Forget Pang Dong Lai, Henan Mine Crane Pays Even More to Staff?

What kind of boss puts RMB60 million in cash on tables and encourages employees to take more?

Meet Cui Pei Jun (崔培军), founder of Henan Mine Crane.

His generosity deserves attention alongside Pang Dong Lai’s boss Yu Dong Lai (于东来). But one clarification matters: public figures do not establish that Henan Mine Crane pays more per employee. What they reveal is an extraordinary commitment to sharing success.

What's so Special about Henan Mine Crane?

Founded in 2002, Henan Mine Crane manufactures cranes. Cui says its practice of distributing cash began in 2004, long before these celebrations became social-media sensations.

For 2025, the company reported RMB270 million in net profit. Its year-end bonuses totalled approximately RMB180 million, equivalent to two-thirds of that reported profit, including around RMB60 million distributed physically at the annual celebration.

The rewards extend throughout the year:

Women’s Day payments, Mid-autumn payments, Spring Festival payments,
Harvesting subsidies. In 2026, employees received RMB1,000 harvesting subsidies, alongside paid time to bring in their wheat.
Spontaneous recognition.
Parents of staff receive festival gifts and company-funded trips.
Many employees reportedly take home RMB7,000–8,000 monthly after social-insurance and housing-fund deductions.

Bear in mind that the average employee in Henan earns RMB3,500 a month, so Henan Mine Crane easily pays 60% more than average.
Suppliers share in the appreciation too. At the September 2026 Mid-Autumn celebration, four selected suppliers reportedly received RMB200,000 each. Cui connected these awards with rejecting suppliers’ gifts and cash.
Customers also benefit from promotions, including a February 2026 “sign an order, receive a red packet” campaign. These are documented examples, although they do not establish a customer-compensation system equivalent to Pang Dong Lai’s.

Despite Cui’s generous payouts, acquaintances describe modest personal habits of this boss Cui Pei Jun.

In a Global People interview, one recalled him eating steamed buns with pickles, keeping a peeling office chair for more than 20 years, and travelling overnight by train with instant noodles.

Cui and Yu share a powerful belief: the people who create wealth should experience its benefits.

Both combine generous employee rewards with expectations of quality and contribution. Both have built substantial businesses: Henan Mine’s 2025 output value reached RMB11.2 billion, growing 8.7%; Pang Dong Lai reported nearly RMB39 billion in sales for 2025. Their success is encouraging, although generosity alone cannot explain it.

Both of them are in stark contrast to the typical “squeeze everybody to make the boss rich” approach. We know that squeezing everybody can extract short-term gains but exhausts employees, weakens suppliers and erodes customer trust.

Their approach suggests another possibility: share value in ways that strengthen the relationships on which future performance depends.

This connects directly to our Love Intelligence: Care, Courage and Connection.

Care recognises people’s real needs.
Courage commits resources to fair treatment.
Connection makes employees, customers and suppliers feel that their contribution matters.

It also illustrates Sustainable Value Creation: People × Performance × Governance. Sustainability includes sustaining livelihoods, trust, capability and the business itself.

Financial Governance and Strategy supplies the discipline. Rewards must be affordable, fairly allocated and supported by cash generation and continued investment. Henan Mine’s free-cash-flow trend is not publicly established, so its cash celebrations should not be treated as proof of financial sustainability.

Call to action for Bosses:

Before your next budget meeting, ask:

Who helped create our success, and how will they share in it?

Review employee compensation, customer remedies, supplier payment terms and investment needs together. Establish clear rules and measure the results.

Written by Andy Ng
Financial Governance and Strategy Advisor

Author of 'Who Challenges the Boss?' and 'The Board Advantage in the AI Era' books

You do not need a mountain of cash to practise Love Intelligence. You need concrete actions that improve people’s lives, and financial discipline that allows those actions to continue.

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