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Tao Li

APUS CEO

Believe in the power of kindness. Be true to yourself and dreams.

--From 2017 New Year speech of Mr. Li Tao, the captain of APUS

Mr. Li Tao, the CEO of APUS, delivered a speech in APUS 2017 annual convention in terms of three aspects.

1.Dreams and responsibilities of APUS.

2.The achievement of APUS in 2016 and its objectives in 2017

3.How APUS will change in 2017

Follow your heart and pursue dreams

Farewell 2016, welcome 2017

A question worth of consideration in our whole life is that what do we desire on earth? We all know that youth and time are the most precious in the world because they pass quickly. Life is short and it is no more than 40 years when we truly devote ourselves to do what we believe. Therefore, doing meaningful things and achieving dreams in limited life matter most.

Everyone has a dream

I always think that life is simple. Basic needs (food, shelter and clothing), families and friends and dreams are sufficient. Basic needs support our lives, families and friends make us feel warm, and dreams as spiritual supports will facilitate us to get improvement and make progress.

Everyone should know their dreams and desire because they will influence our choices, career directions and then the entire future. Thus live to yourself to the fullest no matter who you are and what life you live. Only then will you not live up to your life and leave regrets behind.

My dream was to do something which can influence the world. Then I established APUS, providing more people opportunities to find their own ways to success and fulfill ambitions. I hope we can step forward and explore the future of APUS together, then creating a better life with our endeavor.

Time is like a river. You cannot touch the same water twice. Speak specifically, we cannot stop time and live life again. When I just graduated in 1988, aging and failure worries me a lot. However, these will not trouble me anymore now because my dream came true. I am forties years old and I am pleased and satisfactory that I spent time and energy on my dreams. I would like to say that I leave no regrets behind.

What builds your dream is after all sense of commitment

Helping others is of great virtues that I learned from my father. He always attempted to help those who have difficulties. Thanks to my father’s positive influence, I determined to help others when I was a child. I hoped I was able to help more people, improve their lives and even change the world.

Work on bettering yourself and then you can better the world, which I realized after the junior year of the university. I should improve lives of my families and then help others to have a decent life if I am valued. However, before my junior year, I intended to enter politics. In this way I think I can help more people. I felt lucky that I was in an ordinary but warm family which protects me from lots of suffering and miseries and affect me to help others.

In 1999, the second year after graduation, I started a business with partners. We planned carefully, adhered to goals and finally benefited, allowing my families to have a decent life. This inspired and motivated me to explore wider world, achieve further success and help more people.

I have been funding several kids in Da Liang Mountain of Si Chuan Province in recent years. I received letters from them several days ago, saying that one child had entered into junior high school. I felt inspired and will continue to fund more children, allowing them to accept education. Additionally, I want to appeal for more people to join the charity events.

Education and technologies are driving forces for social advance and will change our lives. Education provides me opportunities to acquire knowledge and achieve success, while technologies give me chances to change destiny, history and do something mattes in this era. Establishing APUS enables me to contribute to the social development and provide more people opportunities prove their abilities and fulfill dreams

Dreams and commitments of APUS: make everyone have a decent life

I want to talk about the entire industry after describing my dreams. At the end of first half of 2014, the whole internet industry went down, greatly affecting Chinese internet industry and even Chinese economy. There are only two options available currently, spawning vertical marketplaces or globalization

The Internet is the greatest invention in the world. It enables individuals to get education, technologies and information at the lowest cost. However, it also creates big challenges and opportunities for this era.

Nowadays, no more than 3 billion users can access the internet and there are about 3 to 3.5 intended users to be acquired (4 times than the number of Chinese users) in South America, Southeast, South Asia, the Middle East, Russia and Africa. At present, I want to bring mutual products, technique, business model and capital to these countries.

Dreams and responsibilities of APUS are to use our own technologies to help the internet industry of these countries develop sustainably. We developed user systems and related products series to make everyone access the internet to accept education and technology at the lowest cost.

This is hard to achieve. However, the priority for us is to survive while staying faithful to dreams. In the process, we should persist in exploring how to help users access the internet better and create more value for users and meanwhile increase business value.

Review 2016
It is a year full of challenges, to which rapid growth is the only resolution

There are a set of obstacles and challenges in the organizational development while rapid growth is the only solution to these issues.

We know the future of the world. We know our dreams and objectives. We follow our heart and insist on dreams to advance forward and develop fast. In this way, internal and external problems are solved and we will be the pacesetter. Dreams are the impetus to facilitate us to achieve goals.

After two and half a year, APUS has been the top among companies focusing on the overseas market. In 2014, we accomplished the design of products and continued to improve performance. In 2015, we endeavored to acquire users around the world and achieved high growth. Since 2016, APUS tried to commercialize and achieved the remarkable result at last. In the process, we spent a whole year, and even more time in constant learning from business partners, upstream and downstream and even the entire industry.

For me and the company, 2016 is a year full of challenges, when we experienced difficulties and changes but ultimately overcame them and achieved success.

Look forward to in 2017:
Evolved management patterns and organizational culture, making employees have a decent life.

How far you can go with chances offered.

With the guide of dreams, we would move towards to a common vision and gradually be mightier. I hope that APUS becomes an open platform for creativity and everyone can find their career direction and fulfill dreams here.

In 2017, we will face large challenges and experience great changes. The priority is to adjust the business model. We will adopt flat and process management structure, and build a mechanism for more justice evaluation. In addition, we will introduce internal competition to help the business keep rapid growth, which once helped us get rid of external competition.

Leadership styles are important in organizational management, especially transformational and autocratic leadership. With the engagement of new staffs, new management ideology could be introduced. We require leaders to understand organizational strategies fully and set systematical working planning based on strategies. Meanwhile, leaders should share management experience and skills and maintain self-disciplines, so as to increase team cohesiveness...

APUS as a platform for creativity is increasingly recognized. However, with the expansion of the company, higher standards for managers are required. We could advance forwards to shared dreams and goals with the guide of organizational value.

Higher requirements for leaders are proposed this year:

1.Leaders know strategies and goals setting as well as breakdown.
2.Leaders can put right people in right jobs.
3.Leaders provide supports to employees and give them more freedom.
4.Leaders should fully understand organizational strategies and objectives, which are more important.
5.Leaders should be result-oriented and value-oriented and could cultivate engaged employees to lead the team progress forward
6.Leadership is significant.

The power of culture----believe in kindness, integrity and your heart.

Communication and management complexity are likely to increase with the organizational expansion and more employees’ engagement. And internal challenges are revealed gradually due to changes and temptation. Under this condition, we should further focus on dreams and listen to hearts. Believe in the power of ideals and culture.

Human nature is good. Never forget who you are when facing temptation. Choose a right way to get self-improvement and gain benefits. Then you will surely achieve your dreams. Kindness and integrity are quite important in the process, which I add to organizational culture

Up to now, I have faced many challenges, difficulties and even sufferings. Sometimes I dealt them with mixed feelings. However, I am well-adjusted and keep it simple again. I am glad that I never forgot who I am and what I desire. When complexity abounds, return to simplicity. This will make you happy and satisfactory.

Gratitude, veneration and awe, passion and focus are always addressed in organizational culture. It is not easy for everyone to obtain current achievements. Thus we should appreciate ourselves and families. In addition, we would hold veneration and awe to principles and nature. Only this, we will not act irresponsibly, make mistakes and break rules. Gratitude and veneration and awe facilitate us to progress forward.

How happy it is to spend time and passion doing things you enjoy!

I hope that all people love their life and jobs and could work for dreams. The most meaningful thing is to live to the fullest no matter what you are.

Shared benefits make employees have a decent life.------Over Ten Million cash bonus and 4 welfare programs

I am a person who is indifferent to fame and fortune. I always believe that happiness is only real when shared. When the company benefited, I would like to share with every employee, awarding them as a return for contribution.

Over ten million cash bonus will be awarded to individuals and teams with better-than-expected performance and all staff as annual bonus to appreciate their contribution. In addition, there are two added welfare programs, rental and commuting allowance programs besides transportation allowance in Spring Festival.

I often talk about the word ‘decent’, which has two implications: material comforts and spiritual dignity. I hope that my subordinates can enjoy material comforts and live with dignity.

There are many young people just graduated in APUS, who may live around the company in order to save time of commuting. However, it is a little hard for them to afford renting because apartments there are expensive. Thus I intend to provide rental allowance for them after careful consideration.

The rental allowance is to ease employees’ living stress and allows them to use saved money to enjoy life, like watching movies or go shopping with friends.

For those who have apartments but live far away from the company, I mean to provide them commuting allowance. I hope that employees could use the money to take taxies, thereby saving massive time.

I wish that the performance will be increasingly better with the business development. Then we can improve employees’ lives in more ways. The first thing I do is to improve employees’ life quality in terms of renting and commuting.

We have been planning and preparing carefully for 2017 business objectives because we know that hard working is necessary for approaching perfect performance although it is easy to improve low performance to mediocre one and maybe harder to perfect performance.

Our purpose is to enable products to stand the test of time and public scrutiny. In order to achieve it, we will insist on our dreams and act from now on.

APUS CEO Signature Tao Li