# 董明珠 · Dong Mingzhu — 封面档案 ACF-01-00111

> 亚洲封面人物 Asia Cover Figure · 机器可读档案（LLM-ready）。本文件由官网结构化档案数据自动生成，供 AI 检索与引用。中文全文与英文全文对照编排。

## 档案元数据 Metadata

- 封面编码 ACF Code：**ACF-01-00111**
- 姓名 Name：董明珠 / Dong Mingzhu
- 职务 Title：董事长 / Chairwoman
- 公司 Company：格力电器（Gree） / Gree Electric
- 出生 Born：1954-08，江苏省南京市 (Nanjing, Jiangsu)
- 篇别 Category：女性影响力（列传篇 / Biographies (Liezhuan)）
- 入档日期 Accessioned：2026-07-20
- 标签 Tags：格力电器, 空调, 制造业, 企业家, 铁娘子, 直播带货, 芯片, 新能源汽车
- 永久档案链接 Archive URL：https://coverfigure.com/acf/ACF-01-00111/liezhuan
- English archive：https://coverfigure.com/acf/ACF-01-00111/liezhuan?lang=en
- 官网原文报道 Feature story：https://coverfigure.com/acf/figure/dongmingzhu

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## 卷首 Editorial Intro

当中国制造业在二十一世纪初集体陷入"以市场换技术"的路径依赖时，有一家公司选择了截然相反的道路——用最笨的方法，花最长的时间，把所有的核心技术从零开始自己做。格力电器从一间组装车间成长为全球空调行业的技术标杆，这条路走了三十多年，中间没有捷径、没有合资红利、没有海外并购的捷径可以借用。当同行们在价格战的泥潭中反复缠斗、用营销费用堆砌增长幻象时，格力把每年销售收入的固定比例投入研发，一笔一笔地积累，直到掌握了压缩机、电机、芯片等空调产业链上几乎所有关键环节的自主知识产权。

这种近乎偏执的技术自主路线，在中国商业史上属于少数派的选择。它意味着在最短的时间里放弃最快的增长方式，意味着在资本市场最热衷于轻资产运营的年份里坚持最重的投入模式，更意味着一个人必须承受整个行业的质疑——直到时间证明她的判断是对的。董明珠就是做出这个判断并坚持执行到底的那个人。她从基层销售员起步，一路升至格力电器董事长，在三十年间将格力打造为全球领先的专业化空调企业，累计纳税超过千亿，产品进入一百六十多个国家和地区。

亚洲《封面人物》杂志独立编委会经过严格评审，将董明珠列入终身档案体系，赋予终身档案编码，作为 independent editorial record 永久存证。编委会在评审过程中重点考量了三个维度：其一，她在中国制造业从"组装经济"向"自主创新"转型的关键节点上，提供了最完整的实践样本；其二，她在企业治理中建立的"技术信仰驱动型"管理模式，为全球制造业的女性领导者提供了一个无法被简化的参照系；其三，她所代表的"不妥协"精神——对品质不妥协、对技术不妥协、对长期主义不妥协——构成了中国商业文明演进过程中一份具有标本意义的精神遗产。

她的名字与格力品牌深度绑定，但她留给时代的远不止一个企业。在空调这个看似传统的赛道上，她用三十年的坚守证明了一件事：当整个行业都在寻找捷径时，选择最难的路，最终会成为唯一的出路。

Gree Electric is the only company in China's home-appliance industry to have built a core-technology moat entirely through independent research and development. Over the past three decades, while Chinese appliance makers largely chose the path of "trading market for technology," Gree took a slower, harder, but more independent road. The person who pioneered and guarded that road is Dong Mingzhu.

In 1990, she joined Gree as a grassroots salesperson. More than thirty years later, Gree is the global leader of the air-conditioning industry, holding more than 130,000 patents and keeping its core components under autonomous control amid the technology rivalry between China and the United States. Dong Mingzhu is not Gree's founder, yet she is the person who defined the company's soul — she defended Gree's technology roadmap with an iron hand, built Gree's channel order with institutions, and shaped the company's values with an "industrial spirit."

This archive does not set out to record a legend of personal struggle. Grounded in chronicled facts, public financial reports, and multi-party industry commentary, it records how one person, in little more than thirty years, carried a small local factory to the summit of global manufacturing; and through the persistence of one individual, it observes the long journey of Chinese manufacturing from "assembly" toward "independence." Everything she did — refusing "aluminum for copper," developing chips in-house, refusing layoffs — points to one conviction: the dignity of manufacturing comes from mastering core technology and from insisting on long-term value.

That is why we record Dong Mingzhu.

## 人物速览 Lead

董明珠，格力电器（Gree）董事长兼总裁，中国制造业最具传奇色彩的女性企业家之一。1954年8月生于江苏南京一个普通工薪家庭，家中兄弟姐妹七人排行最小[s1][s3]。30岁时丈夫因病去世，独自抚养两岁的儿子，六年后以36岁的"高龄"孤身南下珠海，进入当时还叫"海利空调器厂"的格力做基层业务员[s2][s4]。入职第一个任务是追讨42万元陈年旧债，她连续40天死缠烂打，硬是把几吨货物拉了回来[s5][s6]。此后以惊人的业绩一路攀升——从1600万到3650万个人销售额，从业务员到经营部部长到副总经理到总裁到董事长，用了22年走完这条传奇之路[s4][s7]。在她的领导下，格力从一家年产2万台的小型国营工厂成长为全球空调行业的领导者，2012年突破千亿营收，累计分红超1476亿元[s2][s8]。她以"铁娘子"的强硬风格著称，坚守空调主业、拒绝"铝代铜"、豪赌芯片自研、进军新能源汽车，每一次决策都伴随着巨大的争议与关注[s9][s10]。她是3次CCTV中国经济年度人物、连续15年入选《财富》全球最具影响力商界女性、连任五届全国人大代表[s1][s28]。她说过"我从来就没有失误过，我从不认错"，也说过"强势不是我内心很强，而是我一定要把这件事情做成"[s7][s12]。从追债42万的单亲妈妈到掌舵千亿帝国的女企业家，董明珠用三十余年书写了一部关于倔强、孤独与不屈的中国制造史[s1][s2]。

Dong Mingzhu is chairwoman and president of Gree Electric Appliances and one of the most legendary female entrepreneurs in Chinese manufacturing. She was born in August 1954 into an ordinary working-class family in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the youngest of seven siblings.[s1][s3] At the age of 30 her husband died of illness, leaving her to raise their two-year-old son alone; six years later, at the "advanced age" of 36, she traveled alone to the southern city of Zhuhai and joined Gree — then still called the Haili Air Conditioner Factory — as a junior salesperson.[s2][s4] Her very first assignment was to chase down an old debt of 420,000 yuan; she hounded the debtor for 40 straight days and physically hauled back several tons of goods in lieu of payment.[s5][s6] From there she climbed on astonishing results — from 16 million to 36.5 million yuan in personal sales, from salesperson to head of the sales department to deputy general manager to president to chairwoman, completing that legendary ascent in 22 years.[s4][s7] Under her leadership, Gree grew from a small state-owned factory producing 20,000 air conditioners a year into the leader of the global air-conditioning industry, breaking through 100 billion yuan in revenue in 2012 and paying out more than 147.6 billion yuan in cumulative dividends.[s2][s8] She is famous for the tough style of the "Iron Lady": she stuck to air conditioning as the core business, refused to replace copper with aluminum, made an audacious bet on self-developed chips, and pushed into new-energy vehicles — every decision accompanied by enormous controversy and attention.[s9][s10] She has been named a CCTV Chinese Economic Person of the Year three times, listed among Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business internationally for 15 consecutive years, and elected a deputy to the National People's Congress for five consecutive terms.[s1][s28] She has said, "I have never made a mistake; I never admit I am wrong," and also, "Being strong-willed does not mean I am strong inside — it means I am determined to get the thing done."[s7][s12] From a single mother chasing a 420,000-yuan debt to the female entrepreneur at the helm of a hundred-billion-yuan empire, Dong Mingzhu has spent more than three decades writing a chapter of Chinese manufacturing about stubbornness, solitude, and refusal to surrender.[s1][s2]

## 正文 Archive Chapters

### 1. 南京：丧夫、蛰伏与南下 / Nanjing: Bereavement, Six Years in the Shadows, and Heading South

董明珠的性格不是在珠海形成的，而是在南京被命运一步步逼出来的。理解她日后的铁腕，要先看她在30岁那年失去了什么。

1954年8月，董明珠出生于江苏省南京市一个普通工薪家庭。父亲董火森是铁路系统基层职工，母亲周娟娣是家庭主妇，家中兄弟姐妹七人，她排行最小[s1][s3]。父母给她取名"明珠"，意为掌上明珠；但这个全家最受宠的幺女，也是家族里最倔强、最不服输的那一个[s3]。母亲让她学针线活，她偏要跟着男孩爬树上墙；老师说成绩中等就好，她非要考全班第一[s3]。父亲常说："这个丫头，将来不得了。"[s3]

1975年，董明珠从安徽芜湖干部教育学院统计学专业毕业，以干部身份被分配到南京一家化工研究所从事行政管理，端上了那个年代令人羡慕的"铁饭碗"[s1][s5]。统计学训练了她的数字敏感度，行政管理经验让她理解了组织与制度——日后别人靠酒桌和关系做销售时，她靠的是数据和规则[s5]。

1980年前后，董明珠与南京某国企工程师结婚。1982年儿子出生，小名东东[s2][s3]。那时的她和千千万万普通年轻母亲一样，过着相夫教子的生活。

然而命运在她30岁那年骤然转向。1984年，丈夫突然查出重病住院。董明珠白天上班，晚上守在医院，工资和积蓄像流水一样花在医药费上，跑遍亲戚家借钱，有报道称借款约10万元，最终仍没能留住人[s2][s4]。1984年冬天，30岁的董明珠站在墓碑前，手里攥着还不清的欠条，怀里抱着两岁的儿子[s4]。她后来称这段经历是"这辈子关键的转折点"："如果不是这件事，我根本就不会走现在这条路。如果他在，根本就不会同意我来珠海。"[s2]

此后是长达六年的单亲妈妈生涯（1984—1990年）。她白天抱着儿子挤公交上班，晚上加班到深夜；有同事说她"带娃上班影响工作"，她咬着牙把孩子送回父母家，每天通勤四小时往返，就为了晚上能亲一口儿子熟睡的脸[s4][s6]。这六年她没给自己买过一件新衣服，所有积蓄都用来还债和养孩子[s4]。同事劝她"找个男人分担"，她低头给儿子擦鼻涕："妈能行，别让孩子看人脸色。"[s4]也是在这六年里，她形成了日后最核心的人生哲学——"靠自己"："因为只有自己一个人啊，没办法啊，全都得你自己一个人承担啊。"[s4]

六个哥哥姐姐后来各自过着普通人的生活，董明珠成为家族中最"出挑"的一个。她与家人的关系并非没有代价——后来她为守住制度拒绝亲哥哥走后门，两人隔阂持续了二十多年[s9]。她为事业错过的陪伴更多：母亲去世时她正在外地开招商会，赶回来只见到灵柩，这个从不落泪的女人蹲在灵前反复说"我还没陪您好好吃过饭"[s12]。这份对家人的亏欠，是她此后所有"代价"的第一笔。

2025年2月，俞敏洪问她为何不再婚，她提到三个原因：为了儿子、忙于事业，以及自己不想。"重组家庭的孩子眼神不一样，像惊弓之鸟。我这辈子最幸运的是没让他受过委屈。"[s13]

1990年，36岁的董明珠做出改变一生的决定：辞掉南京的"铁饭碗"，把8岁的儿子托付给母亲，孤身南下珠海[s2][s4]。在当时，一个36岁的单亲妈妈辞掉稳定工作南下打工，需要的不仅是勇气——她不是在追求梦想，而是在为生存而战[s4]。临行前她摸着儿子的头说"妈妈去挣钱，很快回来"，转身出门时眼泪把衣领打湿了[s4][s6]。

**English:** Dong Mingzhu's character was not formed in Zhuhai; it was forged step by step by fate in Nanjing. To understand the iron fist she wielded later, one must first see what she lost at the age of 30.

In August 1954, Dong Mingzhu was born into an ordinary working-class family in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Her father, Dong Huosen, was a junior employee in the railway system, and her mother, Zhou Juandi, was a housewife. There were seven children in the family, and she was the youngest.[s1][s3] Her parents named her Mingzhu, meaning "a bright pearl in the palm"; yet this most pampered youngest daughter was also the most stubborn and least willing to admit defeat in the whole clan.[s3] When her mother wanted her to learn needlework, she insisted on climbing trees and walls with the boys; when her teachers said middling grades were good enough, she was determined to finish first in her class.[s3] Her father often said, "This girl is going to be something extraordinary one day."[s3]

In 1975, Dong Mingzhu graduated from the Wuhu Cadre Education College in Anhui Province, majoring in statistics, and was assigned in a cadre capacity to a chemical research institute in Nanjing to do administrative work — landing the "iron rice bowl" that was the envy of that era.[s1][s5] Statistics trained her sensitivity to numbers, and administrative work taught her to understand organizations and systems; years later, when others made sales over banquet tables and personal connections, she relied on data and rules.[s5]

Around 1980, Dong Mingzhu married an engineer at a state-owned enterprise in Nanjing. Their son was born in 1982, with the childhood name Dongdong.[s2][s3] Like millions of ordinary young mothers, she lived a life of supporting her husband and raising her child.

But fate turned abruptly when she was 30. In 1984, her husband was suddenly diagnosed with a serious illness and hospitalized. Dong Mingzhu worked by day and kept watch at the hospital by night; her salary and savings flowed away like water on medical bills, and she ran to relatives across the city to borrow money — reports put the debt at roughly 100,000 yuan — yet in the end she could not save him.[s2][s4] In the winter of 1984, the 30-year-old Dong Mingzhu stood before the grave, clutching IOUs she could not repay, her two-year-old son in her arms.[s4] She later called this experience "the biggest turning point of my life": "If it hadn't been for this, I would never have walked the road I'm on now. If he were alive, he would never have agreed to let me go to Zhuhai."[s2]

What followed were six long years as a single mother (1984–1990). By day she carried her son onto crowded buses to work; by night she worked overtime until late. When colleagues said she was "letting the baby affect her work," she gritted her teeth and sent the child back to her parents' home, commuting four hours a day round-trip just so she could kiss her sleeping son's face goodnight.[s4][s6] During those six years she never bought herself a single new piece of clothing; every penny of savings went to repaying debt and raising the child.[s4] When colleagues urged her to "find a man to share the burden," she bowed her head and wiped her son's runny nose: "Mom can manage. I won't let my child live at anyone else's mercy."[s4] It was also in these six years that she formed the core philosophy of her later life — self-reliance: "Because I was all alone. There was no other way. Everything had to be borne by me alone."[s4]

Her six older brothers and sisters went on to live ordinary lives, while Dong Mingzhu became the one who stood out in the family. Her relationship with her relatives was not without its costs — when she later refused to let her own brother use backdoor channels to protect the company's rules, the rift between them lasted more than twenty years.[s9] She missed even more companionship because of her career: when her mother died she was out of town at an investment-promotion meeting, and by the time she rushed back she saw only the coffin. This woman who never wept crouched before the bier and said over and over, "I never even sat down to a proper meal with you."[s12] That debt to her family was the first of all the "costs" she would pay thereafter.

In February 2025, when Yu Minhong asked her why she never remarried, she gave three reasons: for her son's sake, the demands of her career, and her own unwillingness. "Children in a reconstituted family have a different look in their eyes — like birds startled by the twang of a bowstring. The luckiest thing in my life is that I never let him suffer that kind of grievance."[s13]

In 1990, at 36, Dong Mingzhu made the decision that changed her life: she resigned from her "iron rice bowl" in Nanjing, entrusted her eight-year-old son to her mother, and set out alone for Zhuhai in the south.[s2][s4] At the time, for a 36-year-old single mother to quit a stable job and go south to work took more than courage — she was not chasing a dream, she was fighting for survival.[s4] Before leaving, she stroked her son's head and said, "Mom is going to earn money; she'll be back soon." As she turned and walked out the door, her tears soaked her collar.[s4][s6]

### 2. 南下与追债：把“难缠”变成一种能力 / Heading South and Chasing a Debt: Turning Being "Hard to Handle" into a Skill

1990年，董明珠南下珠海时，没有背景、没有资源，甚至没有销售经验。但她用一个方法证明了自己——把"难缠"变成一种能力。

1990年，36岁的董明珠辞掉南京化工研究所的稳定工作，进入当时叫"珠海海利空调器厂"的格力，成为一名基层销售人员[s2][s4]。当时的海利是一家产能约2万台、年产值不到2000万元的国营空调小厂[s7]。招聘主任看见她36岁的年龄直摇头，她当场拍胸脯："给我三个月，干不出业绩我自己卷铺盖走人。"[s4]刚入职时月工资约200元，收入主要靠提成。她后来表示选择销售不纯粹为了钱："就是觉得那里环境好，但选择的职业收入更高，为什么不去挑战？"[s32]

入职后第一个任务，是去安徽合肥追讨前任业务员留下的42万元债务（据董明珠自述）[s5][s6]。这是一笔90年代初的巨额欠款，老业务员去了三次都铩羽而归。董明珠连续40天死缠烂打，每天去对方公司蹲守；对方耍横"有种你就搬货"，她转身雇卡车堵门："今天这货不拉走，我睡你办公室！"饿了啃馒头，渴了喝自来水，最后硬是逼着对方用几吨货物抵了债[s5][s6]。拉货那天，她趴在方向盘上大哭——不是委屈，是觉得自己终于能挺直腰杆了[s6]。

这股"难缠"的劲头令总经理朱江洪刮目相看，也成为格力从"赊销"转向"现款现货"的起点[s5][s7]。朱江洪后来说，正是从董明珠追债这件事开始，他意识到"赊销"模式对企业健康发展的危害，从而下决心改革格力的销售制度[s5]。

1992年，董明珠在安徽市场销售额突破1600万元，占全公司总销售额的八分之一[s4][s7]。她靠的是"笨功夫"：经销商冷脸相拒"杂牌空调谁买"，她干脆住进仓库，白天帮理货，晚上教店员调试机器；暴雨淹了店面那天，她蹚着齐腰深水抢救样机，经销商老板躲在二楼偷看，眼眶发红[s4]。她的方法很简单：不靠关系、不靠酒桌、不靠回扣，就靠帮经销商解决实际问题[s4]。随后她被调往南京市场，签下200万元的空调单子，一年内个人销售额蹿升至3650万元（据董明珠自传《棋行天下》），创造了当时的销售神话[s4][s7]。在酒桌文化盛行的空调行业，她烟酒不沾，完全靠业绩说话——这在当时以男性为主导的空调行业中，堪称异类[s4]。

她的"笨功夫"本质上是一种极致的服务精神：不是靠嘴巴说服经销商，而是靠行动证明自己值得信赖[s4]。住进仓库理货、蹚水抢救样机这些看似"低贱"的举动，在一个以关系和酒桌为主导的市场里，建立起了经销商对她的深度信任[s4]。一个烟酒不沾的女性靠纯粹的业务能力做到销售额第一，这本身就是一个奇迹。

1991年，"海利空调器厂"更名为"格力电器"，"格力"寓意"格外有力"[s7]。她加入时，企业正处于从国营小厂向市场化企业转型的关键期——一个没有退路的单亲妈妈，与一家急需突破的小企业，在时代的洪流里相遇，最终互相成就[s4][s7]。

1994年，格力内部出现严重危机。因朱江洪大幅降低销售人员提成比例以平衡科技人员待遇，部分骨干业务员"集体辞职"，被竞争对手挖走，扬言"三年打败格力"[s1][s7]。销售团队是企业的命脉，骨干集体出走意味着市场可能一夜崩塌。董明珠不为所动，坚持留在格力，被全票推选为公司经营部副部长，后任部长，临危受命。她回忆道："我不想回来当部长，但是一看也应该回来——你一个人再有能力，如果企业真的垮掉了，你还能存在吗？"[s7]

从追债42万的基层业务员到独当一面的经营部部长，董明珠用四年证明了自己的价值。她的商业逻辑在这时已经清晰：个人能力再强，也必须依托平台；而一个值得托付的平台，必须靠制度而非人情来运转[s7]。

**English:** When Dong Mingzhu headed south to Zhuhai in 1990, she had no background, no resources, and not even any sales experience. But she proved herself with one method — she turned being "hard to handle" into a professional capability.

In 1990, the 36-year-old Dong Mingzhu quit her stable job at the Nanjing chemical research institute and joined Gree — then called the Zhuhai Haili Air Conditioner Factory — as a junior salesperson.[s2][s4] Haili at the time was a small state-owned air-conditioning factory with a capacity of roughly 20,000 units and annual output value of less than 20 million yuan.[s7] The recruitment director shook his head at her age of 36, and she thumped her chest on the spot: "Give me three months. If I can't produce results, I'll pack my bedding and leave myself."[s4] Her starting monthly salary was about 200 yuan, with income mainly from commission. She later said that choosing sales was not purely for money: "I simply felt the environment there was good — but if the career I chose also paid better, why not take the challenge?"[s32]

Her first assignment was to go to Hefei, Anhui Province, to collect a debt of 420,000 yuan left behind by her predecessor (according to Dong Mingzhu's own account).[s5][s6] It was an enormous sum for the early 1990s, and the old salesperson had gone three times and come back defeated each time. Dong Mingzhu laid siege for 40 consecutive days, showing up at the debtor's company every morning. When the other side blustered, "If you've got the nerve, take the goods away," she turned around, hired a truck, and blocked the gate: "If those goods don't leave today, I'll sleep in your office!" When she was hungry she gnawed on steamed buns; when thirsty she drank tap water. In the end she forced the debtor to settle the debt with several tons of merchandise.[s5][s6] On the day the goods were hauled away, she slumped over the steering wheel and cried — not out of grievance, but because she felt she could finally stand up straight.[s6]

That "hard to handle" tenacity caught the eye of general manager Zhu Jianghong, and it also became the starting point of Gree's shift from "selling on credit" to "cash on delivery."[s5][s7] Zhu Jianghong later said that it was precisely Dong Mingzhu's debt collection that made him realize how harmful the credit-sales model was to a company's healthy development, and that was what resolved him to reform Gree's sales system.[s5]

In 1992, Dong Mingzhu's sales in the Anhui market broke through 16 million yuan, accounting for one-eighth of the entire company's total sales.[s4][s7] She did it with "dumb, plodding effort": when dealers turned cold faces on her, saying "who buys a no-name air conditioner," she simply moved into the warehouse, helping tally goods by day and teaching shop clerks how to install and debug the machines by night. On the day a rainstorm flooded a storefront, she waded through waist-deep water to rescue the display units; the dealer's boss watched secretly from the second floor, his eyes reddening.[s4] Her method was simple: no connections, no banquet tables, no kickbacks — just helping dealers solve real problems.[s4] She was then transferred to the Nanjing market, where she signed a two-million-yuan air-conditioning order, and within a year her personal sales rocketed to 36.5 million yuan (according to her autobiography Chess Across the World), creating a sales legend for the time.[s4][s7] In an air-conditioning industry where banquet-table culture reigned, she touched neither tobacco nor alcohol and spoke entirely through results — in the male-dominated industry of that era, she was nothing short of an anomaly.[s4]

Her "dumb effort" was, in essence, an extreme form of service spirit: she did not persuade dealers with words, she proved through action that she was trustworthy.[s4] Moving into the warehouse to tally goods and wading through floodwater to rescue display units — these seemingly "humble" acts built deep trust with the dealers in a market governed by connections and banquet tables.[s4] A woman who neither smoked nor drank, reaching number one in sales purely on professional ability, was itself a miracle.

In 1991, the Haili Air Conditioner Factory was renamed Gree Electric Appliances; "Gree" was meant to suggest "extraordinary power."[s7] When she joined, the company was at a critical juncture in its transformation from a small state-owned factory into a market-driven enterprise — a single mother with no way back met a small company in desperate need of a breakthrough in the torrent of the times, and in the end each made the other's fortune.[s4][s7]

In 1994, a serious crisis erupted inside Gree. After Zhu Jianghong sharply cut the sales team's commission rate in order to balance the treatment of technical staff, a group of key salespeople "resigned collectively," were poached by competitors, and boasted that they would "defeat Gree in three years."[s1][s7] The sales team was the company's lifeline; the mass departure of its backbone threatened to collapse the market overnight. Dong Mingzhu was unmoved. She insisted on staying at Gree and was elected unanimously as deputy head of the company's sales department, later becoming its head — appointed in the hour of peril. She recalled: "I didn't want to come back as a department head, but when I looked at it, I had to come back — no matter how capable one person is, if the company really collapses, can you still exist?"[s7]

From a junior salesperson chasing a 420,000-yuan debt to a sales department head capable of running her own show, Dong Mingzhu spent four years proving her worth. Her business logic was already clear: however strong an individual's ability, it must rest on a platform; and a platform worth entrusting oneself to must run on institutions rather than personal favor.[s7]

### 3. 用制度替代人情：先款后货与凉夏战役 / Institutions over Personal Favor: Cash-Before-Delivery and the Cool-Summer Battle

董明珠执掌经营部后做的第一件事，不是多卖空调，而是重写规则。她用制度替代了人情——这是格力渠道秩序的起点，也是她管理风格的底色。

1995年至1997年，董明珠担任格力电器经营部部长。上任伊始，她推出日后成为格力渠道基石的"先款后货"制度：经销商必须先付款、后提货，彻底杜绝赊销带来的坏账风险[s4][s7]。在1990年代的空调市场，赊销是行业惯例——经销商先提货后付款，卖不完可以退货，企业背着巨大的坏账风险[s4]。新制度引起巨大反弹，许多经销商认为格力"太霸道"，威胁转投其他品牌。但董明珠毫不动摇：当产品足够强、市场足够大时，规则就由你定[s4]。

与此同时，她大力整顿销售秩序，建立严格的区域管理制度，推行区域限量销售，防止经销商之间恶性竞争和价格战对品牌利润的侵蚀[s4]。2001年4月她出任总经理后，又发起内部"整风运动"，提出"公平公正、公开透明、公私分明"12字管理方针，要求所有共产党员戴党徽接受监督："发现一个杀一个，格杀勿论，绝不手软。"[s15]

制度的威力在1996年得到充分验证。当年空调业遭遇罕见凉夏，市场需求大幅萎缩，大量企业选择降价清库存。董明珠带领23名营销业务员迎战国内成百上千人的营销队伍，宁可让出市场也不降价，反而拿出1亿元利润的2%按销售额比例补贴经销商[s4][s7]。她赌的是：降价虽能短期清库存，却会破坏价格体系、损害经销商利益；品质和服务才是消费者最看重的因素[s4]。结果格力当年销售增长17%，首次超过春兰成为行业第一[s4][s7]。这场"凉夏战役"奠定了格力在中国空调市场的领导地位，也确立了她此后30年始终坚守的信条——"宁可让出市场也不降价"[s4]。

在她的铁腕治理下，格力公司销售收入从4亿元增长到28亿元，增长了整整7倍[s4][s7]。规则取代关系，成为这台机器运转的方式——而更大的渠道创新，还在后面。

**English:** The first thing Dong Mingzhu did after taking charge of the sales department was not to sell more air conditioners, but to rewrite the rules. She replaced personal favor with institutions — this was the starting point of Gree's channel order and the base color of her management style.

From 1995 to 1997, Dong Mingzhu served as head of Gree Electric's sales department. Upon taking office, she introduced the "cash-before-delivery" system that would later become the cornerstone of Gree's channel model: dealers had to pay first and take delivery afterward, eliminating at a stroke the bad-debt risk brought by selling on credit.[s4][s7] In the air-conditioning market of the 1990s, credit sales were the industry norm — dealers took delivery first and paid later, and could return unsold goods, leaving manufacturers carrying enormous bad-debt risk.[s4] The new system provoked fierce backlash; many dealers called Gree "overbearing" and threatened to switch to other brands. But Dong Mingzhu did not waver: when the product is strong enough and the market large enough, you are the one who sets the rules.[s4]

At the same time, she vigorously straightened out sales order, established a strict regional management system, and imposed regional sales quotas to prevent vicious competition among dealers and price wars from eroding the brand's margins.[s4] After she became general manager in April 2001, she launched an internal "rectification campaign," putting forward a twelve-character management guideline — "fair and just, open and transparent, public and private strictly separated" — and requiring all Communist Party members to wear their party badges and accept supervision: "Find one, punish one — kill on sight, without the slightest leniency."[s15]

The power of the system was fully vindicated in 1996. That year the air-conditioning industry met a rare cool summer; market demand shriveled, and large numbers of companies chose to cut prices to clear inventory. Dong Mingzhu led 23 sales staff into battle against domestic marketing armies of hundreds or thousands of people, preferring to surrender market share rather than cut prices; instead, she took 2 percent of 100 million yuan in profit and subsidized dealers in proportion to their sales.[s4][s7] Her bet was this: price cuts could clear inventory in the short run but would wreck the price system and harm dealers' interests; quality and service were what consumers cared about most.[s4] The result: Gree's sales grew 17 percent that year, overtaking Chunlan for the first time to become number one in the industry.[s4][s7] This "cool-summer battle" established Gree's leadership in China's air-conditioning market and fixed the creed she has held to for the 30 years since — "rather give up market share than cut prices."[s4]

Under her iron-fisted governance, Gree's sales revenue grew from 400 million yuan to 2.8 billion yuan — a sevenfold increase.[s4][s7] Rules replaced relationships as the way the machine ran — and a still greater channel innovation lay ahead.

### 4. 把经销商变成合伙人：区域销售公司模式 / Turning Dealers into Partners: The Regional Sales Company Model

如果说"先款后货"让经销商怕格力，那么区域销售公司模式则让经销商离不开格力。董明珠做了一件当时没人做过的事：她把经销商变成了合伙人。

1997年，董明珠升任格力电器副总经理[s1]。同年，格力在湖北组织几大经销商联合组成股份制销售公司，独创"区域销售公司"模式——以资产为纽带、以品牌为旗帜，将经销商的利益与格力深度绑定，从体制上重新确立厂商关系[s4][s9]。这一模式被称为"21世纪经济领域的全新营销模式"，成为中国家电行业渠道建设的经典案例[s9]。

它解决了传统经销体系的三个核心问题：其一，经销商之间的恶性竞争——区域限量制度确保每个经销商都有稳定的利润空间；其二，经销商对品牌的忠诚度——通过持股，经销商的利益与格力的业绩直接挂钩；其三，价格体系的稳定性——经销商不再需要靠打价格战争夺市场[s9][s22]。经销商不再是格力的"外部客户"，而是利益共享、风险共担的"股东合伙人"。这一模式的底气，在2004年国美大战中得到充分验证——格力敢于退出中国领先家电连锁，正是因为有这套自建渠道体系托底[s7][s21]。

合伙人模式在十年后被推向更深一层。2007年，董明珠出任格力电器总裁[s1]。同年，格力引进10家核心区域销售公司作为战略股东成立京海互联（原京海担保），持股8.91%成为第二大股东[s9][s22]。经销商从"渠道合作者"变为上市公司股东，厂商利益绑定达到顶点——这一制度设计成为格力渠道控制力的核心密码，也为日后董明珠在公司治理中的话语权埋下伏笔[s22]。

制度要立住，立规矩的人必须先过自己这一关。1997年，董明珠的亲哥哥曾帮经销商拿货，许诺2%的好处费（约2万元），被她一口回绝，并停止向该经销商供货[s9][s12]。哥哥从南京赶到珠海理论未果，寄来断绝关系的信，甚至说要将她从族谱中除名；这隔阂持续了二十多年，直到2015年前后哥哥生病，董明珠带着积蓄去医院探望，两人才红着眼眶和解[s9][s12]。在她看来这是底线：如果连董事长的亲哥哥都不能走后门，其他人还有什么资格搞特殊？"公私分明"四个字，由此成为格力制度真正具有约束力的起点[s9][s12]。

董明珠的升迁之路——业务员、经营部部长、销售副总、总经理、总裁——每一步都有朱江洪的提拔和支持；讨论副总任命时异议较大，也是朱江洪努力说服才通过[s7]。朱江洪主内（研发、生产、质量），董明珠主外（市场、销售），两人性格互补：朱江洪内敛谦逊、从善如流，董明珠黑白分明、霸气外露[s8]。科龙电器前总裁王国端评价："朱江洪遇到董明珠是朱的福气，董明珠遇到朱江洪是董的运气。"[s8]这对"黄金搭档"的默契合作，为格力的腾飞奠定了坚实基础[s8]。在追赶阶段，"朱董配"是格力最有效的组合——这套渠道制度，正是在两人的默契配合下落地生根。此后二十多年里，这套模式经历了国美的冲击、电商的崛起乃至经销商体系自身的"倒戈"，几经修补与改造，但"厂商利益共同体"的底层设计，始终是格力渠道的骨架[s7][s22]。

**English:** If "cash-before-delivery" made dealers fear Gree, the regional sales company model made dealers unable to do without Gree. Dong Mingzhu did something no one had done at the time: she turned dealers into partners.

In 1997, Dong Mingzhu was promoted to deputy general manager of Gree Electric.[s1] That same year, in Hubei, Gree organized several major dealers to jointly form a joint-stock sales company, creating the original "regional sales company" model — using assets as the bond and the brand as the banner, binding dealers' interests deeply to Gree's, and redefining the manufacturer-dealer relationship institutionally.[s4][s9] The model was hailed as "a brand-new marketing model for the economic sphere of the twenty-first century" and became a classic case of channel building in China's home-appliance industry.[s9]

It solved three core problems of the traditional distribution system. First, vicious competition among dealers: the regional quota system ensured every dealer a stable margin. Second, dealers' loyalty to the brand: by taking equity, dealers' interests were tied directly to Gree's performance. Third, the stability of the price system: dealers no longer needed to fight price wars to win market share.[s9][s22] Dealers were no longer Gree's "external customers" but "shareholder-partners" sharing both profits and risks. The strength of this model was fully vindicated in the 2004 Gome war — Gree dared to walk away from China's largest home-appliance chain precisely because it had this self-built channel system beneath it.[s7][s21]

The partnership model was pushed a layer deeper a decade later. In 2007, Dong Mingzhu became president of Gree Electric.[s1] That same year, Gree brought in ten core regional sales companies as strategic shareholders to establish Jinghai Interconnection (originally Jinghai Guarantee), which took an 8.91 percent stake and became the second-largest shareholder.[s9][s22] Dealers went from "channel partners" to shareholders in the listed company, and the binding of manufacturer and dealer interests reached its apex — this institutional design became the core code of Gree's channel control and also laid the groundwork for Dong Mingzhu's say in corporate governance later on.[s22]

For a system to stand, the person who sets the rules must first pass the test within her own family. In 1997, Dong Mingzhu's own elder brother helped a dealer obtain goods and was promised a 2 percent commission (about 20,000 yuan); she refused outright and cut off supply to that dealer.[s9][s12] Her brother traveled from Nanjing to Zhuhai to argue the point without success, then sent a letter severing relations and even spoke of striking her from the family genealogy; the estrangement lasted more than twenty years, and it was only around 2015, when her brother fell ill, that Dong Mingzhu took her savings to the hospital to visit him and the two reconciled with red-rimmed eyes.[s9][s12] In her view this was the bottom line: if even the chairwoman's own elder brother could not use backdoor channels, what right did anyone else have to special treatment? The phrase "public and private strictly separated" thus became the point at which Gree's rules acquired real binding force.[s9][s12]

Every step of Dong Mingzhu's ascent — salesperson, sales department head, vice president for sales, general manager, president — carried Zhu Jianghong's promotion and support; when considerable objection arose over the vice-president appointment, it was Zhu Jianghong who argued hard to push it through.[s7] Zhu Jianghong ran the inside (R&D, production, quality), while Dong Mingzhu ran the outside (market, sales), and their characters complemented each other: Zhu was introverted, humble, and ready to take good advice; Dong saw the world in black and white and wore her dominance openly.[s8] Wang Guoduan, former president of Kelon Electrical, observed: "For Zhu Jianghong, meeting Dong Mingzhu was his good fortune; for Dong Mingzhu, meeting Zhu Jianghong was her good luck."[s8] The tacit cooperation of this "golden duo" laid a solid foundation for Gree's takeoff.[s8] In the catch-up phase, the "Zhu-Dong pairing" was Gree's most effective combination — and this channel system took root precisely in the two leaders' tacit teamwork. Over the following two decades and more, the model withstood the shock of Gome, the rise of e-commerce, and even the "defection" of the dealer system itself; it was repaired and reworked again and again, but the underlying design of a "community of shared interests between manufacturer and dealer" remained the skeleton of Gree's channel throughout.[s7][s22]

### 5. 两场保卫战：父子之争与国美大战 / Two Battles to Defend Independence: The Parent-Subsidiary Dispute and the Gome War

格力在崛起途中打过两场硬仗：一场保卫品牌归属，一场保卫渠道自主。董明珠在两场仗里都选择了最硬的打法——正面不退，迂回借力。

2003年至2005年，格力集团（母公司）与格力电器（子公司）爆发震惊业界的"父子之争"[s8][s21]。矛盾的根源是品牌使用权：母公司投资的格力小家电、格力热水器等非核心业务借用"格力"品牌，却因质量问题频频拖累格力空调的核心声誉[s8][s21]。董明珠的反击干净利落：她在全国二十多家媒体高调发表声明维权[s8][s21]。集团方面一度筹划罢免朱江洪董事长职务，甚至有媒体发文将朱江洪描绘成"褚时健式人物"——这是危险的政治信号[s8]。关键时刻，董明珠一边指挥员工挡在公司大门阻止尽调人员入场，一边悄悄赴广州找省委书记陈情，"半个月以后，省里来了调查组"[s8][s21]。2005年12月，格力集团宣布将"格力"商标无偿转让给格力电器；2006年8月，朱江洪兼任格力集团董事长、总裁和党委书记[s8][s21]。品牌归属之争以格力电器完胜告终。

2004年的国美大战是同一逻辑的延伸。因成都国美单方大幅降价、严重破坏格力价格体系，董明珠果断下令停止向成都国美供货；国美总部随即报复，将格力清场清库[s7][s21]。面对中国领先家电连锁的压力，她毫不退让，格力全线退出国美渠道，转而自建专卖店，誓言"永不进国美"[s7][s21]。她的判断是："渠道是企业的生命线，把生命线交给别人，就等于把命运交给别人。"[s7]

短短6年时间，格力在全球建立起超过10000家专卖店，开创家电行业"厂商自主渠道"的典范[s7]。后来国美在家电零售业的垄断地位逐渐瓦解，而格力的专卖店网络成为其最核心的竞争壁垒之一[s7]。国美大战更深远的影响在于：它打破了"连锁卖场垄断渠道"的行业共识，证明品牌商可以绕过大型连锁直接触达终端消费者——这一逻辑在十年后的电商时代得到进一步验证[s7]。2005年，格力家用空调产销量跃居全球第一；1995年至2005年，格力连续11年空调产销量、销售收入、市场占有率均居全国首位[s1]。两场仗打下来，董明珠在格力的地位再无人能够撼动[s8]。两场保卫战之后，格力的品牌与渠道，都掌握在了自己手里。

**English:** On its way to prominence, Gree fought two hard battles: one to defend ownership of the brand, the other to defend the independence of its channels. In both, Dong Mingzhu chose the hardest way to fight — standing firm head-on while borrowing leverage through maneuver.

From 2003 to 2005, the parent company Gree Group and the subsidiary Gree Electric erupted in an industry-shocking "father-and-son dispute."[s8][s21] The root of the conflict was the right to use the brand: non-core businesses invested in by the parent company — Gree small home appliances, Gree water heaters, and the like — borrowed the "Gree" name, yet quality problems repeatedly dragged down the core reputation of Gree air conditioners.[s8][s21] Dong Mingzhu's counterattack was clean and decisive: she issued a high-profile statement defending her rights in more than twenty media outlets across the country.[s8][s21] At one point the Group side planned to remove Zhu Jianghong from the chairmanship, and some media articles even portrayed Zhu as a "Chu Shijian-style figure" — a dangerous political signal.[s8] At the critical moment, Dong Mingzhu both directed employees to stand in the company gateway to block due-diligence personnel from entering and quietly went to Guangzhou to plead her case to the provincial party secretary; "half a month later, a provincial investigation team arrived."[s8][s21] In December 2005, Gree Group announced that it would transfer the "Gree" trademark to Gree Electric free of charge; in August 2006, Zhu Jianghong concurrently became chairman, president, and party secretary of Gree Group.[s8][s21] The battle over brand ownership ended in a complete victory for Gree Electric.

The Gome war of 2004 was an extension of the same logic. After Gome's Chengdu operation unilaterally slashed prices and badly damaged Gree's price system, Dong Mingzhu peremptorily ordered a halt to supplies to Gome Chengdu; Gome headquarters retaliated by clearing Gree products off its floors and out of its warehouses.[s7][s21] Facing pressure from China's largest home-appliance chain, she did not give an inch: Gree withdrew from the Gome channel across the board, turned instead to building its own specialty stores, and vowed "never to enter Gome again."[s7][s21] Her reasoning: "The channel is a company's lifeline. To hand your lifeline to someone else is to hand your destiny to someone else."[s7]

In just six years, Gree built more than 10,000 specialty stores worldwide, creating a model of "manufacturer-owned channels" for the home-appliance industry.[s7] In later years Gome's monopoly in appliance retail gradually crumbled, while Gree's specialty-store network became one of its most core competitive bulwarks.[s7] The deeper significance of the Gome war was that it shattered the industry consensus that "chain stores monopolize the channel," proving that a brand owner could bypass the big chains and reach end consumers directly — a logic that would be further vindicated in the e-commerce era a decade later.[s7] In 2005, Gree's production and sales of residential air conditioners rose to first place in the world; from 1995 to 2005, Gree ranked first nationwide for 11 consecutive years in air-conditioner output and sales volume, sales revenue, and market share.[s1] After the two battles, no one could any longer shake Dong Mingzhu's position at Gree.[s8] When the two battles of self-defense were over, both Gree's brand and its channels were in its own hands.

### 6. “朱董配”终结：接班与路线之辩 / The End of the "Zhu-Dong Pairing": Succession and the Debate over Strategy

2012年权力交接之后，"朱董配"从商界佳话变成了路线之辩。这段公案没有简单的对错——它更像中国制造业在两个发展阶段的必然分叉。

2012年5月，朱江洪届龄退休（1945年生，时年67岁），董明珠正式接任格力集团董事长、格力电器董事长兼总裁，长达20年的"朱董配"时代画上句号，格力进入"董明珠时代"[s1][s8]。据朱江洪自传《我执掌格力的24年》所述，董明珠接任之前并没有准备：2012年5月珠海市领导向朱江洪传达新一届人事安排，5月25日换届股东大会后，朱江洪收拾东西一个人悄悄离开公司[s8]。《北京商报》透露，按规定60岁退休但可以返聘，董明珠的意见可能对最后名单起到关键作用——若她希望朱江洪继续搭档，可以跟国资委商量破格推荐，但实际上并没有出现这个结果[s8]。

退休后的疏离令人唏嘘。朱江洪退休仅一个月赴京参加中国家用电器协会为他举行的颁奖仪式，格力方面没有安排任何人接机，他打车抵达会场后流下了泪水[s8]；此后不久，他悉数减持了自己持有的格力股票，并公开表示："这几年，格力跟我没有任何联系，我不评价现在的格力人和事。"[s8]2017年，他在自传中公开回应"谁是格力创始人"的争议，称"没有朱江洪就没有董明珠这句话或许有一定道理"，但不认可"没有董明珠就没有格力"的说法；他还写道，格力的销售政策、决策"哪样离开过我的参与与制定？"[s8]这些都属公开出版的个人观点，档案照录。

路线分歧是两人分野的核心。朱江洪坚持技术立企、专注空调主业、反对盲目多元化，在自传中写道：春兰就是败于多元化，才成就了格力，"企业是一步步地干出来的，不是喊出来的"[s8]；他明确表示，如果自己继续执掌，不会让格力造手机、造汽车[s8]。董明珠则走上更为激进的扩张之路，从手机到银隆到芯片全面多元化[s8]；她曾说"格力真正有专利技术是从2012年开始的"，此言被业内认为"去朱江洪化"意味浓重[s8]。2023年，朱江洪现身飞利浦空调相关活动，而飞利浦空调的核心团队几乎清一色来自格力——董事长黄辉（原格力执行总裁、二号人物）、总裁胡文丰（原格力总裁助理）、实际控制人徐自发（原格力最大经销商）[s8][s22]。

评价两个时代，公开的产业数据比立场更有说服力。朱江洪时期（1992—2012），格力营收复合增长率约23.7%，净利润复合增长率约22.1%，空调国内市占率从约1%做到约30%；董明珠时期（2012—2025），营收复合增长率约5.8%，净利润复合增长率约6.2%，市占率维持在25%—30%区间[s8]。但基数差异同样客观：朱江洪接手时格力年营收仅1.2亿至1.5亿元，而董明珠接班时格力已是千亿级企业——2012年格力营收突破1000亿元，是国内家电业少有的依靠空调单一品类进入千亿行列的企业[s1][s8]。

路线之争的本质，不是谁对谁错，而是企业在不同发展阶段面临的战略选择：追赶阶段专注主业是正确答案，朱江洪的技术立企与董明珠的渠道创新共同创造了格力的辉煌；而当空调市场趋于饱和、竞争对手全面多元化，领先阶段的格力必须回答"第二条增长曲线在哪里"[s8]。董明珠的激进多元化，本质上是一个成功者面对天花板的增长焦虑[s16]。至于答案是否正确，仍需更长的时间来检验。

**English:** After the handover of power in 2012, the "Zhu-Dong pairing" turned from a celebrated business partnership into a debate over strategy. There is no simple right or wrong in this affair — it looks more like an inevitable fork in the road between two stages of Chinese manufacturing.

In May 2012, Zhu Jianghong retired at the retirement age (born 1945, he was 67), and Dong Mingzhu formally succeeded him as chairwoman of Gree Group and chairwoman and president of Gree Electric. The two-decade era of the "Zhu-Dong pairing" came to an end, and Gree entered the "Dong Mingzhu era."[s1][s8] According to Zhu Jianghong's autobiography The 24 Years I Led Gree, Dong Mingzhu was unprepared before taking over: in May 2012, Zhuhai city leaders conveyed the new personnel arrangements to Zhu, and after the shareholder meeting for the leadership change on May 25, Zhu packed his things and quietly left the company alone.[s8] Beijing Business Today revealed that, under the rules, executives retired at 60 but could be rehired on contract, and Dong Mingzhu's opinion may have played a decisive role in the final list — had she wished for Zhu to remain her partner, she could have discussed an exceptional recommendation with the state assets commission, but in the event no such outcome occurred.[s8]

The estrangement after retirement was poignant. Just a month after retiring, Zhu Jianghong traveled to Beijing for an award ceremony held for him by the China Household Electrical Appliances Association; Gree arranged no one to meet him at the airport, and after he arrived at the venue by taxi he shed tears.[s8] Soon afterward, he sold off all the Gree shares he held and stated publicly: "These past few years, Gree has had no contact with me at all. I do not comment on Gree's people or affairs today."[s8] In 2017, in his autobiography, he publicly responded to the dispute over "who founded Gree," saying that the statement "without Zhu Jianghong there would be no Dong Mingzhu may have some truth to it," but he did not accept the claim that "without Dong Mingzhu there would be no Gree"; he also wrote, of Gree's sales policies and decisions, "which of them was ever made without my participation and authorship?"[s8] These are personal views published openly, and this archive records them as such.

Strategic divergence was the core of their parting. Zhu Jianghong insisted on building the enterprise on technology, focusing on the core air-conditioning business, and opposing blind diversification; he wrote in his autobiography that Chunlan was ruined precisely by diversification, which in turn made Gree, and that "an enterprise is built step by step through doing, not through slogans";[s8] he stated plainly that, had he remained at the helm, he would not have let Gree make mobile phones or build cars.[s8] Dong Mingzhu, for her part, took a far more aggressive path of expansion, diversifying comprehensively from mobile phones to Yinlong to chips;[s8] she once said that "Gree's real patented technology began in 2012," a remark widely read in the industry as heavy with the intent of "de-Zhu-Jianghong-ification."[s8] In 2023, Zhu Jianghong appeared at events related to Philips air conditioners, and the core team of Philips air conditioners came almost entirely from Gree — chairman Huang Hui (formerly Gree's executive president and number two), president Hu Wenfeng (formerly Gree's assistant to the president), and actual controller Xu Zifa (formerly Gree's largest distributor).[s8][s22]

In assessing the two eras, public industry data are more persuasive than positions. During the Zhu Jianghong period (1992–2012), Gree's revenue grew at a compound annual rate of about 23.7 percent and net profit at about 22.1 percent, with domestic air-conditioner market share rising from roughly 1 percent to roughly 30 percent; during the Dong Mingzhu period (2012–2025), revenue grew at a compound annual rate of about 5.8 percent and net profit about 6.2 percent, with market share holding in the 25-to-30-percent range.[s8] But the difference in base size is equally real: when Zhu took over, Gree's annual revenue was only 120 to 150 million yuan, whereas when Dong succeeded him Gree was already a hundred-billion-yuan enterprise — in 2012 Gree's revenue broke through 100 billion yuan, making it the only company in China's home-appliance industry to enter the hundred-billion club on a single category, air conditioners.[s1][s8]

The essence of the strategy dispute is not who was right and who was wrong, but the strategic choices an enterprise faces at different stages of development: in the catch-up phase, focusing on the core business was the correct answer, and Zhu Jianghong's technology-first approach and Dong Mingzhu's channel innovation together created Gree's glory; but when the air-conditioner market nears saturation and competitors diversify across the board, Gree in its leadership phase must answer the question "where is the second growth curve?"[s8] Dong Mingzhu's aggressive diversification was, at bottom, the growth anxiety of a successful person facing a ceiling.[s16] Whether the answer is the right one still requires more time to test.

### 7. 十亿赌约：一场赌局的三种读法 / The One-Billion-Yuan Bet: Three Ways to Read a Wager

2013年那场10亿赌约，是中国商业史上传播最广的一次公开对赌。它的价值不在金额，而在于它把"虚实之争"具象成了两个人——以及两种发展路线。

赌约本身。2013年12月12日，央视第十四届中国经济年度人物颁奖盛典现场，两位颁奖嘉宾被定义为"虚拟经济"与"实体经济"的代表[s10][s23]。雷军提出：五年之内如果小米营业额击败格力，董明珠输他1块钱就行。董明珠当场回应："第一，不可能；第二，要赌就赌10个亿。"[s10][s23]马云被邀做担保，笑称"支付宝不敢担保"，并说"没有传统的制造业……只有传统的思想"[s10]。这是一场无法律效力的口头赌约：10亿元人民币，5年为期（2013—2018），赌小米与格力谁的年度营业收入更高[s10][s23]。当时双方体量悬殊：2013年小米营收约316亿元、员工约4000人，格力营收约1200亿元、员工约72000人，格力约为小米的3.8倍[s10][s23]。

结果与反转。2018年到期：格力电器营收1981.2亿元（年报数据，同比增长33.61%），净利润262.02亿元；小米集团营收1749.15亿元，经调整净利润85.55亿元——格力以约232亿元优势胜出[s10][s23]。董明珠公开表示10亿元不要了："赢得这个赌约不是靠什么……格力的宗旨和目标很简单，就是让世界爱上中国造。"[s10]但"下半场"迅速反转：2019年小米营收2058亿元首次反超格力的2005亿元[s10][s23]。同年8月，董明珠在中国质量协会40周年纪念大会上喊话"还想再跟雷军赌五年"，雷军回应"可以试一下"，但双方此后都没有再正式续约[s10][s23]。2020年8月，雷军在小米十周年演讲中正式认输："我们为啥要招惹董大姐，带来那么多烦恼？……五年赌局，小米输了，当年确实膨胀了。"[s23]到2024年底，小米营收约3659亿元、格力约1900亿元，小米已近格力2倍[s23]。2026年4月，雷军再谈赌约时坦言"当年不该开这个玩笑，承受了巨大情绪成本"[s23]。

行业意义。五年间小米营收增长约6.6倍、利润增长约24.8倍，2020年代后小米"手机+AIoT+汽车"的多元扩张与格力多元化的坎坷形成对照[s10][s23]。董明珠赢了当年的10亿面子，雷军赢了此后的产业里子。但格力赢的也不只是面子：在空调领域的深耕、在芯片领域的突破、在品质控制上的执着，都是"互联网思维"无法替代的能力[s14]。这场赌约留下的真正问题是：单一赛道的极致深耕，能否支撑一家千亿级企业的持续增长？至今，它仍是观察中国制造转型的经典参照系[s10][s23]。

**English:** The one-billion-yuan bet of 2013 was the most widely circulated public wager in the history of Chinese business. Its value lay not in the amount but in the way it made the "debate between the virtual and the real" concrete in two people — and two development routes.

The bet itself. On December 12, 2013, at the gala for the fourteenth CCTV Chinese Economic Person of the Year awards, the two presenters of the award were cast as representatives of the "virtual economy" and the "real economy."[s10][s23] Lei Jun proposed that, if Xiaomi's turnover beat Gree's within five years, Dong Mingzhu need only pay him one yuan. Dong Mingzhu responded on the spot: "First, that's impossible; second, if we're going to bet, let's bet one billion."[s10][s23] Jack Ma was invited to stand as guarantor and laughed that "Alipay would not dare guarantee it," adding that "there is no traditional manufacturing … only traditional thinking."[s10] It was a verbal wager with no legal force: one billion yuan, a five-year term (2013–2018), on whether Xiaomi's or Gree's annual operating revenue would be higher.[s10][s23] At the time the two sides were vastly unequal in scale: in 2013 Xiaomi's revenue was about 31.6 billion yuan with some 4,000 employees, while Gree's revenue was about 120 billion yuan with roughly 72,000 employees — Gree was about 3.8 times Xiaomi's size.[s10][s23]

The result and the reversal. When the bet came due in 2018: Gree Electric's revenue was 198.12 billion yuan (annual-report figure, up 33.61 percent year on year) with net profit of 26.202 billion yuan; Xiaomi Group's revenue was 174.915 billion yuan with adjusted net profit of 8.555 billion yuan — Gree won by a margin of roughly 23.2 billion yuan.[s10][s23] Dong Mingzhu said publicly that she would not claim the one billion yuan: "Winning this bet wasn't achieved by anything special … Gree's purpose and goal is simple: to let the world fall in love with Chinese manufacturing."[s10] But the "second half" quickly reversed: in 2019 Xiaomi's revenue of 205.8 billion yuan overtook Gree's 200.5 billion yuan for the first time.[s10][s23] In August that year, at the fortieth-anniversary conference of the China Association for Quality, Dong Mingzhu called out that she "wanted to bet another five years with Lei Jun"; Lei Jun replied that "we could give it a try," but neither side ever formally renewed the bet.[s10][s23] In August 2020, in his speech for Xiaomi's tenth anniversary, Lei Jun formally conceded: "Why did we have to provoke Sister Dong and bring ourselves so much trouble? … In the five-year bet, Xiaomi lost; back then we really were swollen-headed."[s23] By the end of 2024, Xiaomi's revenue was about 365.9 billion yuan and Gree's about 190 billion — Xiaomi was nearly twice Gree's size.[s23] In April 2026, speaking of the bet again, Lei Jun admitted that "we shouldn't have made that joke back then; we bore an enormous emotional cost."[s23]

The industry significance. Over the five years Xiaomi's revenue grew about 6.6 times and its profit about 24.8 times; after the 2020s, Xiaomi's diversified expansion of "handsets plus AIoT plus automobiles" stood in contrast to the bumpy road of Gree's diversification.[s10][s23] Dong Mingzhu won the face of the one-billion-yuan wager that year; Lei Jun won the substance of the industry thereafter. Yet Gree did not win only face: its deep cultivation of air conditioning, its breakthrough in chips, and its obsession with quality control are capabilities that "internet thinking" cannot replace.[s14] The real question the wager left behind is this: can the ultimate cultivation of a single track sustain the continued growth of a hundred-billion-yuan enterprise? It remains, to this day, a classic frame of reference for observing the transformation of Chinese manufacturing.[s10][s23]

### 8. 多元化尝试：银隆的跟头与芯片的破局 / Diversification Attempts: The Yinlong Stumble and the Chip Breakthrough

董明珠的多元化战绩表上，一头是巨额亏损的跟头，一头是渐成气候的破局。两件事的结果相反，但背后的逻辑是一致的——她不相信"天花板"。

先说跟头。银隆新能源是董明珠商业生涯中最大胆、也最具争议的一笔投资[s9][s16]。2016年1月，她在银隆创始人魏银仓陪同下参观银隆产业园，被其钛酸锂电池技术吸引——能量密度不如三元锂，但快充、安全、寿命长，适合商用车和储能[s9][s16]。她判断新能源是制造业转型的机会，银隆是"被埋在沙子里的金子"；更深层的原因是空调主业触及天花板，她急着为格力找"第二条腿"[s9][s16]。中国新闻周刊评价她的性格："反对如果有用的话，她就不是董明珠了。"[s16]

2016年10月28日，格力股东大会审议130亿元收购银隆方案：收购子议案以66.96%勉强过关，但97亿元配套融资等15项核心议案被中小股东否决[s9][s16]。董明珠在会上大发雷霆："格力没有亏待你们！两年给你们分了180亿……我5年不给你们分红，你们又能把我怎么样？"[s9]被否后她以个人身家入局：拉来王健林、刘强东、中集集团等共同投资30亿元，其中7.5亿元来自格力经销商联盟[s9][s16][s29]。王健林公开表示投资前根本没做尽调，只是"相信董明珠的眼光"[s9]。她首期出资约10亿元、持股7.46%，后两度增持至17.46%，成为银隆第二大股东，直言"我愿拿我所有的资产投入到银隆里面去"[s9][s16]。

银隆很快爆雷。2017年魏银仓喊出300亿元销售目标，实际营收仅87.52亿元，净利润同比暴跌68%[s16]。董明珠带队查账发现：魏银仓及关联方涉嫌侵占公司利益超10亿元，其中7.8亿元涉民事诉讼、2.7亿元涉嫌刑事犯罪[s16]。2018年11月银隆起诉魏银仓、孙国华；2019年4月孙国华等6人因涉嫌侵占超14亿元被刑拘，魏银仓出逃美国，后被列入红色通缉令[s16]。2021年8月，格力电器通过司法拍卖以18.3亿元获得银隆30.47%股权，董明珠个人17.46%股份的表决权委托给上市公司行使，银隆更名"格力钛新能源"[s16]。代价沉重：2020年银隆亏损6.9亿元、负债226亿元，资产负债率78%；截至2023年格力钛负债约247.86亿元，2025年格力计提约28亿元资产减值；王健林、刘强东关联公司已基本退出；按2023年约41亿元估值推算，董明珠个人累计亏损超20亿元[s16]。她坦言"银隆真的是个窟窿"，但表示"现在进去依然不后悔"[s16]。

再说破局。2018年，在中美贸易摩擦升级、中兴芯片被禁运的背景下，董明珠在股东大会上宣布："哪怕投资500亿，也要把芯片研究成功。"[s9][s14]同年8月，珠海零边界集成电路有限公司成立，注册资本10亿元，她任法定代表人；芯片工厂从开工到产品通线仅用时388天[s14]。格力造芯并非平地起楼：2010年格力新元电子首次量产IPM智能功率模块，2015年成立微电子所攻关空调主控芯片[s14]。零边界三大产品线覆盖EM32通用工控MCU、EAI系列AIoT SoC（累计出货近千万颗）、EP系列功率器件（IGBT、FRD、IPM），品质达同类进口芯片水平，不良率低于10ppm[s14]；公司先后获评高新技术企业、国家鼓励的重点集成电路设计企业，并获第22届中国专利优秀奖[s14]。

出货量见证了后来的增长：2019年10月突破1000万颗，2020年底累计3800万颗，2022年底超1亿颗，2025年底突破3亿颗，2026年8月累计超3.4亿颗；家电主控芯片自给率超90%（仅指主控芯片），年节省外购成本约35亿元（第三方估算）[s14]。更具标志意义的是碳化硅：格力建成亚洲首座全自动化6英寸碳化硅晶圆工厂，一期规划年产24万片（折合芯片约6000万颗），国产设备替代率超70%，良率99.6%，单片制造成本比国际同行低约18%，整条生产线平均不到40人运营[s14]。格力芯片已进入美的、海尔等竞争对手供应链，为阳光电源、宁德时代提供逆变器核心器件，并为超20家芯片设计公司提供晶圆制造与封测服务；碳化硅已装机出货超200万台空调，光伏储能、物流车等应用2026年陆续量产，业务当年同比增长200%[s2][s14]。2025年6月起，董明珠陆续卸任零边界等公司法定代表人，由副总裁方祥建等人接任，被市场解读为芯片业务转向专业化运营、可能为分拆上市做准备[s14]。2026年1月，她接待广汽集团董事长冯兴亚时笑称"未来广汽的汽车芯片中一半由格力产品替代"，广汽随后澄清网传表述并非事实，双方仅在探讨"人车家"智慧生态融合——但这也说明车规碳化硅正是格力芯片的下一个目标[s14]。

银隆与芯片，一败一胜，看似矛盾，实则同源：都是她在主业天花板压力下，对"格力还能做什么"的回答。她的多元尝试有失败也有突破，但背后的逻辑是一致的——不相信"天花板"。2026年，格力钛在储能市场爆发中迎来转机，钛酸锂快充、安全、长寿命的优势在储能场景下逐渐得到验证[s16]——时间会给出最终的判决。

**English:** On Dong Mingzhu's diversification scorecard, one end is a money-losing stumble, the other a breakthrough that is gradually coming into its own. The two outcomes are opposite, but the logic behind them is the same — she does not believe in "ceilings."

First, the stumble. Yinlong New Energy was the boldest and most controversial investment of Dong Mingzhu's business career.[s9][s16] In January 2016, she toured the Yinlong industrial park accompanied by its founder Wei Yincang and was drawn to its lithium titanate battery technology — lower in energy density than ternary lithium, but fast-charging, safe, and long-lived, suitable for commercial vehicles and energy storage.[s9][s16] She judged new energy to be an opportunity for manufacturing's transformation and Yinlong to be "gold buried in the sand"; the deeper reason was that the core air-conditioning business had touched a ceiling, and she was in a hurry to find Gree "a second leg."[s9][s16] China Newsweek assessed her character: "If opposition worked on her, she wouldn't be Dong Mingzhu."[s16]

On October 28, 2016, Gree's shareholders' meeting reviewed the 13-billion-yuan plan to acquire Yinlong: the acquisition sub-resolution squeaked through with 66.96 percent approval, but 15 core resolutions, including the 9.7-billion-yuan supporting financing, were voted down by minority shareholders.[s9][s16] Dong Mingzhu stormed at the meeting: "Gree has never treated you unfairly! In two years we distributed 18 billion yuan to you … if I didn't pay you dividends for five years, what could you do about me?"[s9] After the rejection she entered the fray with her personal fortune: she pulled in Wang Jianlin, Liu Qiangdong, and CIMC to co-invest 3 billion yuan, of which 750 million came from the Gree dealer alliance.[s9][s16][s29] Wang Jianlin said publicly that he had done no due diligence at all before investing, but simply "believed in Dong Mingzhu's judgment."[s9] Her initial contribution was about 1 billion yuan for a 7.46 percent stake; she later increased her holding twice to 17.46 percent, becoming Yinlong's second-largest shareholder, and said bluntly, "I am willing to put all my assets into Yinlong."[s9][s16]

Yinlong blew up soon after. In 2017 Wei Yincang trumpeted a sales target of 30 billion yuan; actual revenue was only 8.752 billion, with net profit plunging 68 percent year on year.[s16] Dong Mingzhu led a team to audit the books and found that Wei Yincang and related parties were suspected of siphoning more than 1 billion yuan in company interests — 780 million yuan in civil litigation and 270 million yuan suspected of criminal offenses.[s16] In November 2018 Yinlong sued Wei Yincang and Sun Guohua; in April 2019 Sun Guohua and five others were criminally detained on suspicion of embezzling more than 1.4 billion yuan, while Wei Yincang fled to the United States and was later placed on a red notice.[s16] In August 2021, Gree Electric acquired a 30.47 percent stake in Yinlong for 1.83 billion yuan through a judicial auction; Dong Mingzhu entrusted the voting rights of her personal 17.46 percent stake to the listed company, and Yinlong was renamed "Gree Titanium New Energy."[s16] The price was heavy: in 2020 Yinlong lost 690 million yuan and carried 22.6 billion yuan in debt, with a debt-to-asset ratio of 78 percent; as of 2023 Gree Titanium owed about 24.786 billion yuan, and in 2025 Gree booked about 2.8 billion yuan in asset impairment; companies associated with Wang Jianlin and Liu Qiangdong had largely exited; based on a valuation of about 4.1 billion yuan in 2023, Dong Mingzhu's cumulative personal loss exceeded 2 billion yuan.[s16] She admitted frankly that "Yinlong really is a sinkhole," but said that "even going in now, I would have no regrets."[s16]

Then, the breakthrough. In 2018, against the backdrop of escalating China-U.S. trade friction and the ZTE chip ban, Dong Mingzhu declared at a shareholders' meeting: "Even if it costs 50 billion yuan, we must succeed in developing chips."[s9][s14] That August, Zhuhai Edgeless Integrated Circuits Co., Ltd. was established with registered capital of 1 billion yuan, with her as legal representative; the chip factory went from groundbreaking to production line in just 388 days.[s14] Gree's chipmaking was not built from scratch: in 2010 Gree's Xinyuan Electronics first mass-produced IPM intelligent power modules, and in 2015 a microelectronics institute was set up to tackle air-conditioner main-control chips.[s14] Edgeless's three product lines cover the EM32 general industrial-control MCU, the EAI series of AIoT SoCs (nearly ten million units shipped cumulatively), and the EP series of power devices (IGBTs, FRDs, and IPMs), with quality matching imported chips of the same type and defect rates below 10 ppm;[s14] the company has successively been named a high-tech enterprise and a key nationally encouraged integrated-circuit design enterprise, and won an excellence award at the twenty-second China Patent Awards.[s14]

Shipment volumes bear witness to the growth that followed: breaking ten million chips in October 2019, 38 million cumulatively by the end of 2020, over 100 million by the end of 2022, over 300 million by the end of 2025, and more than 340 million cumulatively by August 2026; the self-sufficiency rate for home-appliance main-control chips exceeds 90 percent (main-control chips only), saving about 3.5 billion yuan a year in external purchasing costs (third-party estimate).[s14] Even more emblematic is silicon carbide: Gree built Asia's first fully automated six-inch silicon-carbide wafer fab, with phase one planned at 240,000 wafers a year (equivalent to about 60 million chips), a domestic-equipment substitution rate of over 70 percent, a 99.6 percent yield, per-wafer manufacturing costs about 18 percent below international peers, and the entire line run on average by fewer than 40 people.[s14] Gree chips have entered the supply chains of rivals Midea and Haier, supply core inverter components to Sungrow and CATL, and provide wafer manufacturing, packaging, and testing services to more than 20 chip-design houses; silicon-carbide devices have been installed and shipped in more than two million air conditioners, with applications in photovoltaic storage and logistics vehicles moving into mass production in 2026, and the business grew 200 percent year on year.[s2][s14] Beginning in June 2025, Dong Mingzhu successively stepped down as legal representative of Edgeless and other companies, succeeded by vice president Fang Xiangjian and others — read by the market as the chip business shifting to professionalized operation and possibly preparing for a spin-off listing.[s14] In January 2026, when receiving GAC Group chairman Feng Xingya, she joked that "in the future, half of GAC's automotive chips will be replaced by Gree products"; GAC subsequently clarified that the reported wording was not factual and that the two sides were only exploring integration of the "people-car-home" smart ecosystem — but the episode also shows that automotive-grade silicon carbide is precisely Gree chips' next target.[s14]

Yinlong and chips, one failure and one success, seem contradictory but share one source: both were her answer, under the pressure of the core business's ceiling, to the question "what else can Gree do?" Her diversification attempts have included both failures and breakthroughs, but the logic behind them is consistent — she does not believe in "ceilings." In 2026, Gree Titanium found a turning point amid the explosion of the energy-storage market, as the advantages of lithium titanate — fast charging, safety, long life — were gradually validated in storage scenarios;[s16] time will deliver the final verdict.

### 9. 渠道革命：混改、直播与削藩 / The Channel Revolution: Mixed-Ownership Reform, Livestreaming, and Cutting the Feudatories

董明珠在70岁前后发起的渠道革命，对象不是外敌，而是与格力绑定了二十多年的经销商体系。这是一场迟到但不得不做的"削藩"。

2019年12月，格力混改尘埃落定：高瓴资本旗下珠海明骏以46.17元/股、总价416.62亿元受让格力集团持有的15%股份，格力电器变更为无控股股东和实际控制人[s16][s22]。混改前董明珠高调表态"绝不接受野蛮人"[s16]；她通过格臻投资（持股95.48%）在珠海明骏GP层占有重要席位，实际掌控经营决策权[s16]。高瓴入局带来对效率和数字化的追求，推动渠道改革加速[s22]。传统模式的代价已经清晰：空调从工厂下线经省代、市代、多级经销商，每层截留利润，终端价格居高不下、信息反馈滞后[s22]。

2020年疫情成为催化剂。一季度格力销售收入比预期少300多亿元[s9][s22]，董明珠从坚持线下转向拥抱直播：4月抖音首秀仅卖23万元，5月快手直播3小时销售3.1亿元，6月格力品牌日单日达65.4亿元；全年八场直播累计销售341.8亿元（格力官方口径），创下家电行业直播带货纪录——但业内对"直播销售额"的统计方式存在争议，质疑其是否包含经销商线上下单的水分[s9][s22]。与此同时，渠道扁平化改革启动：砍掉省市级代理层级，推行"格力董明珠店"线上平台，工厂直供经销商——去中介、扁平化、数字化[s22]。这直接冲击了省级代理商的根本利益：传统模式中省代掌握"货权分配权"和"淡季打款杠杆"，新制度下这些权力被收归总部[s22]。

"藩王"的反抗很快到来。河北格力总经销商徐自发，1999年起执掌河北新兴格力，在格力体系深耕二十余年，曾任格力电器董事（2015—2017年），是京海互联核心成员（河北格力营销在京海互联持股28%）[s9][s22]。2022年3月，他以飞利浦空调董事代表身份现身产研基地奠基；8月9日高调出席飞利浦空调杭州新品发布会[s22]；8月16日，格力总部对河北市场下达断供令[s22]。8月20日，徐自发在石家庄宴请河北全省核心经销商，宣布"不做格力了"，并为每桌到场宾客派发10万元现金，现场支出现金数千万元；8月28日，河北新兴格力彻底退出格力业务[s9][s22]。飞利浦空调阵营随之清晰：董事长黄辉、总裁胡文丰、实际控制人徐自发，运营总部170多位员工中约80%曾在格力工作，截至2026年网点扩张至8300余家[s22]。京海互联也在2022年6月减持1.1亿股（约1.86%股权），套现约38.72亿元，被视为经销商体系与格力"解绑"的标志性事件[s22]。

改革的代价真实而沉重：合同负债从2023年中期289亿元的峰值缩水逾百亿，经销商"蓄水池"功能弱化；2025年格力营收同比下滑9.89%，2026年上半年同比下降8.15%[s2][s22]。但成效也在显现：2024年底格力数科成立，将原盛世系销售团队收编为直属员工；2024—2025年累计削减经销商层级约20%—30%，直营占比从15%提升至25%—30%，库存周转天数从约80天压缩到60—70天[s22]。徐自发不是在背叛格力，他是在捍卫自己二十多年积累的权力基础——而董明珠要回答的问题是：削藩之后，新的渠道能否支撑起下一个十年[s22]。

**English:** The channel revolution Dong Mingzhu launched around the age of 70 was directed not at an external enemy but at the dealer system that had been bound to Gree for more than twenty years. It was a delayed but unavoidable "cutting down of the feudatories."

In December 2019, Gree's mixed-ownership reform was settled: Zhuhai Mingjun, an entity under Hillhouse Capital, took over the 15 percent stake held by Gree Group at 46.17 yuan per share for a total of 41.662 billion yuan, and Gree Electric became a company with no controlling shareholder and no actual controller.[s16][s22] Before the reform, Dong Mingzhu had declared high-profile that she would "never accept barbarians at the gate";[s16] through Gezhen Investment (95.48 percent owned), she held an important seat at the GP level of Zhuhai Mingjun, effectively controlling operational decision-making.[s16] Hillhouse's entry brought a drive for efficiency and digitalization, accelerating channel reform.[s22] The costs of the traditional model had become clear: after an air conditioner rolled off the line it passed through provincial agents, city agents, and multiple tiers of dealers, each layer skimming off profit, leaving terminal prices high and feedback on information sluggish.[s22]

The pandemic of 2020 became the catalyst. In the first quarter Gree's sales revenue fell more than 30 billion yuan short of expectations;[s9][s22] Dong Mingzhu shifted from insisting on offline to embracing livestreaming: her Douyin debut in April sold only 230,000 yuan, a three-hour Kuaishou livestream in May sold 310 million yuan, and the Gree Brand Day in June reached 6.54 billion yuan in a single day; eight livestreams over the year generated cumulative sales of 34.18 billion yuan (Gree's official figure), setting a livestream-e-commerce record for the home-appliance industry — though the industry disputed how "livestream sales" were counted, questioning whether they were inflated by dealers placing orders online.[s9][s22] At the same time, channel flattening got under way: provincial and city agent tiers were cut away, the online "Gree Dong Mingzhu Store" platform was pushed, and the factory supplied dealers directly — disintermediated, flattened, digitalized.[s22] This struck directly at the fundamental interests of provincial agents: under the old model, provincial agents held the "power to allocate goods" and the "leverage of off-season payments"; under the new system, those powers were pulled back to headquarters.[s22]

Resistance from the "feudatory kings" came quickly. Xu Zifa, Gree's general distributor for Hebei, had run Hebei Xinxing Gree since 1999, deep in the Gree system for more than twenty years; he had served as a director of Gree Electric (2015–2017) and was a core member of Jinghai Interconnection (Hebei Gree Marketing held 28 percent of Jinghai Interconnection).[s9][s22] In March 2022, he appeared as a board representative of Philips air conditioners at the groundbreaking of an R&D and production base; on August 9 he made a high-profile appearance at Philips air conditioners' new-product launch in Hangzhou;[s22] on August 16, Gree headquarters issued a supply-cut order for the Hebei market.[s22] On August 20, Xu Zifa hosted a banquet for Hebei's core dealers across the province in Shijiazhuang, announced that he was "no longer doing Gree," and handed out 100,000 yuan in cash to each table of guests, with tens of millions in cash paid out on the spot; on August 28, Hebei Xinxing Gree exited the Gree business completely.[s9][s22] The Philips air-conditioner camp then came into focus: chairman Huang Hui, president Hu Wenfeng, actual controller Xu Zifa; of the more than 170 employees at its operating headquarters, about 80 percent had once worked at Gree, and by 2026 its network had expanded to more than 8,300 outlets.[s22] Jinghai Interconnection also reduced its holdings by 110 million shares (about 1.86 percent of equity) in June 2022, cashing out about 3.872 billion yuan — seen as a landmark event in the "unbundling" of the dealer system from Gree.[s22]

The cost of reform was real and heavy: contract liabilities shrank by more than ten billion yuan from their mid-2023 peak of 28.9 billion, weakening the dealers' "reservoir" function; Gree's revenue fell 9.89 percent year on year in 2025 and dropped 8.15 percent year on year in the first half of 2026.[s2][s22] But results were also emerging: Gree Digital Technology was established at the end of 2024, absorbing the former Shengshi-system sales teams as direct employees; in 2024–2025 dealer tiers were cut by about 20 to 30 percent cumulatively, the share of direct sales rose from 15 percent to 25–30 percent, and inventory turnover days were compressed from about 80 to 60–70.[s22] Xu Zifa was not betraying Gree; he was defending the power base he had built over twenty years — and the question Dong Mingzhu had to answer was whether, after cutting the feudatories, the new channel could support the next decade.[s22]

### 10. 铁腕的来路与边界：管理哲学与个人IP / The Origins and Limits of the Iron Fist: Management Philosophy and the Personal Brand

董明珠的铁腕不是表演，而是她人生经历的延长线；但当铁腕从管理风格外溢为个人IP，它的边界也开始显现。

风格从何而来。她的管理可以用一个字概括——"狠"：对员工狠，对自己更狠[s12][s17]。"我从来就没有失误过，我从不认错，我永远是对的"——出自自传《棋行天下》的这句话，既是她性格的极致表达，也是外界批评她刚愎自用的主要依据[s7][s12]；"管理就是铁，怎么会是艺术呢？"[s12][s17]她在格力28年没休假一天，"在格力花一分钱也要她签字"[s12][s17]。这种风格的来路并不复杂：30岁丧夫、独自抚养儿子六年的经历，教会她"没有人可以依靠，只能靠自己"[s4]——投射到管理上，就是极度的责任感与控制欲；在酒桌文化盛行的行业里烟酒不沾、不走关系的"不合群"，则让她只信业绩和规则[s4]。

铁腕首先指向品质。当行业普遍采取"铝代铜"降低成本时，董明珠坚决说不[s12]：2026年铜价突破10万元/吨，用铝材每台空调可省约120元，按格力年产数千万台计算一年可省约6亿元，但她算的是消费者的十年账——铝的耗电是铜的1.7倍，"铝还没有达到铜的同等技术条件和保障"[s12]。格力空调设862道检测工序，2021年起在行业率先推出"十年免费包修"[s2]。

铁腕也有另一面。2026年两会期间她再次承诺"不裁员"：一条生产线从14000人改造为2000人，富余员工通过培训转型为设备管理员、运维技术员，"机器人替代的从来都是重复、繁重、高风险的劳动，而非活生生的人"[s12]。她承诺给员工分房，3700套人才公寓已投入使用，"员工在格力工作，到退休时能分到一套房，这就是我的承诺"[s12]；格力还有除社保外另发一份退休工资的制度[s13]。有个广为流传的故事：女员工家里困难违反制度该罚100元，她照罚后自己又掏了100元，说"这是我私人给孩子买零食的"[s12]——原则上寸步不让，人情上留有余地[s4]。

她对家人同样守这条线。她坚决不让儿子进入格力："他不在格力，格力没有我的家人，这是我最基本的原则。"[s13]儿子东东学法律，硕士毕业后去重庆当律师，住出租屋、开10万元的车、月薪几千元，同事完全不知道他是董明珠的儿子[s31]。8岁被留在南京的孩子，11岁上寄宿学校，12岁独自坐飞机去珠海找妈妈[s6]——董明珠给他的不是财富和位置，而是一个独立的人格[s31]。

边界在哪里。当"董明珠"三个字本身成为品牌，风险随之而来。2021年，她在芒果TV《初入职场的我们》中选中浙江大学毕业生孟羽童任秘书，同年11月公开表示"要将孟羽童培养成第二个董明珠"，话题讨论量达3.1亿[s24]；外界普遍分析，她更想培养的是"家电领域的董宇辉"，用个人IP带动直播带货，但"明珠羽童精选"首秀4小时销售额约62万元，后续不及预期[s11][s24]。2023年5月孟羽童离职，格力官方回应"人员流动很正常"[s11]；同年11月，董明珠在大学生入职仪式上怒斥："一个文都写不出来，只想用格力平台当网红""不能容忍这样的人在格力，所以将她开除了"[s11]。关于离职，三种口径并存：董明珠称"开除"，格力称"人员流动"，孟羽童称"顺利毕业"[s11]。2025年5月，两人时隔两年"破冰"合体直播，观看人次292万，董明珠称"孩子太小，太年轻"，并表示孟羽童读完书后仍有可能重回格力[s11]。

个人IP的深度绑定同样体现在"董明珠健康家"：2025年2月发布，截至2026年上半年全国门店突破1500家，非空调品类销售占比在标杆门店达42.2%[s2][s27]；但有老股东致信董明珠，认为强推"董明珠健康家"、门头去掉"格力"二字，是错误评估了个人IP的品牌价值[s27]。她已执掌格力超过12年，2025年第五次连任董事长、任期至2028年，并称"已找到接班人，有三四个预备人选"[s1][s13][s20]——但在她的强势光环下，如何建立一个不依赖任何个人的组织体系，仍是格力最大的考题[s20]。

她说过"强势不是我内心很强，而是我一定要把这件事情做成"[s12]。铁腕成就了格力的制度与品质，也让她付出了亲情疏离、搭档陌路、接班人难觅的代价。"我从来不怕得罪人"是她的铠甲[s32]——铠甲穿得久了，也就是孤独。

**English:** Dong Mingzhu's iron fist is not a performance; it is the extension of her life experience. But when the iron fist spilled over from a management style into a personal brand, its boundaries also began to show.

Where the style came from. Her management can be summed up in a single word — "tough": tough on employees, and even tougher on herself.[s12][s17] "I have never made a mistake, I never admit I am wrong, I am always right" — this line from her autobiography Chess Across the World is both the ultimate expression of her character and the main basis on which outsiders criticize her as willful and headstrong;[s7][s12] "Management is iron — how could it be an art?"[s12][s17] In her 28 years at Gree she has not taken a single day of vacation, and "even spending one fen of money at Gree requires her signature."[s12][s17] The origins of this style are not complicated: losing her husband at 30 and raising her son alone for six years taught her that "there is no one to rely on — you can only rely on yourself,"[s4] which projected onto management as an extreme sense of responsibility and a need for control; in an industry where banquet-table culture reigned, her abstention from tobacco and alcohol and her refusal to trade in connections — her "not fitting in" — left her believing only in performance and rules.[s4]

The iron fist pointed first at quality. When the industry widely adopted "aluminum for copper" to cut costs, Dong Mingzhu said a firm no:[s12] with copper prices breaking 100,000 yuan per ton in 2026, using aluminum would save about 120 yuan per air conditioner — roughly 600 million yuan a year given Gree's tens of millions of units annually — but she was calculating the consumer's ten-year ledger: aluminum consumes 1.7 times the electricity of copper, and "aluminum has not yet reached copper's technical conditions and guarantees."[s12] Gree air conditioners go through 862 inspection procedures, and from 2021 the company took the industry lead in offering a "ten-year free repair warranty."[s2]

The iron fist has another side. During the 2026 "Two Sessions" she again promised "no layoffs": a production line transformed from 14,000 workers to 2,000, and the surplus employees were retrained into equipment administrators and operations-and-maintenance technicians — "what robots replace is always repetitive, heavy, high-risk labor, not living, breathing people."[s12] She promised to give employees housing; 3,700 units of talent apartments are already in use, and "when an employee works at Gree until retirement, they can be allocated an apartment — that is my promise."[s12] Gree also has a system of paying a supplementary retirement pension on top of social insurance.[s13] A widely told story: a female employee in family difficulty broke the rules and was liable to a 100-yuan fine; Dong enforced the fine and then took 100 yuan from her own pocket, saying, "This is from me personally, for the child to buy snacks."[s12] — unyielding on principle, with room left for human feeling.[s4]

She holds the same line with her family. She firmly refused to let her son enter Gree: "He is not at Gree; there are no members of my family at Gree — that is my most basic principle."[s13] Her son Dongdong studied law, and after his master's degree went to work as a lawyer in Chongqing, living in a rented apartment, driving a 100,000-yuan car, earning a few thousand yuan a month; his colleagues had no idea he was Dong Mingzhu's son.[s31] The child left behind in Nanjing at 8 went to boarding school at 11 and flew alone to Zhuhai to find his mother at 12[s6] — what Dong Mingzhu gave him was not wealth or position but an independent character.[s31]

Where the boundaries lie. Once the name "Dong Mingzhu" itself became a brand, risk followed. In 2021, on the Mango TV show Workplace Newcomers: Us, she selected Meng Yutong, a Zhejiang University graduate, as her secretary, and said publicly in November that year that she would "train Meng Yutong to become the second Dong Mingzhu," a topic that drew 310 million discussions;[s24] outsiders widely analyzed that what she really wanted to cultivate was a "Dong Yuhui of the home-appliance world," using a personal IP to drive livestream e-commerce, but the "Mingzhu Yutong Selection" debut sold only about 620,000 yuan in four hours, and later results fell short of expectations.[s11][s24] In May 2023 Meng Yutong left Gree, and Gree officially responded that "personnel turnover is perfectly normal";[s11] in November that year, at a college-graduates onboarding ceremony, Dong Mingzhu raged: "Someone who can't even write a document and only wants to use Gree's platform to become an internet celebrity" — "I cannot tolerate that kind of person at Gree, so she was fired."[s11] On the departure, three versions coexist: Dong Mingzhu calls it "fired," Gree calls it "normal turnover," and Meng Yutong calls it "graduating smoothly."[s11] In May 2025, after two years, the two "broke the ice" with a joint livestream watched by 2.92 million people; Dong Mingzhu said "the child was too young, too green," and indicated that after Meng finished her studies it was still possible for her to return to Gree.[s11]

The deep binding of the personal brand is equally embodied in the "Dong Mingzhu Health Home": launched in February 2025, with more than 1,500 stores nationwide by the first half of 2026, and non-air-conditioning categories reaching 42.2 percent of sales at benchmark stores;[s2][s27] but some long-time shareholders have written to Dong Mingzhu arguing that forcefully pushing "Dong Mingzhu Health Home" and removing the word "Gree" from storefront signs wrongly overestimates the brand value of the personal IP.[s27] She has led Gree for more than 12 years, was re-elected chairwoman for the fifth time in 2025 with a term running to 2028, and says she has "found a successor, with three or four candidates in reserve"[s1][s13][s20] — yet under the halo of her dominance, how to build an organizational system that does not depend on any single individual remains Gree's greatest examination question.[s20]

She has said, "Being strong-willed does not mean I am strong inside; it means I am determined to get this thing done — that is what being strong means."[s12] The iron fist built Gree's institutions and quality, but it also cost her estrangement from family, a partner turned stranger, and a successor hard to find. "I am never afraid of offending people" is her armor[s32] — and armor worn long enough is, in the end, loneliness.

### 11. 坐标：荣誉、财务与国际评价 / Coordinates: Honors, Financials, and International Assessment

把董明珠放回坐标系里看：榜单给过她顶峰，也给过她落榜；财报记录了格力的护城河，也记录了它的失速。

荣誉与榜单。《财富》杂志连续15年（2010—2024年）将她列入全球最具影响力商界女性排行榜，2012—2014年连续三年蝉联中国榜首，2019年、2020年再登榜首，2019年全球排名第3位[s1][s28]。《财富》当时评价："当公司最大的股东要求将更多资金投在金融衍生品时，董明珠威慑住了他们，她把钱投到了半导体行业，以便让格力摆脱对美国供应商的依赖。"[s28]2025年，她15年来首次落榜该榜：排名从2022年第4位、2023年第10位、2024年第12位到2025年未上榜[s18]。格力电器市场总监朱磊回应："董明珠的影响力不来自于财富，来自于她所创造的财富。"[s18]分析认为，评选主题从"个人声量"转向"可持续领导力"，榜单聚焦高精尖制造业和AI产业[s18]。《福布斯》2024年将她列为中国杰出商界女性第9名，2025年升至第5位[s1]；2009年美国全球版《商业周刊》评价："格力与华为的科技创新，代表中国未来。"[s8]她还连任第十届至十四届全国人大代表（五届），2021年出任国际标准化组织制冷压缩机实验和评定分委会（ISO/TC 86/SC 4）主席，2024年8月获国务院政府特殊津贴[s1][s19]。她的主要荣誉包括全国劳动模范、全国五一劳动奖章、全国三八红旗手标兵、3次CCTV中国经济年度人物、第三届中国质量奖、中国专利金奖[s1]。

财务全景。朱江洪时代（1992—2012），格力营收从约1.2亿至1.5亿元增至突破1000亿元，成为国内家电业少有的依靠空调单一品类进入千亿行列的企业[s1][s8]。董明珠时代，格力2018年营收达1981.2亿元的历史峰值，上市以来累计分红超1476亿元，堪称A股"分红之王"[s2]。2025年全年：营业总收入1704.47亿元（同比-9.89%），归母净利润290.03亿元（同比-9.89%），扣非净利润277.06亿元（-7.95%）；消费电器营收1330.55亿元（-10.44%），工业制品及绿色能源173.81亿元（+0.78%），智能装备6.81亿元（+60.51%）；内销1264.07亿元（-10.67%），外销273.75亿元（-2.93%）[s2]。毛利率不降反升（内销34.52%，+0.27pct），经营活动现金流净额463.83亿元（+57.93%），"造血"能力依然健康[s2]。2025年度分红111.70亿元，中期加年度合计167.55亿元，分红率超38%；公司另推出50亿至100亿元回购计划，不低于70%用于注销[s2][s25]。2026年上半年营收893.98亿元（-8.15%），归母净利润132.78亿元（-7.87%），但内销主营收入同比+1.90%，基本盘出现企稳迹象[s2][s26]。横向看，2025年美的集团营收约4565亿至4585亿元（+12.1%），海尔智家约3023亿元（+5.71%），格力与美的的差距从2018年的约600亿元扩大到2024年的约2200亿元[s2][s22]；但格力净利润率约17%，高于美的的约10%，品牌溢价仍在[s2]。

国际评价。在全球商界，董明珠是一个独特的存在：她不是科技新贵，也不是资本运作行家，而是从最基层一步步走上来的制造业女掌门[s28]。《福布斯》评价她"霸气、正直、不服输的精神更是成为商界典范"[s8]。她与雷军的10亿赌约被《财富》等国际媒体广泛报道，视为"中国传统制造vs互联网模式"的标志性对决[s10][s23]；她的芯片战略在中美科技竞争背景下获得国际关注[s14]。她本人不喜欢"女强人"标签："强势不是我内心很强，而是我一定要把这件事情做成，这才叫强势。"[s12]格力连续多年全球空调产销量第一，累计专利超13万件、"国际领先"技术48项，产品远销160多个国家和地区[s2]——但外销收入仅占约16%，而美的、海尔海外收入占比均超40%，国际化仍是明显短板[s2][s25]。

**English:** Place Dong Mingzhu back within her coordinate system: the rankings have carried her to the summit and also dropped her from their lists; the financial reports record both Gree's moat and its loss of speed.

Honors and rankings. Fortune magazine included her on its list of the world's most powerful women in business for 15 consecutive years (2010–2024); she topped the China list three years running in 2012–2014, reached the top again in 2019 and 2020, and ranked third globally in 2019.[s1][s28] Fortune's assessment at the time: "When the company's largest shareholders demanded that more capital be put into financial derivatives, Dong Mingzhu overawed them; she put the money into semiconductors, so that Gree could free itself from dependence on American suppliers."[s28] In 2025 she fell off the list for the first time in 15 years: from fourth place in 2022, tenth in 2023, twelfth in 2024, to unlisted in 2025.[s18] Gree Electric marketing director Zhu Lei responded: "Dong Mingzhu's influence does not come from wealth; it comes from the wealth she has created."[s18] Analysts noted that the awards' theme had shifted from "personal voice" to "sustainable leadership," with the list focusing on high-end, sophisticated manufacturing and the AI industry.[s18] Forbes ranked her ninth among China's outstanding businesswomen in 2024 and raised her to fifth in 2025;[s1] in 2009 the global edition of America's BusinessWeek judged: "The technological innovation of Gree and Huawei represents China's future."[s8] She also served five consecutive terms as a National People's Congress deputy, from the tenth to the fourteenth; in 2021 she became chair of the International Organization for Standardization's subcommittee on the testing and rating of refrigeration compressors (ISO/TC 86/SC 4); and in August 2024 she received the State Council's special government allowance.[s1][s19] Her principal honors include National Model Worker, the National May First Labor Medal, National March-Eighth Red-Banner Pacesetter, three selections as CCTV Chinese Economic Person of the Year, the third China Quality Award, and the China Patent Gold Award.[s1]

The financial panorama. In the Zhu Jianghong era (1992–2012), Gree's revenue grew from roughly 120 to 150 million yuan to more than 100 billion yuan, making it the only company in China's home-appliance industry to enter the hundred-billion club on a single category, air conditioners.[s1][s8] In the Dong Mingzhu era, Gree's revenue reached its historical peak of 198.12 billion yuan in 2018, and cumulative dividends since listing exceed 147.6 billion yuan, earning it the name of A-share "king of dividends."[s2] For the full year 2025: total operating revenue of 170.447 billion yuan (down 9.89 percent year on year), net profit attributable to the parent of 29.003 billion yuan (down 9.89 percent), and non-GAAP net profit of 27.706 billion yuan (down 7.95 percent); consumer appliances revenue of 133.055 billion yuan (down 10.44 percent), industrial goods and green energy 17.381 billion yuan (up 0.78 percent), and intelligent equipment 681 million yuan (up 60.51 percent); domestic sales were 126.407 billion yuan (down 10.67 percent) and overseas sales 27.375 billion yuan (down 2.93 percent).[s2] Gross margin rose rather than fell (domestic 34.52 percent, up 0.27 percentage points), and net cash flow from operating activities was 46.383 billion yuan (up 57.93 percent) — the blood-making capacity remained healthy.[s2] The 2025 annual dividend was 11.17 billion yuan, bringing the interim and annual total to 16.755 billion yuan, a payout ratio above 38 percent; the company also launched a five-to-ten-billion-yuan buyback plan, with no less than 70 percent to be canceled.[s2][s25] In the first half of 2026, revenue was 89.398 billion yuan (down 8.15 percent) and net profit attributable to the parent 13.278 billion yuan (down 7.87 percent), but domestic main-business revenue rose 1.90 percent year on year, showing signs that the base business was stabilizing.[s2][s26] Horizontally, in 2025 Midea Group's revenue was about 456.5 to 458.5 billion yuan (up 12.1 percent) and Haier Smart Home's about 302.3 billion yuan (up 5.71 percent); the gap between Gree and Midea widened from about 60 billion yuan in 2018 to about 220 billion yuan in 2024;[s2][s22] but Gree's net margin of about 17 percent was above Midea's roughly 10 percent, so brand premium remained.[s2]

International assessment. In global business circles, Dong Mingzhu is a singular figure: she is neither a technology nouveau riche nor a master of capital operations, but a woman at the helm of manufacturing who came up step by step from the most grassroots level.[s28] Forbes praised her "domineering, upright, refuse-to-lose spirit as a model for the business world."[s8] Her one-billion-yuan bet with Lei Jun was widely covered by international media including Fortune, seen as the emblematic showdown between "traditional Chinese manufacturing and the internet model";[s10][s23] her chip strategy drew international attention against the backdrop of China-U.S. technology rivalry.[s14] She herself dislikes the "strong woman" label: "Being strong-willed does not mean I am strong inside; it means I am determined to get this thing done — that is what being strong means."[s12] Gree has ranked first in global air-conditioner production and sales for many years running, holds more than 130,000 cumulative patents and 48 "internationally leading" technologies, and ships its products to more than 160 countries and regions[s2] — yet overseas revenue accounts for only about 16 percent, whereas both Midea and Haier derive over 40 percent of revenue abroad; internationalization remains a clear weak point.[s2][s25]

### 12. 未竟的任期：第五个三年与身后之问 / The Unfinished Term: The Fifth Three Years and the Question Beyond Her

2025年连任之后，董明珠进入自己的第五个、也可能是最后一个董事长任期。格力的所有考题——渠道、芯片、储能、接班人——都要在这个任期内交出阶段性答卷。

2025年4月，董明珠以超过33亿股同意票数高票连任格力电器第十三届董事会董事长，开启第五个三年任期（至2028年）[s1][s20]；同时卸任担任了24年的总裁职务，由49岁的张伟接任，新一届高管团队平均年龄约50岁，"85后"钟成堡进入董事会，技术派占多数[s20]。她为格力提出新定位——"覆盖家用消费品与工业装备两大领域的全球工业制造集团"[s18]；2026年3月出席全国两会，围绕规范平台经济、促进绿色消费、维护市场公平等提出五项建议[s35]。从"好空调格力造"到"好电器格力造"，再到"全球工业制造集团"，愿景的边界在不断外扩。2026年8月，她出任格力技工学校校长[s2]——在为技术路线寻找接班人的同时，也在为制造业本身培养技术工人。

2026年6月的2025年年度股东大会上，近500名股东参会，董明珠坦言"出口没做好，很惭愧"[s25]；同月，珠海明骏（高瓴旗下）通过大宗交易减持4279万股、套现超15.89亿元，是2020年入主以来首次减持[s25]。她个人则反向操作：持股比例从2025年初的约1.8%提升至2026年一季度的2.01%（约1.12亿股），2025年税前报酬1293.48万元[s20][s25]。

最后一个任期的看点已经摆上桌面：渠道改革能否止住营收下滑——2026年一季度营收同比+3.52%，二季度又同比-16.8%，阵痛仍在持续[s2][s26]；芯片业务分拆上市能否取得实质进展[s14]；格力钛能否抓住储能风口、填平银隆的旧账[s16]；"董明珠健康家"能否从门店数量扩张转向单店效率提升[s27]；以及最关键的——2028年任期届满时，她口中"三四个预备人选"能否完成平稳交接[s13][s20]。

她说："我更关心的是如何让格力健康活下去，而且要活得久。我们要的不只是当下的辉煌，而是成为能活100年、200年的世界级品牌。"[s12]这位72岁的女性依然每天出现在格力总部，依然事必躬亲，依然说着"我从来不怕得罪人"[s12]。一个人能否缔造一家不依赖于自己的企业——这是董明珠留给格力的最后一道题，也是这份档案为她记下的、尚未写完的一章。

**English:** After her re-election in 2025, Dong Mingzhu entered her fifth and possibly final term as chairwoman. All of Gree's examination questions — channels, chips, energy storage, succession — must receive interim answers within this term.

In April 2025, with more than 3.3 billion shares voted in favor, Dong Mingzhu was re-elected by a landslide as chairwoman of Gree Electric's thirteenth board of directors, opening her fifth three-year term (to 2028);[s1][s20] at the same time she stepped down from the presidency she had held for 24 years, succeeded by 49-year-old Zhang Wei; the new senior management team has an average age of about 50, with post-1985 executive Zhong Chengbao joining the board and the technical faction in the majority.[s20] She set a new positioning for Gree — "a global industrial manufacturing group covering both household consumer goods and industrial equipment";[s18] at the national "Two Sessions" in March 2026 she put forward five proposals on regulating the platform economy, promoting green consumption, and safeguarding market fairness.[s35] From "good air conditioners, made by Gree" to "good appliances, made by Gree" and on to "global industrial manufacturing group," the boundary of her vision keeps expanding. In August 2026, she became principal of the Gree Technical School[s2] — while seeking a successor for the technology route, she is also training skilled workers for manufacturing itself.

At the 2025 annual shareholders' meeting in June 2026, with nearly 500 shareholders present, Dong Mingzhu admitted frankly that "we have not done well on exports; I am ashamed";[s25] in the same month, Zhuhai Mingjun (under Hillhouse) reduced its holdings by 42.79 million shares through block trades, cashing out more than 1.589 billion yuan — its first reduction since taking a stake in 2020.[s25] She personally moved in the opposite direction: her stake rose from about 1.8 percent at the start of 2025 to 2.01 percent (about 112 million shares) by the first quarter of 2026, and her pre-tax compensation in 2025 was 12.9348 million yuan.[s20][s25]

The things to watch in the final term are already on the table: whether channel reform can stop the decline in revenue — first-quarter 2026 revenue was up 3.52 percent year on year, but the second quarter was down 16.8 percent year on year, and the growing pains continue;[s2][s26] whether the spin-off and listing of the chip business can make substantive progress;[s14] whether Gree Titanium can seize the energy-storage tailwind and fill the old Yinlong hole;[s16] whether "Dong Mingzhu Health Home" can shift from expanding store counts to raising per-store efficiency;[s27] and, most critically, whether the "three or four candidates in reserve" of which she speaks can complete a smooth handover when her term expires in 2028.[s13][s20]

She has said: "What I care about more is how to keep Gree alive healthily — and to live long. What we want is not just the glory of the moment, but to become a world-class brand that can live 100 or 200 years."[s12] The 72-year-old woman still appears at Gree headquarters every day, still attends to everything herself, still says "I am never afraid of offending people."[s12] Whether one person can build an enterprise that does not depend on herself — that is the final question Dong Mingzhu leaves to Gree, and the unfinished chapter this archive records for her.

## 卷尾 Editorial Conclusion

将董明珠置于中国工业文明的时间轴上审视，她的坐标意义在二十年后会变得比今天更加清晰。二十一世纪的前二十年，中国制造业经历了一场深刻的身份焦虑——从"世界工厂"到"中国智造"，从代工经济到品牌出海，从价格优势到技术壁垒，整个产业在完成量的积累之后，迫切需要找到质的突破口。格力电器在这条路上提供的，是一个完整的、可回溯的、有始有终的实践案例：一家企业在没有任何外部技术转移的条件下，仅凭本土团队的自主研发，完成了从跟随者到引领者的身份跨越。这个案例的价值不会因为格力未来可能经历的起伏而减损——它已经发生，已经成立，已经被完整记录。

从更长的历史维度看，中国商业史需要这样的人物档案。不是因为每一个企业家都值得被铭记，而是因为某些个体的经历浓缩了一个时代最核心的命题。董明珠的档案记录了什么？记录了一个销售出身的管理者如何将技术信仰注入一家万亿级企业的基因，记录了一个行业在价格战与技术战之间的反复摇摆，记录了"中国制造"这个概念从贬义走向中性的艰难跋涉。这些记录的价值，在于为后来者提供一份可验证的历史参照——不是教科书里的理论推演，而是真实发生过的商业决策、真实承受过的代价、真实获得的回报。

终身档案编码的意义，在于将这种参照价值以制度化的方式固化下来。亚洲《封面人物》杂志的独立编委会在评审时，关注的从来不是当下的热度或舆论的风向，而是一个人物在历史脉络中能否经得起反复阅读。董明珠的档案经得起。因为她的故事里包含了中国制造业最本质的矛盾——规模与品质、速度与深度、短期回报与长期价值——以及一个具体的、活生生的个体如何用自己的方式回应了这些矛盾。

五十年后，当历史学家回溯二十一世纪中国制造业的转型历程时，他们会需要这样一份经过独立评审、永久存证的档案，来理解那个时代的温度、压力和方向。董明珠的名字已经写入了这份档案，而档案的价值会随着时间的推移持续释放。

Dong Mingzhu embodies the defining question of an era of Chinese manufacturing: between technology, market, and capital, how does a company hold its boundaries, and how does it seek new possibilities beyond them? Her path includes both Gree's rise from a regional workshop to a global leader and its setbacks and reflections in diversification attempts such as Yinlong, mobile phones, and chips.

This archive faithfully records her highlights and also notes the controversies — the estrangement from her long-time partner, the tug-of-war with distributors, and the parting and reconciliation with her "successor." The manufacturing upgrade of an era is never an epic of flawless heroes; it is the process of a practitioner who keeps trying, correcting, and trudging forward.

Viewed over a longer horizon, Gree's self-developed chips, silicon-carbide plant, and intelligent equipment still await the market's verdict. But one thing can already be confirmed: in the coordinate system where Chinese manufacturing moves from "scale" toward "quality," the road she traveled is itself an unavoidable landmark.

Asia Cover Figure places this dossier on file — recording one person's life, and preserving a true historical record of Chinese manufacturing's upward breakthrough.

## 金句 Pull Quote

> 让世界爱上中国造。

> Let the world fall in love with Chinese manufacturing.

## 履历时间线 Career Timeline

- **1954-08** 出生于南京 / Born in Nanjing
  - 1954年8月，董明珠出生于江苏省南京市一个普通工薪家庭，家中兄弟姐妹七人排行最小。父亲董火森是铁路系统基层职工，母亲周娟娣是家庭主妇[s1][s3]。
  - EN: In August 1954, Dong Mingzhu was born into an ordinary working-class family in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, the youngest of seven siblings. Her father, Dong Huosen, was a junior employee in the railway system, and her mother, Zhou Juandi, was a housewife.[s1][s3]
- **1975** 大学毕业分配工作 / Graduates and assigned to first job
  - 从安徽芜湖干部教育学院统计学专业毕业，以干部身份被分配到南京一家化工研究所从事行政管理工作[s1][s5]。
  - EN: She graduated from the Wuhu Cadre Education College in Anhui Province, majoring in statistics, and was assigned in a cadre capacity to a chemical research institute in Nanjing to do administrative work.[s1][s5]
- **1982** 儿子出生 / Son is born
  - 儿子出生，小名东东[s2]。
  - EN: Her son was born, with the childhood name Dongdong.[s2]
- **1984** 丈夫因病去世 / Husband dies of illness
  - 丈夫因病突然去世，30岁的董明珠成为单亲妈妈，留下两岁的儿子和大笔债务。她称这是"这辈子关键的转折点"[s2][s4]。
  - EN: Her husband died suddenly of illness, and the 30-year-old Dong Mingzhu became a single mother, left with a two-year-old son and large debts. She called it "the biggest turning point of my life."[s2][s4]
- **1990** 南下珠海加入格力 / Collects the 420,000-yuan debt
  - 36岁的董明珠辞掉南京的稳定工作，孤身南下珠海，加入当时叫"海利空调器厂"的格力，成为基层销售人员。招聘主任嫌她年纪大，她当场拍胸脯保证三个月干出业绩[s4]。
  - EN: Her first assignment was to go to Hefei, Anhui, to collect a debt of 420,000 yuan (according to Dong Mingzhu's own account). It was an enormous sum for the early 1990s, and the veteran salesperson had gone three times and returned defeated. Dong Mingzhu laid siege for 40 straight days, staking out the debtor's company daily. When the other side blustered "if you've got the nerve, take the goods," she hired a truck and blocked the gate. She gnawed on steamed buns when hungry and drank tap water when thirsty, finally forcing the debtor to settle with several tons of merchandise. On the day the goods were hauled away she cried over the steering wheel — not out of grievance, but because she could finally stand up straight.[s5][s6]
- **1990** 追债42万 / Collects the 420,000-yuan debt
  - 入职后第一个任务是去安徽合肥追讨42万元债务（据董明珠自述）。这是一笔90年代初的巨额欠款，老业务员去了三次都铩羽而归。董明珠连续40天死缠烂打，每天去对方公司蹲守。对方耍横'有种你就搬货'，她转身雇卡车堵门。饿了啃馒头，渴了喝自来水，最后硬是逼着对方用几吨货物抵了债。拉货那天她趴在方向盘上大哭——不是委屈，是终于挺直了腰杆[s5][s6]。
  - EN: Her first assignment was to go to Hefei, Anhui, to collect a debt of 420,000 yuan (according to Dong Mingzhu's own account). It was an enormous sum for the early 1990s, and the veteran salesperson had gone three times and returned defeated. Dong Mingzhu laid siege for 40 straight days, staking out the debtor's company daily. When the other side blustered "if you've got the nerve, take the goods," she hired a truck and blocked the gate. She gnawed on steamed buns when hungry and drank tap water when thirsty, finally forcing the debtor to settle with several tons of merchandise. On the day the goods were hauled away she cried over the steering wheel — not out of grievance, but because she could finally stand up straight.[s5][s6]
- **1992** 安徽销售额破1600万 / Anhui sales top 16 million yuan
  - 在安徽市场销售额突破1600万元，占公司总销售额的八分之一。靠"笨功夫"——住进仓库、帮理货、教店员调试机器[s4][s7]。
  - EN: Her sales in the Anhui market broke through 16 million yuan, one-eighth of the company's total sales. She achieved it with "dumb, plodding effort" — living in the warehouse, helping tally goods, and teaching shop clerks to debug the machines.[s4][s7]
- **1994** 临危受命任经营部长 / Appointed sales department head in a crisis
  - 格力骨干业务员集体跳槽，董明珠坚持留下，被全票推选为经营部副部长、后任部长[s1][s7]。
  - EN: When Gree's backbone salespeople jumped ship en masse, Dong Mingzhu insisted on staying and was elected unanimously as deputy head of the sales department, later becoming its head.[s1][s7]
- **1995** 推行"先款后货" / Introduces cash-before-delivery
  - 推出"先款后货"制度，整顿销售秩序，公司销售收入从4亿元增长到28亿元[s4][s7]。
  - EN: She introduced the cash-before-delivery system and straightened out sales order; the company's sales revenue grew from 400 million to 2.8 billion yuan.[s4][s7]
- **1996** 凉夏战役行业登顶 / Cool-summer battle takes her to the top
  - 空调业遭遇凉夏，董明珠带领23名业务员迎战，拿出1亿元利润的2%补贴经销商，格力销售增长17%，首次超过春兰成为行业第一[s4][s7]。
  - EN: When the air-conditioning industry hit a cool summer, Dong Mingzhu led 23 sales staff into battle, earmarking 2 percent of 100 million yuan in profit to subsidize dealers. Gree's sales grew 17 percent, overtaking Chunlan for the first time to rank first in the industry.[s4][s7]
- **1997** 升任副总经理，创立区域销售公司模式 / Promoted VP; creates regional sales company model
  - 升任格力电器副总经理。在湖北首创"区域销售公司"模式，被称为"21世纪经济领域的全新营销模式"[s4][s9]。
  - EN: She was promoted to deputy general manager of Gree Electric. In Hubei she pioneered the "regional sales company" model, hailed as "a brand-new marketing model for the economic sphere of the twenty-first century."[s4][s9]
- **2001-04** 出任格力电器总经理 / Becomes general manager of Gree Electric
  - 出任格力电器总经理，发起内部"整风运动"，提出12字管理方针[s7][s15]。
  - EN: She became general manager of Gree Electric, launched an internal "rectification campaign," and put forward her twelve-character management guideline.[s7][s15]
- **2004** 国美大战 / The Gome war
  - 因成都国美单方大幅降价破坏格力价格体系，董明珠果断下令停止供货。国美总部报复性地将格力清场清库。面对中国领先家电连锁的强势压力，董明珠毫不退让，格力全线退出国美渠道，转而自建专卖店渠道，誓言'永不进国美'。短短6年时间在全球建立超万家专卖店，开创了家电行业'厂商自主渠道'的典范[s7][s21]。
  - EN: After Gome's Chengdu operation unilaterally slashed prices and wrecked Gree's price system, Dong Mingzhu peremptorily ordered a halt to supplies. Gome headquarters retaliated by clearing Gree off its floors and out of its warehouses. Facing the full pressure of China's largest home-appliance chain, she did not give an inch: Gree withdrew from the Gome channel across the board, built its own specialty-store channel instead, and vowed "never to enter Gome again." In just six years it built more than 10,000 specialty stores worldwide, creating a model of "manufacturer-owned channels" for the home-appliance industry.[s7][s21]
- **2005** 空调产销量全球第一 / World's No. 1 in air-conditioner output and sales
  - 格力家用空调产销量跃居全球第一。连续11年空调产销量、销售收入、市场占有率居全国首位[s1]。
  - EN: Gree's production and sales of residential air conditioners rose to first place in the world. It ranked first nationwide for 11 consecutive years in air-conditioner output and sales volume, sales revenue, and market share.[s1]
- **2007** 出任总裁，成立京海互联 / Becomes president; Jinghai Interconnection formed
  - 出任格力电器总裁。引进10家核心区域销售公司成立京海互联，持股8.91%成为第二大股东[s9][s22]。
  - EN: She became president of Gree Electric. She brought in ten core regional sales companies to form Jinghai Interconnection, which took an 8.91 percent stake to become the second-largest shareholder.[s9][s22]
- **2012-05** 接班格力，进入"董明珠时代" / Succeeds at Gree; the "Dong Mingzhu era" begins
  - 朱江洪届龄退休，董明珠接任格力集团董事长、格力电器董事长兼总裁。"朱董配"时代结束[s1][s8]。
  - EN: Zhu Jianghong retired at the retirement age, and Dong Mingzhu succeeded him as chairwoman of Gree Group and chairwoman and president of Gree Electric. The era of the "Zhu-Dong pairing" came to an end.[s1][s8]
- **2013-12** 十亿赌约 / The one-billion-yuan bet
  - 在央视中国经济年度人物颁奖典礼上与雷军定下10亿元赌约，赌五年后小米与格力谁的营收更高[s10][s23]。
  - EN: At the CCTV Chinese Economic Person of the Year awards ceremony, she made the one-billion-yuan bet with Lei Jun, wagering whose revenue — Xiaomi's or Gree's — would be higher five years later.[s10][s23]
- **2015** 入选《财富》世界500强 / Leads Gree onto the Fortune Global 500
  - 带领格力进入《财富》世界500强。同年发布格力手机一代[s1]。
  - EN: She led Gree into the Fortune Global 500. The same year saw the launch of the first-generation Gree phone.[s1]
- **2016-10** 收购银隆被否决 / Yinlong acquisition rejected
  - 130亿元收购银隆新能源方案被股东大会否决。董明珠在大会上大发雷霆：'格力没有亏待你们！两年给你们分了180亿！'被否决后，她以个人全部身家入股银隆，首期出资约10亿元。拉来王健林、刘强东等共同投资，王健林表示投资前根本没有尽调，只是'相信董明珠的眼光'[s9][s16]。
  - EN: The 13-billion-yuan plan to acquire Yinlong New Energy was voted down by the shareholders' meeting. Dong Mingzhu stormed at the meeting: "Gree has never treated you unfairly! In two years we distributed 18 billion yuan to you!" After the rejection, she invested in Yinlong with her entire personal fortune, contributing about 1 billion yuan in the first phase. She pulled in Wang Jianlin and Liu Qiangdong to co-invest; Wang Jianlin said he had done no due diligence before investing, but simply "believed in Dong Mingzhu's judgment."[s9][s16]
- **2018-08** 成立零边界，格力造芯 / Edgeless founded; Gree makes chips
  - 珠海零边界集成电路有限公司成立，注册资本10亿元。董明珠宣布"哪怕投资500亿也要造芯片"[s9][s14]。
  - EN: Zhuhai Edgeless Integrated Circuits Co., Ltd. was established with registered capital of 1 billion yuan. Dong Mingzhu declared: "Even if it costs 50 billion yuan, we must succeed in making chips."[s9][s14]
- **2018** 赌约结果格力胜出 / Gree wins the bet
  - 格力2018年营收1981.2亿元，小米1749.15亿元，格力以约232亿元优势胜出。董明珠表示10亿元不要了[s10][s23]。
  - EN: Gree's 2018 revenue was 198.12 billion yuan and Xiaomi's 174.915 billion yuan; Gree won by a margin of about 23.2 billion yuan. Dong Mingzhu said she would not claim the one billion yuan.[s10][s23]
- **2019-12** 格力混改完成 / Gree mixed-ownership reform completed
  - 高瓴资本旗下珠海明骏以416.62亿元受让15%股份，格力变更为无控股股东和实际控制人[s16][s22]。
  - EN: Zhuhai Mingjun under Hillhouse Capital took a 15 percent stake for 41.662 billion yuan, and Gree became a company with no controlling shareholder and no actual controller.[s16][s22]
- **2020** 直播带货341亿 / Livestream sales reach 34.18 billion yuan
  - 受疫情冲击，格力一季度销售收入比预期少300多亿元。董明珠从坚持线下转向拥抱直播：4月抖音首秀翻车（仅卖23万元），5月快手3小时3.1亿元，6月品牌日65.4亿元。全年八场直播累计销售341.8亿元（格力官方口径），创家电行业纪录。同时启动渠道扁平化改革，砍掉省市级代理层级[s9][s22]。
  - EN: Hit by the pandemic, Gree's first-quarter sales revenue fell more than 30 billion yuan short of expectations. Dong Mingzhu shifted from insisting on offline to embracing livestreaming: her April Douyin debut flopped (only 230,000 yuan sold), three hours on Kuaishou in May brought 310 million yuan, and the June Brand Day 6.54 billion yuan. Eight livestreams over the year generated cumulative sales of 34.18 billion yuan (Gree's official figure), an industry record. At the same time she launched channel flattening, cutting away provincial and city agent tiers.[s9][s22]
- **2021-08** 格力入主银隆 / Gree takes control of Yinlong
  - 格力电器以18.3亿元获得银隆新能源30.47%股权，银隆更名为"格力钛新能源"[s16]。
  - EN: Gree Electric acquired a 30.47 percent stake in Yinlong New Energy for 1.83 billion yuan, and Yinlong was renamed "Gree Titanium New Energy."[s16]
- **2023-05** 孟羽童离职 / Meng Yutong leaves Gree
  - 孟羽童从格力离职。格力官方回应"人员流动很正常"[s11][s24]。
  - EN: Meng Yutong left Gree. Gree officially responded that "personnel turnover is perfectly normal."[s11][s24]
- **2024-08** 获国务院政府特殊津贴 / Receives State Council special allowance
  - 被授予国务院政府特殊津贴专家证书[s1][s19]。
  - EN: She was awarded the certificate of expert receiving the State Council's special government allowance.[s1][s19]
- **2025-04** 第五次连任董事长 / Re-elected chairwoman for the fifth time
  - 以超33亿股同意票连任格力电器董事长，开启第五个三年任期。同时卸任总裁，由张伟接任[s1][s20]。
  - EN: With more than 3.3 billion shares voted in favor, she was re-elected chairwoman of Gree Electric, opening her fifth three-year term. She also stepped down as president, succeeded by Zhang Wei.[s1][s20]
- **2025-07** 《财富》15年来首次落榜 / Off the Fortune list for the first time in 15 years
  - 《财富》中国最具影响力商界女性榜单，董明珠15年来首次落榜。格力回应"不在意这个事情"[s18]。
  - EN: On Fortune's list of China's most influential women in business, Dong Mingzhu fell off for the first time in 15 years. Gree responded that it "does not care about this matter."[s18]
- **2026-08** 出任格力技工学校校长 / Becomes principal of Gree Technical School
  - 出任珠海市格力技工学校校长。首届招生300人，报名人数突破8000人，开设九大专业[s2]。
  - EN: She became principal of the Zhuhai Gree Technical School. The first cohort enrolled 300 students, but more than 8,000 applied, with nine majors offered.[s2]

## 常问问答 FAQ

**Q1: 董明珠为什么36岁才去格力？**

A: 董明珠1954年8月出生于南京，1975年从安徽芜湖干部教育学院统计学专业毕业后在南京化工研究所工作[s1][s5]。1980年前后结婚，1982年儿子出生[s2]。1984年丈夫因病去世，她独自抚养儿子六年。这期间她没有买过一件新衣服，所有积蓄都用来还债和养孩子，每天通勤四小时往返只为了晚上能亲一口儿子熟睡的脸[s4]。1990年才辞掉南京的稳定工作南下珠海，进入格力做基层业务员[s2][s4]。从30岁丧夫到36岁南下，这六年是她人生中最艰难的岁月，也是塑造她'靠自己'人生哲学的关键时期。

**Q1 (EN): Why did Dong Mingzhu only go to Gree at the age of 36?**

A: Dong Mingzhu was born in Nanjing in August 1954. After graduating in 1975 from the Wuhu Cadre Education College in Anhui, majoring in statistics, she worked at a chemical research institute in Nanjing.[s1][s5] She married around 1980, and her son was born in 1982.[s2] In 1984 her husband died of illness, and she raised their son alone for six years. During that period she never bought herself a single new piece of clothing; every penny of her savings went to repaying debt and raising the child, and she commuted four hours a day round-trip just to kiss her sleeping son's face at night.[s4] It was only in 1990 that she quit her stable job in Nanjing, went south to Zhuhai, and joined Gree as a junior salesperson.[s2][s4] From losing her husband at 30 to heading south at 36, those six years were the hardest of her life and also the formative period of her philosophy of relying on oneself.

**Q2: 董明珠和朱江洪是什么关系？**

A: 朱江洪（1945年生）是格力电器的缔造者，1988年任海利空调器厂厂长，是董明珠的伯乐和提携者[s8]。朱江洪主内（研发、生产、质量），董明珠主外（市场、销售），两人被称为'朱董配'黄金搭档[s8]。在2003-2005年'父子之争'中，董明珠挺身而出保护朱江洪，挡住了尽调人员入场[s8]。2012年朱江洪退休后，两人关系逐渐疏远。朱江洪赴京参加颁奖仪式时格力没人接机，他打车到场后流下泪水[s8]。朱江洪公开表示'这几年，格力跟我没有任何联系'，并在自传中对格力的贡献归属问题作出了回应[s8]。2023年朱江洪现身飞利浦空调活动，核心团队几乎清一色格力旧部[s8][s22]。

**Q2 (EN): What was the relationship between Dong Mingzhu and Zhu Jianghong?**

A: Zhu Jianghong (born 1945) was the builder of Gree Electric; he became director of the Haili Air Conditioner Factory in 1988 and was Dong Mingzhu's mentor and patron.[s8] Zhu Jianghong ran the inside (R&D, production, quality) while Dong Mingzhu ran the outside (market, sales), and the two were known as the golden "Zhu-Dong pairing."[s8] During the 2003–2005 "father-and-son dispute," Dong Mingzhu stepped forward to protect Zhu Jianghong and blocked the due-diligence personnel from entering the company.[s8] After Zhu Jianghong retired in 2012, the two gradually drifted apart. When Zhu traveled to Beijing for an award ceremony, no one from Gree met him at the airport; after arriving at the venue by taxi he shed tears.[s8] Zhu said publicly that "these past few years, Gree has had no contact with me at all," and in his autobiography he responded to the question of who deserved credit for Gree.[s8] In 2023 Zhu appeared at a Philips air-conditioner event, whose core team was made up almost entirely of former Gree people.[s8][s22]

**Q3: 10亿赌约谁赢了？**

A: 董明珠赢了。2013年12月在央视颁奖现场，雷军提议赌五年后小米营业额能否超过格力，董明珠加码至10亿元[s10][s23]。2018年格力营收1981.2亿元（年报），小米1749.15亿元（年报），格力以约232亿元优势胜出[s10][s23]。董明珠表示10亿元不要了。但2019年小米营收2058亿元首次反超格力的2005亿元[s10]。2020年雷军正式承认赌局输了，坦言'那时候信心爆棚，的确膨胀了'[s23]。到2024年底，小米营收约3659亿元，格力约1900亿元，小米已近格力2倍。2026年4月雷军坦言'当年不该开这个玩笑'[s23]。这场赌约被视为传统制造与互联网两种路线的对垒。

**Q3 (EN): Who won the one-billion-yuan bet?**

A: Dong Mingzhu won. In December 2013, at the CCTV awards ceremony, Lei Jun proposed betting whether Xiaomi's turnover could overtake Gree's five years later, and Dong Mingzhu raised the stakes to one billion yuan.[s10][s23] In 2018 Gree's revenue was 198.12 billion yuan (annual report) and Xiaomi's 174.915 billion yuan (annual report), so Gree won by a margin of about 23.2 billion yuan.[s10][s23] Dong Mingzhu said she would not claim the one billion yuan. But in 2019 Xiaomi's revenue of 205.8 billion yuan overtook Gree's 200.5 billion yuan for the first time.[s10] In 2020 Lei Jun formally admitted losing the bet, conceding that "back then our confidence was through the roof; we really were swollen-headed."[s23] By the end of 2024, Xiaomi's revenue was about 365.9 billion yuan and Gree's about 190 billion — Xiaomi was nearly twice Gree's size. In April 2026 Lei Jun admitted that "we shouldn't have made that joke back then."[s23] The bet is regarded as a contest between two routes — traditional manufacturing and the internet.

**Q4: 银隆新能源现在怎么样了？**

A: 银隆于2016年被董明珠看中，130亿元收购方案被股东大会否决后，董明珠以个人首期约10亿元入股[s9][s16]。2018年底银隆爆雷，创始人魏银仓涉嫌侵占公司超10亿元资产后出逃美国，被列入红色通缉令[s16]。2021年格力电器以18.3亿元获得银隆控制权，更名为'格力钛新能源'[s16]。截至2023年负债约247.86亿元，2025年格力对其计提约28亿元资产减值[s16]。王健林、刘强东关联公司已退出[s16]。董明珠累计亏损超20亿元，但表示'不后悔'[s16]。2026年储能业务迎来转机，钛酸锂的差异化优势逐渐验证[s16]。

**Q4 (EN): What has become of Yinlong New Energy?**

A: Dong Mingzhu set her sights on Yinlong in 2016; after the 13-billion-yuan acquisition plan was voted down by the shareholders' meeting, she invested personally with an initial contribution of about 1 billion yuan.[s9][s16] At the end of 2018 Yinlong blew up: founder Wei Yincang was suspected of siphoning more than 1 billion yuan in company assets, then fled to the United States and was placed on a red notice.[s16] In 2021 Gree Electric took control of Yinlong for 1.83 billion yuan and renamed it "Gree Titanium New Energy."[s16] As of 2023 it carried about 24.786 billion yuan in debt, and in 2025 Gree booked about 2.8 billion yuan in asset impairment on it.[s16] Companies associated with Wang Jianlin and Liu Qiangdong had exited.[s16] Dong Mingzhu's cumulative loss exceeded 2 billion yuan, but she said she had "no regrets."[s16] In 2026 the energy-storage business found a turning point, as the differentiated advantages of lithium titanate were gradually validated.[s16]

**Q5: 格力芯片做到什么程度了？**

A: 截至2026年8月，格力自研芯片累计出货超3.4亿颗，家电主控芯片自给率超90%（指主控芯片）[s2][s14]。2018年成立珠海零边界集成电路有限公司，注册资本10亿元[s14]。产品覆盖32位MCU（EM32系列）、AIoT SoC芯片（EAI系列）、功率器件（EP系列）三大品类[s14]。碳化硅业务是亮点：建成亚洲首座全自动化6英寸SiC晶圆工厂，良率99.6%，成本比国际同行低约18%，2026年同比增长200%[s14]。已进入美的、海尔、阳光电源、宁德时代等供应链[s14]。2025年董明珠卸任芯片公司法人，市场普遍预期将分拆上市[s14]。

**Q5 (EN): How far has Gree's chip business gotten?**

A: As of August 2026, Gree's self-developed chips had cumulatively shipped more than 340 million units, and the self-sufficiency rate for home-appliance main-control chips exceeded 90 percent (main-control chips only).[s2][s14] Zhuhai Edgeless Integrated Circuits Co., Ltd. was founded in 2018 with registered capital of 1 billion yuan.[s14] Its products span three categories: 32-bit MCUs (the EM32 series), AIoT SoC chips (the EAI series), and power devices (the EP series).[s14] The silicon-carbide business is the highlight: Gree built Asia's first fully automated six-inch SiC wafer fab, with a 99.6 percent yield, costs about 18 percent below international peers, and growth of 200 percent year on year in 2026.[s14] Its chips have entered the supply chains of Midea, Haier, Sungrow, and CATL.[s14] In 2025 Dong Mingzhu stepped down as legal representative of the chip companies, and the market widely expects a spin-off listing.[s14]

**Q6: 孟羽童为什么离开格力？**

A: 2021年董明珠在综艺节目中选中浙江大学毕业生孟羽童，公开表示要'将孟羽童培养成第二个董明珠'[s24]。2023年5月孟羽童离职，格力官方回应'人员流动很正常'[s11]。同年11月董明珠在内部大会上怒斥：'一个文都写不出来，只想用格力平台当网红'，并称'将她开除了'[s11]。但三种说法存在差异：董明珠称'开除'，格力称'人员流动'，孟羽童称'顺利毕业'[s11]。外界分析离职原因包括直播成绩未达预期、价值观冲突、薪资差距等[s24]。2025年5月两人时隔两年'破冰'合体直播，观看人次292万[s11][s24]。

**Q6 (EN): Why did Meng Yutong leave Gree?**

A: In 2021 Dong Mingzhu selected Meng Yutong, a Zhejiang University graduate, on a variety show and said publicly that she would "train Meng Yutong to become the second Dong Mingzhu."[s24] In May 2023 Meng Yutong left Gree, and Gree officially responded that "personnel turnover is perfectly normal."[s11] In November that year, at an internal meeting, Dong Mingzhu raged that "she can't even write a document and only wants to use Gree's platform to become an internet celebrity," saying "she was fired."[s11] But three versions differ: Dong Mingzhu calls it "fired," Gree calls it "normal turnover," and Meng Yutong calls it "graduating smoothly."[s11] Outsiders analyzed the reasons for departure as livestream results falling short of expectations, value clashes, pay gaps, and more.[s24] In May 2025 the two "broke the ice" with a joint livestream after two years, watched by 2.92 million people.[s11][s24]

**Q7: 董明珠为什么不再婚？**

A: 2025年2月董明珠在与俞敏洪对话中谈到三个原因：为了儿子（'重组家庭的孩子眼神不一样，像惊弓之鸟。我这辈子最幸运的是没让他受过委屈。'）、忙于事业、以及自己不想[s13]。她在节目中多次提到，1984年丈夫去世后，她独自抚养儿子的六年是人生最艰难的时期[s4]。那段经历让她深刻认识到：靠自己才是唯一可靠的选择[s4]。这种'靠自己'的人生哲学，既是她事业成功的动力，也是她不愿再婚的深层原因[s4][s12]。

**Q7 (EN): Why didn't Dong Mingzhu remarry?**

A: In February 2025, in conversation with Yu Minhong, Dong Mingzhu gave three reasons: for her son's sake ("Children in a reconstituted family have a different look in their eyes — like birds startled by the twang of a bowstring. The luckiest thing in my life is that I never let him suffer that kind of grievance."), the demands of her career, and her own unwillingness.[s13] On the program she several times recalled that the six years after her husband died in 1984, during which she raised her son alone, were the hardest period of her life.[s4] That experience taught her deeply that relying on oneself was the only dependable choice.[s4] This philosophy of self-reliance was both the driver of her business success and the deeper reason for her unwillingness to remarry.[s4][s12]

**Q8: 格力现在经营情况怎么样？**

A: 2025年全年：营业总收入1704.47亿元（同比-9.89%），归母净利润290.03亿元（同比-9.89%）[s2]。营收下滑主要受渠道改革阵痛和外销下降影响[s2][s22]。2026年上半年营收893.98亿元（-8.15%），净利润132.78亿元（-7.87%）[s2]。但内销+1.90%，说明基本盘在企稳[s26]。值得注意的是，毛利率在提升（内销+0.27pct），经营现金流463.83亿元（+57.93%），说明'造血'能力依然健康[s2]。上市以来累计分红超1476亿元[s2]。2024年美的营收约4091亿元，格力约1900亿元，差距在扩大[s22]。

**Q8 (EN): How is Gree doing as a business now?**

A: For the full year 2025: total operating revenue of 170.447 billion yuan (down 9.89 percent year on year) and net profit attributable to the parent of 29.003 billion yuan (down 9.89 percent).[s2] The revenue decline was mainly driven by the growing pains of channel reform and falling overseas sales.[s2][s22] In the first half of 2026 revenue was 89.398 billion yuan (down 8.15 percent) and net profit 13.278 billion yuan (down 7.87 percent).[s2] But domestic sales rose 1.90 percent, indicating the base business is stabilizing.[s26] Notably, gross margin is improving (domestic up 0.27 percentage points) and operating cash flow was 46.383 billion yuan (up 57.93 percent), showing the blood-making capacity remains healthy.[s2] Cumulative dividends since listing exceed 147.6 billion yuan.[s2] In 2024 Midea's revenue was about 409.1 billion yuan and Gree's about 190 billion, and the gap is widening.[s22]

**Q9: 董明珠还会在格力多久？**

A: 2025年4月董明珠第五次连任董事长，任期至2028年，届时她将74岁[s1][s20]。她已卸任总裁（由张伟接任），'85后'钟成堡进入董事会[s20]。她表示'已找到接班人，有三四个预备人选'在不同平台和岗位上锻炼[s13]。接班人培养的核心挑战是：在董明珠的强势光环下，任何接班人都难以建立自己的权威。格力需要的不是一个'小董明珠'，而是一个能够带领企业转型的新时代领导者[s20][s24]。

**Q9 (EN): How much longer will Dong Mingzhu stay at Gree?**

A: In April 2025 Dong Mingzhu was re-elected chairwoman for the fifth time, with a term running to 2028, when she will be 74.[s1][s20] She has stepped down as president (succeeded by Zhang Wei), and post-1985 executive Zhong Chengbao has joined the board.[s20] She says she has "found a successor, with three or four candidates in reserve" being trained on different platforms and in different roles.[s13] The core challenge of succession is this: under Dong Mingzhu's dominant halo, any successor will find it hard to establish their own authority. What Gree needs is not a "little Dong Mingzhu" but a new-era leader able to steer the enterprise through transformation.[s20][s24]

**Q10: 董明珠在格力的持股比例是多少？**

A: 截至2026年一季度，董明珠持有格力电器约1.12亿股，持股比例约2.01%[s20]。2025年税前报酬1293.48万元（同比下降10%）[s2]。持股比例从2025年初的约1.8%提升至2.01%，显示她在用真金白银表达对格力的信心[s25]。作为格力钛（原银隆）的第二大股东（17.46%表决权委托上市公司行使），她还在新能源领域保持着重要利益[s16]。

**Q10 (EN): What is Dong Mingzhu's stake in Gree?**

A: As of the first quarter of 2026, Dong Mingzhu held about 112 million shares of Gree Electric, a stake of about 2.01 percent.[s20] Her pre-tax compensation in 2025 was 12.9348 million yuan (down 10 percent year on year).[s2] Her stake rose from about 1.8 percent at the start of 2025 to 2.01 percent, showing that she is putting real money behind her confidence in Gree.[s25] As the second-largest shareholder of Gree Titanium (formerly Yinlong) — with the voting rights of her 17.46 percent stake entrusted to the listed company for exercise — she also maintains a substantial interest in the new-energy field.[s16]

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