
The scene shifts to today: the 402 headquarters building houses over 5,000 engineers, with operations in 47 countries worldwide, 63 multinational agreements, and the number one market share in all seven core technology sectors.
The final scene shows Zuo Cheng on the rooftop watching a satellite streak across the night sky. The voiceover is a line spoken by Fang Ze seven years ago in the incubator, also recorded on a phone, mixed with fan noise: "Brother Cheng said he was going to build a rocket. I thought he was joking at the time."
The documentary crew conducted random interviews on the streets of Hangzhou. All three segments were included in the final cut.
A food delivery rider in his thirties, wearing a helmet with a celestial logo, said, "Before, a delivery took forty minutes; now, with smart traffic scheduling, it only takes twenty-five minutes. Those extra fifteen minutes allow me to complete five more deliveries a day. Five deliveries mean an extra eighty yuan. That adds up to over two thousand yuan a month. With that two thousand yuan, I enrolled my daughter in two extracurricular classes."
A middle school teacher in his forties said, "Our school is located in an earthquake zone. We used to worry about it all the time, but now we have the Sky Dome earthquake early warning system, which gives a warning 30 seconds in advance. Last semester, there was a magnitude 5 earthquake. I was teaching when the alarm went off. Within 30 seconds, all 1,200 students in the school had evacuated to the playground. The ground started shaking when the last student ran out of the school building."
A patient in his fifties, who had undergone brain-computer interface surgery and had been paralyzed for three years due to a spinal cord injury, was the 30,000th patient in the Interstellar NeuroSurgery procedure. He stood ramrod straight in front of the camera and said a few words.
"I was the 30,000th patient in their surgery. The doctor said the standard recovery period was three months, and I stood up after two months. My son cried the day I stood up. I didn't cry."
He paused for a moment.
"I cried when I was lying in bed alone at night."
On the night the documentary premiered inside room 402, Zuo Cheng sat in the front row. He watched it for two hours and ten minutes without moving. The air conditioning in the screening room was a bit low, but no one got up to adjust the temperature. Everyone's attention was focused on the screen.
Yu Ying sat to his right. When the documentary reached the part where the patient spoke, she took his hand. When it came to Fang Ze's line, "He thought I was joking," she smiled, a soft laugh escaping the quiet screening room. When the final rooftop scene came on, she remained silent, but Zuo Cheng felt her grip on his hand tighten slightly.
The movie ended, and the lights came on.
Yu Ying asked him, "Your company is now among the top ten globally. How does that make you feel?"
Zuo Cheng remained silent for a long time, so long that everyone else left the screening room.
"Ten years ago, the day I woke up, lying in my rented room, my only thought was to do the things I hadn't done well in my previous life," he said. "I never imagined I would build rockets, build quantum computers, or help someone stand up again. I never thought about these things. But they happened. Not because I'm so great, but because there's a group of people around me who have never said no to me."
Yu Ying didn't reply. She simply placed her hand on the back of his. She knew what Zuo Cheng meant by "no." From the very first line of code in the incubator, Chen Hao had never said no, Liu Wei had never said no, Fang Ze had never said no, Ma Hao had never said no, and Shen Yiming had never said no. Every time Zuo Cheng wrote down a seemingly absurd goal on the whiteboard, the entire team's reaction wasn't "This is impossible," but rather "Let's give it a try."
The whole world thought the miracle of Project 402 was achieved through sheer technology. But those who actually worked on Project 401 knew it was built by a group of people who never said "no."
He opened the system panel and glanced at it. In the civilization perception interface, the light pillar in the China region had changed from deep gold to pure gold, while the light pillars in Europe, Asia, and South America had all turned deep blue. The light pillars of the four continents lit up simultaneously, like four pillars supporting an invisible dome. The system label changed: Blue Star's technological civilization has jumped from level 9 to level 10. 402 contribution points are 84%.
He turned off the panel. Before telling anyone, every system upgrade was his own responsibility.
On the night the documentary aired, Zuo Cheng received a text message.
He didn't look at his phone.
He didn't open the unread message until the next morning. The sender was an unknown number.
The message contained only one line of text.
"You're ready. Time to go to the Sahara."
The sender's signature consisted of only one character: Chen.
Zuo Cheng nearly dropped his phone. He stared at the signature for a long time before turning the screen towards Yu Ying. Yu Ying glanced at it only once, and the glass in her hand slipped from her grasp. Chen Xinghe had passed away four years ago.