Popular Science Chapter Dr. Zhang

   In the 1930s, Zhang Xilun, a student from Hebei, graduated from Jiaozuo Institute of Technology, the first mining university in China. As a rare talent majoring in smelting, he was hired by a steelmaking plant in Shanghai. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Shanghai's industry moved westward on a large scale, and Zhang Xilun also came to Chongqing, the wartime companion capital, with the large army. The steel factory where he worked was incorporated into the military industrial system of the National Government and became the 21st arsenal under the Ordnance Administration.

After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the Ordnance Department dispatched a large number of personnel to the whole country to take over the ordnance factory left by the Japanese invaders. Zhang Xilun also came to Nanjing with his colleagues to receive the Japanese field arsenal near Yuhuatai, and established an army there. The 60th Arsenal of the Work Department. At this time, Zhang Xilun was already a well-known steel-making expert in the industry. He settled down in Nanjing and married his long-acquainted girlfriend. In 1948, his second child was born and named Zhang Rujing.

  After the Huaihai Campaign ended, the PLA troops approached the Yangtze River, Su Yu's Sanye Eighth Corps had been stationed across the river on the other side of Nanjing, and the 60th Arsenal began to urgently withdraw to Taiwan. Zhang Xilun, who was already a senior officer of the National Army, knew that he could never stay in the mainland, so he and his family took Zhang Rujing, who was still in swaddling, and followed the large army that moved to the factory. On a cloudy morning in early 1949. , board the ship at Shimonoseki, Nanjing, and set off for Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

   In addition to his own family, Zhang Xilun also took away more than 200 young metallurgical apprentices in the arsenal. Before the departure, many parents of apprentices begged Zhang Xilun like an orphan, asking him to take good care of their children. In the following decades, Zhang Xilun has always been a senior executive of 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 a family. When these young children grow up and get married, Zhang Xilun will always be witnesses.

   Zhang Rujing, who was brought to Taiwan when he was less than one year old, grew up with excellent academic performance and was admitted to National Taiwan University all the way, and then went to study in the United States, where he successively obtained a master's degree in engineering and a doctorate in electronics. In 1977, 29-year-old Zhang Rujing joined the American semiconductor giant Texas Instruments and joined the team of Jack Kilby, the Nobel Prize winner in physics and the inventor of the integrated circuit. At Texas Instruments, Zhang Rujing started as a R&D and design engineer for 20 years.

  Since the 1960s, the Chinese have emerged in the US semiconductor industry, and talented engineers and outstanding entrepreneurs have continued to emerge. Dr. Shao Zifan, Zhang Rujing's immediate boss at Texas Instruments, is the world's top chip manufacturing plant 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 before and after, covering the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy and other places, becoming a recognized "factory master" in the industry.

   Since Zhang Rujing's career focus is on the United States, Zhang Xilun and his wife Liu Peijin both 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 family and country complex, always caring about the mainland of the motherland. After Zhang Rujing's career was booming and he became a well-known factory building expert in the global chip industry, Zhang Xilun asked his son this question: "When will you go to the mainland to build a factory?"

  My father's question was answered in the late 1990s. In 1997, after 20 years at Texas Instruments, Zhang Rujing retired early. After a short trip to the mainland (which will be mentioned later), with the support of his old friend, he returned to Taiwan and founded Shida Semiconductor, which quickly achieved mass production and profitability. During this period, Zhang Rujing has made a detailed plan for building a chip factory in the mainland: World University's first and second factories are built in Taiwan, and the third to tenth factories are all placed on the mainland.

   World events are unpredictable, and the rapid rise of World University has aroused the vigilance of industry leader TSMC. Just when Zhang Rujing was preparing for a big fight, the major shareholder of Shida, without Zhang Rujing's knowledge, secretly negotiated with TSMC and sold the company to TSMC in January 2000 for US$5 billion. Zhang Rujing only learned about it after the fact, knowing that it would be difficult to gain a foothold in the new company after the merger, so he resigned the day after the acquisition was completed, and decided to go north to the mainland to start a business again.

  With the fame in the industry and the successful experience of World University, Zhang Rujing quickly gathered a group of talents and funds, and began to choose a factory site. The chip industry in 2000 was far less popular than it is now. However, in Shanghai, they were warmly received. The then mayor Xu Kuangdi personally went out and took them to the hinterland of Pudong, which is full of farmland, and showed Zhang Rujing a large area of ​​land planned and built for them by Shanghai.

  In April 2001, in this place called Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, Zhang Rujing's new factory SMIC was established. For a long time after that, these two names occupied a very heavy weight in the Chinese semiconductor industry.

In 1949, Zhang Xilun withdrew 200 metallurgical apprentices from Nanjing to Kaohsiung, and established the huge Kaohsiung No. 60 Arsenal; in 2000, Zhang Rujing led 300 chip engineers from Taipei to Shanghai, and established the most advanced chip in the mainland. Manufacturing base.

   History has completed a reincarnation between the two generations of the Zhang family, but the difficult journey of Zhang Rujing and SMIC, as well as the core acid past of China's semiconductor industry behind it, has just begun.

   Excerpted from: "China's Core Acid Past"

   PS: I'm not in this line of business, there is a lot of information to be queried.

  

  

   (end of this chapter)