Billy Howard's actions were indeed very successful. In the blink of an eye, Jiangnan Group became the target of public criticism. Many people began to petition online, demanding severe penalties for Jiangnan Group and restrictions on its so-called "sinister" technologies and products, such as storage chips and mobile phone chips. They called for American companies to refrain from using such chips and for stringent sanctions against Jiangnan Group.
However, when it came to storage chips, no company responded to the demands of these indignant bystanders. The reason was simple: Jiangnan Group's current storage chips were superior in quality and cheaper in price than all similar products on the market. If they were to stop using Jiangnan Group's storage chips, their costs would increase.
This would either lead to a decrease in profits or cede market share to competitors. No one would do something so foolish, especially since there were no competitors in the entire storage chip market that could pose a threat to Jiangnan Group. You couldn't ban them, not even the government dared to, otherwise the corporations under its purview would tear the government apart.
What about mobile phone chips?
Many companies quickly expressed their support on this matter because they had never used Jiangnan Group's mobile phone chips, so expressing support was inconsequential.
In fact, the only phone on the market that seemed to use Jiangnan Group's chips was Jiangnan's own Tianxing 5. Everyone was quite happy to see a competitor fall.
As a result, all the pressure quickly shifted to the Tianxing 5 mobile phone. Soon, posts and videos appeared online depicting the smashing of Tianxing 5 phones.
Jabaha was a very patriotic young white man. After witnessing the evil deeds of Jiangnan Group online, he immediately decided to take action.
Coincidentally, his friend had a Tianxing 5 phone. Thus, this angry youth decided to throw the phone from a building to smash it to pieces.
He also planned to film it and promote his actions online, encouraging more people to smash this wicked phone.
However, he knew that his friend cherished this phone dearly, as he had spent a hefty $6,000 to buy it at a high price. His friend would surely be unwilling to smash it.
But, in order to save his friend from falling into an abyss from which he couldn't extricate himself, he decided to sacrifice himself and help his friend by secretly smashing the phone.
But his friend always carried the phone with him. So, he pretended to have drinks with his friend, and while his friend was drunk and asleep, he stole the phone... no, he took it, and then directly threw it from the third floor. He filmed the entire process with a digital camera.
After throwing it, he rushed downstairs immediately, wanting to film the wicked phone shattering into pieces. To his surprise, the phone was still lying on the ground, intact.
Upon picking it up and examining it closely, he discovered that only the outer layer of glass had shattered, and the touch functionality was damaged. However, the screen could still be lit up, and the phone could be operated by pressing the buttons.
Jabaha felt completely embarrassed. So, he ran to the fourth floor and forcefully threw it down again, thinking that this time it should shatter. But when he ran downstairs to look, it was still the same, only with more cracks on the glass and a slight deformation of the phone's casing.
This completely ignited Jabaha's competitive spirit. He decided to increase the number of floors for further testing.
On the fifth floor, the screen completely stopped displaying, but when he tried to make a call, it still worked. The sixth floor was the same. It wasn't until the seventh floor that the phone became completely unusable.
Only then did Jabaha, with satisfaction, upload the recorded video online. When his friend woke up from his drinking, he excitedly told him that he had helped him get rid of that wicked phone.
As for how the story unfolded afterward, it was no longer important. In any case, the result was that the video went viral online. Many people watched it with great amusement and curiosity, finding immense entertainment in it.
In fact, in later years, one of the top 10 most viewed videos on YouTube was a video of someone repeatedly smashing an iPhone with a hammer to see how durable it was.
This person later also filmed videos of baking iPhones in a microwave, crushing them with a hydraulic press, or soaking them in concentrated sulfuric acid, and so on. In short, he devised dozens of different methods, and each such video received a particularly high number of views. Destroying one iPhone could earn him the equivalent of hundreds of iPhones. He had truly discovered the secret to wealth.
The same was true in this world. After discovering that this video's view count had increased, some foolish people decided to emulate it and get a Tianxing 5 to torment.
But smarter people decided to get a Motorola, a Samsung, a Nokia, and finally a Tianxing 5. Then, they dropped all four phones simultaneously from the third floor, layer by layer, to see which one would give out first.
In the end, the Motorola fared the worst, becoming unusable after only three floors.
The Samsung held up until the fifth floor, the Tianxing 5 this time lasted until the eighth floor, while the Nokia lasted until the twelfth floor.
The direct consequence of these videos appearing was that the price of Tianxing 5 phones in the second-hand market continued to surge. It went from the original $6,000 to a staggering $8,000, and they were still impossible to buy. This was because the second batch of Tianxing 5 phones from Jiangnan Group was still en route across the sea, and the market was still dominated by the first batch, which was insufficient for such destructive testing.
However, Motorola's phone sales began to plummet, looking truly miserable.
In response to the online doubts and controversies, Jiangnan Group did not respond, as Jiangnan Group had no official account in the United States. It was their subsidiary, BLm company, that responded on its own official account.
BLm company stated that these were outright fabrications and insults. Jiangnan Group and BLm were currently collecting evidence, and once all the evidence was gathered, they would simultaneously sue the rumor-mongers in Chinese and American courts. They would then settle the matter in court and would not issue any further clarifying statements.
Upon receiving this notification, many onlookers cursed, believing that Jiangnan Group was cowardly and had chickened out.
However, whether Jiangnan Group had chickened out was unknown, but Billy Howard certainly had. He began to frantically cover up all traces that might lead back to him, lest he be sent to prison if Jiangnan Group actually sued him in court.
After all, during the process of spreading rumors, Billy Howard was fully aware of the truth. And it was obvious even to someone with his limited intelligence that Jiangnan Group must possess ample evidence, making a conviction a certainty. Therefore, Billy Howard had to clean up his act; he didn't want to go to prison and have someone else clean up his mess.
But the problem was that even though Billy Howard had backed down, Edward Zamp behind him had not. On the contrary, seeing how well the situation was developing, he immediately instructed Billy Howard to proceed with the counter-propaganda as originally planned, three days later.
That is, to expose that Professor Chen's technology was not developed by himself but stolen from Motorola.
Billy Howard was actually quite resistant to this, because unlike the small accounts spreading rumors online, which were untraceable.
Once Professor Chen publicly announced and admitted that his technology was stolen from Motorola, Professor Chen would inevitably be investigated. And since Professor Chen had direct contact with Billy Howard, if he were to confess, Billy Howard would be unable to escape.
However, Billy Howard also dared not offend Edward Zamp. Under Edward Zamp's repeated urging, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and arrange for Professor Chen to appear. At the same time, he prayed in his heart that Jiangnan Group would be magnanimous and not actually sue him in court... at least not in an American court, he'd be fine with a Chinese court.
Billy Howard was not fantasizing. After all, American courts were notoriously protective of their own. Many foreign companies were reluctant to sue in American courts.
But they didn't know that as long as sufficient evidence was presented, even American courts could not completely deny the truth. After all, to some extent, the American legal system could be considered their last vestige of conscience.
As long as concrete evidence was presented, one could win a case. For instance, a certain glass manufacturer in later years successfully won a lawsuit in court after submitting enough evidence. Currently, the two countries were still in a honeymoon period, so it was unlikely that things would be so egregiously distorted.
Thus, according to the original plan, three days later, NBC television began broadcasting the second installment of the documentary, the main purpose of which was to find the legendary Professor Chen, who had supposedly arrived in the United States and was in hiding.
The host, through a series of investigations and inquiries, finally found Professor Chen washing dishes in a sewage-filled alley in New York's Chinatown.
This was a typical scene shot with the BBC's gloomy filter.
At this moment, Professor Chen showed none of the dignity befitting a professor. On the contrary, in the camera, Professor Chen looked utterly miserable, wearing a tattered shirt, covered in sewage, with greasy food scraps strewn at his feet. Professor Chen was thus lamenting amidst a pile of garbage while washing dishes.
Seeing the reporter's sudden visit, Professor Chen was clearly startled, followed by various attempts to evade and refuse cooperation. It wasn't until the reporter revealed his identity, employed all sorts of tactics, and guaranteed that no one would threaten Professor Chen that Professor Chen finally, timidly, agreed to the interview.
In the interview, Professor Chen revealed a shocking truth: his technology was not self-developed. With China's current technology and capabilities, it would take at least another 50 years to develop such advanced chips.
Therefore, his chip technology was actually stolen from Motorola. Because of this, Jiangnan Group held his weakness, and he dared not stand up and sue the other party for their evil deeds, but instead hid in this dirty corner, living a wretched life.
And now, he had finally bravely spoken the truth, because the air of freedom was everywhere here.