Once upon a time, there came along a company named Yilishen (蟻力神) in China. The company sells health and food products that derived from ants.But how does the company ensure that it gets an adequate supply of ants from which to extract the ingredients required for their products?
Yilishen actually used the well-known behavior of ants by recruiting massive numbers of ant farmers. Each ant farmer signs up with the company with an initial fee of 10,000 yuan, and then he gets supplied with the company ant-breeding equipment. The ant farmer gets paid for the number of ants produced at a price that ensures him a good profit if he meets the quota. Hundreds of thousands of people sign up.
The ability of the company to pay the ant farmers requires that enough of the ant-based products are being sold. If the sales exceeds the supply, all is well. If the sales is lower than the supply, it is hell to pay.
Recently, Yilishen suddenly discontinued buying from the the ant farmers as well as the payments. The rumor was that the company was bankrupt and the senior company officials have esconded. Several tens of thousands ant farmers converged to the company headquarters in Shenyang to protest without effect.
So last night, the protestors switched their target and surrounded the Liaoning provincial party committee 's office and broke through the police cordon to wave banners and chant slogan. The police are on full alert. Meanwhile, all discussions about Yilishen and the demonstrations have been disappeared from the mainland Chinese Internet. (Extracted from ESWN website)
Tags: Ant, Ant Power, Ant Farmer, Yilishen, Shenyang, Liaoning, Liaoning Provincial Party Committee, China
2 comments:
There is such thing as an ant-farmer?? this is so bizzare to me. Well, i sure hope that those ant-farmers manage to back their earnings on their hard work
looks like the founders have absconded. the scheme is almost like those pyramid schemes
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