Worker who revived electronics giant honored

Xiao Shengli still remembers the weight of the moment in 1994. The Yonghong Equipment Factory, a State-owned manufacturer of semiconductor devices in Tianshui city, Northwest China's Gansu province, was on its knees.

Debts had soared past 90 million yuan ($13.24 million). Wages had gone unpaid for three months. Workshop machinery mostly stood idle, veteran workers were despairing, and the young were fleeing. The enterprise was sliding toward bankruptcy.

When he was handed this "mess", Xiao did not hesitate. Facing the anxious eyes of the remaining workforce, he took the factory head's post and made a solemn pledge: keep the enterprise alive, stabilize the workers, and revive growth.

What followed were brutal reforms. He launched measures, including layoffs and efficiency drives, but he started with his own family.

He persuaded his wife — a department head — to take early retirement. This meant she gave up her job and career earlier than planned, likely with a lower lifetime income and pension than if she had continued working. Then he sent his son away to find work in another city.

Word spread quickly through the factory. Resistance melted. A disheartened workforce began to pull together.

To win back orders, Xiao and his core personnel squeezed into packed green slow trains, survived on dry bread and stayed in cheap guesthouses. They went door to door, rebuilding trust.

The effort worked: the old plant swung back to profit.

"The most critical step was to concentrate resources on integrated circuit packaging and testing. In 1996, more than 4 million yuan was poured into upgrading a plastic-encapsulated integrated circuit production line. That year, sales revenue broke through 10 million yuan for the first time — a foundation on which everything else would be built," Xiao said.

The numbers today tell the story of what grew from that "bet". By the end of 2025, Tianshui Huatian Electronics Group — the company that emerged from the ashes of Yonghong — had boosted its annual packaging capacity from 200 million units in the early 2000s to 90 billion units. It holds 778 patents, including 362 domestic invention patents and 40 international invention patents.

Huatian now ranks third in the Chinese mainland and fifth globally in semiconductor packaging and testing.

On Wednesday, Xiao was honored as one of the outstanding members of the Communist Party of China at a gathering in Beijing, which marked the Party's 105th founding anniversary.

Xiao, who graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University in Shaanxi province in 1969, has never left the semiconductor business since then. He said that it is this lifetime of single-minded commitment that fuels his refusal to step away.

"The thousands, now tens of thousands of workers, who have struggled alongside the enterprise, are a responsibility I cannot lay down. As long as my health permits, I will guard the industry we built together," the 79-year-old said.

Alongside that personal sense of duty sits a driving national mission.

"For decades, the entire chip supply chain has been constrained by others. Packaging and testing are key links; each breakthrough we achieve bolsters China's confidence in its push for self-sufficiency. With advanced packaging breakthroughs and domestic substitution at a critical stage, I should be charging at the front," he said.

He said talent is the means to get there. "Outstanding employees are a company's most precious wealth."

By relying on its internal talent development system, Huatian has trained more than 3,000 skilled workers who now form the backbone of the business.

Meanwhile, the engineering master's program jointly established with Xi'an Jiaotong University is also nurturing a group of professionals specializing in packaging and testing — a quiet rebuttal to the assumption that talent must drain from the west to the coast.

"Huatian is where it is today because several generations of technicians and young researchers have carried the baton," he said.

"Seeing this enterprise, to which I have dedicated my entire life, continue to grow brings me a sense of fulfillment and peace of mind that nothing else can replace."