In the 1930s, Zhang Xilun, a student from Hebei Province, graduated from Jiaozuo Institute of Technology, China's first mining institution. As a rare talent majoring in smelting, he was hired by a steelmaking factory in Shanghai. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Shanghai
Industry moved westward on a large scale, and Zhang Xilun also moved with the large army to Chongqing, the wartime capital. The steelmaking plant where he worked was incorporated into the military industrial system of the Nationalist Government and became the 21st Ordnance Factory under the Ordnance Industry Administration.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the Ordnance Industry Administration dispatched a large number of personnel across the country to take over the ordnance factories left by the Japanese invaders. Zhang Xilun also came to Nanjing with his colleagues to take over the Japanese field ordnance factory located near Yuhuatai, and here he
The 60th Ordnance Factory of the Ordnance Industry Administration was established. At this time, Zhang Xilun was already a well-known steelmaking expert in the industry. He established a career in Nanjing and married his girlfriend whom he had known for many years. In 1948, his second child was born, named Zhang Rujing.
After the Huaihai Campaign, the People's Liberation Army troops approached the Yangtze River. Su Yu's Sanye 8th Corps was already stationed on the other side of Nanjing across the river. The 60th Ordnance Factory began an emergency evacuation to Taiwan. Zhang Xilun, who was already a colonel and commander of the National Army, knew that he was in danger.
Unable to stay in the mainland, he and his family took the infant Zhang Rujing with them and followed the large troops moving to the factory. On a cloudy morning in early 1949, he boarded a ship in Xiaguan, Nanjing, and set off for Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
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In addition to his own extended family, Zhang Xilun also took away more than 200 young metallurgical apprentices from the arsenal. Before setting off, many apprentices' parents begged Zhang Xilun like orphans, asking him to take good care of their children. After that,
In the past few decades, Zhang Xilun has been a senior executive in the arsenal. At the same time, he has also taken care of more than 200 young people like a parent, helping them to study and start families. When these young children grow up and get married, Zhang Xilun will always be the witness.
Zhang Rujing was brought to Taiwan when she was less than one year old. When she grew up, she had excellent academic performance and was admitted to National Taiwan University. She then went to the United States to study and obtained a master's degree in engineering and a doctorate in electronics. In 1977, the 29-year-old Zhang Rujing joined the company.
American Semiconductor
At Texas Instruments, Zhang Rujing started as a R&D design engineer and worked there for twenty years.
Since the 1960s, Chinese people have emerged in the U.S. semiconductor industry, with talented engineers and outstanding entrepreneurs emerging continuously. Zhang Rujing's immediate boss at Texas Instruments, Dr. Shao Zifan, is the world's top chip manufacturing factory construction expert. Under the guidance and cultivation of Shao Zifan
, Zhang Rujing grew rapidly and participated in the construction of 9 large-scale chip factories in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy and other places, becoming a recognized "factory construction master" in the industry.
Since the focus of Zhang Rujing's career was in the United States, Zhang Xilun and his wife Liu Peijin moved to the United States after retirement. Like countless older generations who evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan, Zhang Xilun and his wife are also people with a strong sense of family and country, and they always care about their motherland.
Mainland China. After Zhang Rujing's career flourished and he became a well-known factory construction expert in the global chip industry, Zhang Xilun asked his son this question: "When will you go to the mainland to build a factory?"
The answer to his father's question came in the late 1990s. In 1997, after working at Texas Instruments for 20 years, Zhang Rujing retired early. After a brief trip to the mainland (which will be mentioned later), he found a job with his old friend
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He went to Taiwan to establish Shida Semiconductor and quickly achieved mass production and profitability. During this period, Zhang Rujing had already made a detailed plan to build a chip factory in the mainland: Shida's first and second factories were built in Taiwan, and the second factory was built in Taiwan.
Plants 3 to 10 are all located in mainland China.
Things are unpredictable, and the rapid rise of Shida has aroused the vigilance of the industry leader TSMC. Just when Zhang Rujing was preparing to make a big move, Shida's major shareholder secretly negotiated with TSMC without Zhang Rujing's knowledge, and in 2000
January will
The company was sold to TSMC for a price of US$5 billion. Zhang Rujing only found out about this after the fact. He knew that it would be difficult to gain a foothold in the new company after the merger, so he did not hesitate to resign the day after the acquisition was completed and decided to go north.
Mainland China is starting a business again.
Relying on his reputation in the industry and the successful experience of Shida, Zhang Rujing quickly gathered a group of talents and funds and began to select a factory site. The chip industry in 2000 was far less popular than it is now. However, in Shanghai, they were affected by
After receiving a warm reception, the then mayor Xu Kuangdi personally took them to the hinterland of Pudong, which is full of farmland, and showed Zhang Rujing the large area of land planned for them to build a factory in Shanghai.
In April 2001, Zhang Rujing's new factory SMIC was established in this place called Zhangjiang Hi-Tech. For a long time afterwards, these two names occupied a very important position in China's semiconductor industry.
In 1949, Zhang Xilun withdrew 200 metallurgical apprentices from Nanjing to Kaohsiung and established the massive Kaohsiung 60 Arsenal; in 2000, Zhang Rujing led 300 chip engineers from Taipei to Shanghai and established the most advanced chip in mainland China.
Manufacturing base.
History has completed a cycle between the two generations of the Zhang family, father and son, but the difficult journey of Zhang Rujing and SMIC, as well as the core and sour past of China's semiconductor industry behind it, has just begun.