Recently, the story of Suining’s “Qili Chuan Hot Pot” sharing 330,000 yuan in profits among employees during the four days of the New Year holiday has become a hot topic. Major media outlets rushed to report this event, praising the boss Huang Houming as a “generous” and “considerate” “conscientious boss,” and elevating his hot pot restaurant to new heights. Online, some people expressed a desire to apply for jobs there, and even others compared him to Yu Donglai, a people’s entrepreneur. He shamelessly claimed that he aims for “common prosperity” with his employees, and said he had also worked as a waiter and understands employees’ feelings. However, Yu Donglai, once worshipped on a pedestal, was thoroughly exposed on forums, revealing that his true nature was no different from other bosses—just better at disguising himself and more ruthless in exploiting workers. Can Huang Houming be a boss who truly achieves “mutual benefit and win-win” with his employees?
Of course, this is impossible. During the Spring Festival holiday, the busiest time for the catering industry, this hot pot restaurant serves over a hundred tables daily, but the total number of employees in one store is only over 20. The back kitchen needs staff, the front hall needs staff, waiters and dishwashers also need workers, as do the store manager and other managers—who are essentially exploiters doing little actual work. Calculating roughly, only a few workers are left with real tasks. The store manager, who received the most dividends, said he starts work at 8 a.m. and works until 1 or 2 a.m. the next day. That means spending 18 hours in the store each day! If the store manager is this busy, ordinary workers are even busier. During the busy period of the Spring Festival, 140 employees worked overtime without triple pay. The boss claimed to “share 330,000 yuan in profits” with employees, but dividing 330,000 by 140 employees only yields an average of 2,421 yuan per person. According to Suining’s minimum wage (full-time), which is 12 yuan per hour, four days’ wages would be 12 (hourly wage) × 16 hours (assuming two hours off, which is unlikely given the busyness) × 3 times the wage × 3 days + 16 × 2 times the wage × 16 hours = 2,112 yuan—seems about 300 yuan more than the minimum wage calculation. However, the actual dividends are based on three tiers: store manager and managers, waiters and chefs, and dishwashers and servers. The “dogs” of the bosses, like store managers and managers, often receive thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan in dividends, with the highest reaching over 14,800 yuan. As a result, most workers actually receive far less than 2,421 yuan. The busiest jobs in the hot pot restaurant are waiters, dishwashers, and cleaners. The cleaner works a whole day washing and wiping for over ten hours, but their dividend is only about 1,400 yuan—less than one-tenth of the store manager’s, and not even reaching Suining’s minimum wage during the holiday! Clearly, the so-called “generous” boss and “sharing” profits are just deducting workers’ rightful wages and redistributing them to their cronies—store managers and managers. Isn’t this exactly the same as the situation in milk tea shops, where the store manager relies on performance-based monthly salaries of over ten thousand yuan, while workers earn less than 5,000 yuan a month? This shows that this boss is not a conscientious employer at all; like other capitalists, he is a ruthless wolf devouring workers’ bones!
All these calculations are based on the framework of capitalism, calculated according to Chinese labor law. However, if we analyze this from a Marxist perspective, it becomes even clearer to expose Huang Houming’s bourgeoisie ugliness. He treats the 330,000 yuan profit as a donation to employees, but how did this profit come about? According to Huang Houming himself, it is “after deducting rent, utilities, labor, ingredients, and all other costs during New Year’s Eve and the first day of the Lunar New Year, the remaining profit is shared with employees; on the second and third days, only labor and ingredient costs are deducted,” leaving 330,000 yuan from a total turnover of 1 million over four days. This calculation, at best, reflects how much a capitalist thinks they can earn. But from the workers’ perspective? If it weren’t for service workers maintaining the store’s operation, capital turnover, how could Huang Houming have money to pay wages and rent? Rent is just a portion of surplus value taken by landlords from him—ultimately created by workers. What costs does the boss really pay? Moreover, Huang Houming owns his own hot pot base factory, exploiting the workers on the production line (he shamelessly states in a video, “We need to strengthen factory management,” which actually means more brutal exploitation of workers), and can significantly reduce raw material, transportation, and storage costs, resulting in a profit margin of up to 33% during these days. The surplus value rate behind this is unimaginably high. With such ruthless exploitation of workers, can Huang Houming still claim to be a “conscientious” boss?
The Chinese government’s mouthpieces are loudly promoting Huang Houming’s so-called “conscientious” capitalism, which has a deep purpose. First, to create a false illusion of “class peace.” Do capitalists not need to exploit workers and seize all surplus value? Workers are always in sharp class opposition to capitalists—rooted in the fact that workers labor without reward while capitalists profit without labor. However, if two “conscientious bosses” are portrayed as sharing profits with employees, the exploitation behind it seems to be wiped away, as if there’s no need to overthrow this capitalist system of exploitation. Both workers and capitalists can live well. The purpose of these bourgeois media outlets rushing to report is to create this illusion and then tell workers: "Don’t struggle anymore, hope you meet a ‘boss like others’” (People’s Daily, February 1, 2025: “Once again! Hot pot restaurant owner earns 530,000 yuan net profit in three days during Spring Festival, all given to employees!”). Huang Houming’s tactic is to deceive workers, spread slave-master philosophy, and reactionary ideas of personal wealth. He takes what workers rightfully deserve—the wages they earn and the profits they create—and presents it as charity (even if insufficient), tricking workers into not fighting and believing they are lucky to meet a good boss who genuinely cares for employees. Linking profits and turnover as if more work equals more money is false. Just look at how the dividends of the least contributing cronies like store managers and managers are ten times that of cleaners, revealing that this division is merely a redistribution of profits among exploiters.
Huang Houming also deeply adheres to this slave-master philosophy. In a short video, he speaks to employees with a screen behind him showing: “Life philosophy… Contributing effort comparable to anyone’s… Live with gratitude… Don’t have emotional troubles…” Effort, in reality, means workers give him their hard work to extract surplus value; gratitude is simply workers thanking this vampire; not having troubles means workers forget the oppression they face daily, forget the resentment of standing for over ten hours just to get by, and “work hard” for the company, “be grateful” to the company!
In today’s China, struggles against oppression by workers, peasants, students, and other social classes are intensifying. Therefore, the fascist government needs to adopt two reactionary tactics—one is to brutally suppress, and the other is to let clever capitalists like Yu Donglai and Huang Houming appear, spreading the myth of their “conscience” as entrepreneurs and claiming they do many benefits for employees, encouraging the oppressed to give up fighting. But from a Marxist perspective, all these so-called conscientious entrepreneurs are ruthless vampires and parasites! In face of these deceptive tactics, we must say: happiness does not come from Pan Donglai or Qili Chuan Healthy Hot Pot; happiness depends on our own struggles in reality!