Bambang Pamungkas
The ambitious pursuit of self-reliance within China’s critical semiconductor industry is not only reshaping global supply chains but also minting a new generation of billionaires. The latest beneficiaries of this transformative domestic boom are Zhu Shuangquan and Zhu Shunquan, the sibling founders of Hubei Dinglong, a pivotal chemical materials supplier for chip manufacturing. Their combined fortunes have soared, propelling them into the exclusive club of billionaires, a testament to the strategic importance of localized tech production in an era of heightened geopolitical competition.
The Ascent of Hubei Dinglong: From Printer Toner to Chip Materials Powerhouse
Hubei Dinglong, headquartered in Wuhan, has seen its shares on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange surge by an astonishing 116% over the past year. This remarkable market performance directly translated into a significant increase in the personal wealth of its co-founders. Zhu Shuangquan, 61, who serves as the company’s Chairman, and his younger brother, Zhu Shunquan, 57, the CEO, each hold approximately 15% of the company’s shares. Based on the closing stock price of 64.19 yuan last Friday, Forbes estimates each brother’s net worth to be approximately US$1.3 billion.
The journey of Hubei Dinglong, established in 2000, began with a foundational mission to reduce China’s reliance on imported industrial materials. At its inception, the company focused on developing chemical toners for printers, a market segment heavily dominated by Japanese and Western corporations. This initial venture into challenging foreign monopolies provided the blueprint and entrepreneurial spirit that would later define its strategic pivot.
In 2012, building on its success and expertise in fine chemical manufacturing, Dinglong made a strategic entry into the semiconductor materials sector, specifically targeting Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) materials. This move was driven by an internal team’s discovery of chemical similarities between printer toner and CMP slurries, as CEO Zhu Shunquan revealed in an interview with Securities Times in February. The company aimed to replicate its earlier success in disrupting foreign dominance, this time in the more complex and strategically vital chip industry.
China’s Strategic Imperative: The Drive for Semiconductor Self-Sufficiency
The rise of Hubei Dinglong is inextricably linked to China’s overarching national strategy to achieve self-sufficiency in critical technologies, particularly semiconductors. This initiative gained significant momentum under the "Made in China 2025" plan, which identified integrated circuits as a core strategic industry. Beijing has poured billions of dollars into its domestic chip industry through various mechanisms, most notably the National IC Industry Investment Fund, commonly known as the "Big Fund." This fund, launched in 2014, has channeled massive investments into chip manufacturing, design, and materials companies, aiming to foster a robust indigenous ecosystem capable of meeting the nation’s vast demand for chips.
The rationale behind this aggressive push is multi-faceted. Economically, China is the world’s largest consumer of semiconductors, importing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of chips annually, surpassing even crude oil imports in value. Strategically, semiconductors are the backbone of modern technology, powering everything from smartphones and AI to advanced military systems. A heavy reliance on foreign suppliers, predominantly from the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, presents a significant vulnerability, particularly amidst escalating geopolitical tensions.
The Catalyst: US Export Controls and Geopolitical Tensions
The geopolitical landscape has served as a powerful accelerant for China’s domestic semiconductor efforts. Beginning around 2018, and intensifying dramatically in 2022, the United States imposed stringent export controls on advanced chip technology, manufacturing equipment, and even personnel to China. These measures, aimed at curbing China’s technological advancement and military modernization, included restrictions on companies like Huawei, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), and other key players in the Chinese tech ecosystem.
The 2022 regulations were particularly impactful, targeting any company, anywhere in the world, that uses U.S. technology to produce chips for China. This created an urgent imperative for Chinese companies to localize every possible component of the semiconductor supply chain, from design tools (EDA software) to manufacturing equipment and, crucially, specialized materials. The restrictions underscored China’s vulnerability and catalyzed a "burning bridges" mentality, as articulated by Zhu Shuangquan, driving domestic firms to innovate and fill the void left by restricted foreign access. This period marked a turning point, transforming the pursuit of self-reliance from an economic goal into a national security imperative.
Dinglong’s Critical Role: Filling Gaps in the Semiconductor Supply Chain
Hubei Dinglong has positioned itself as a crucial player in mitigating China’s vulnerabilities, particularly in the complex and highly specialized domain of semiconductor manufacturing materials. The company’s expertise spans several critical areas:
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Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) Materials: This process is fundamental to modern chip manufacturing. After various layers of materials are deposited onto a silicon wafer, the surface must be perfectly flattened to enable subsequent lithography steps and the stacking of multiple chip layers. Dinglong claims to be the only supplier in China offering a complete line of CMP materials, ranging from slurries (semi-liquid abrasives used for polishing) to post-polishing cleaning fluids that remove residues. The global CMP market, valued at approximately $2.5 billion in 2023, is dominated by a few international giants like Dow, Cabot, and Fujifilm. Dinglong’s ability to provide a comprehensive domestic alternative is a significant strategic advantage for China.
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Lithography Materials: Following the tightening of US export controls in 2022, Dinglong strategically expanded its business into lithography materials, one of the most significant weaknesses in China’s domestic chip industry. Lithography is the process of transferring circuit designs onto silicon wafers using light. Photoresists, chemical materials sensitive to light, are crucial for this step. While Dinglong is now producing photoresists, its most advanced products are currently utilized primarily for lower-end chip manufacturing. High-end lithography, especially for advanced nodes (e.g., 7nm and below), remains a formidable challenge, requiring extremely sophisticated photoresists and exposure equipment (like ASML’s EUV machines), areas where foreign companies still hold a near-monopoly. The global photoresist market is projected to reach over $5 billion by 2028, underscoring the vast potential for domestic players.
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Advanced Semiconductor Packaging Materials: Beyond the front-end fabrication, Dinglong has also ventured into materials for advanced chip packaging, a crucial step for enhancing chip performance and density, especially for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and other cutting-edge applications. One of its notable products is temporary adhesives used to bond silicon wafers to glass blocks before they are ground extremely thin and stacked into high-tech memory chips. As chip design moves towards heterogeneous integration and 3D stacking, advanced packaging materials are becoming increasingly vital. The market for these materials is rapidly expanding, driven by demand for higher performance and smaller form factors in AI, data centers, and high-performance computing.
Financial Performance and Market Validation
Hubei Dinglong’s strategic shifts and expansion into critical semiconductor materials have translated into robust financial performance. In the first quarter of 2026, the company reported a net profit increase of 78% year-on-year, reaching 251 million yuan (approximately US$36.9 million). Revenue also saw a healthy growth of 24%, climbing to 1 billion yuan, largely propelled by its burgeoning CMP materials business.
For the full year 2025, over half of Dinglong’s total revenue of 3.7 billion yuan was derived from its semiconductor-related businesses. In addition to CMP, lithography, and advanced packaging materials, the company also produces materials for OLED displays. While the company notes that its chip packaging materials and photoresist businesses are still in early stages, they have entered a "stable small-volume supply phase," indicating a gradual but consistent penetration into these challenging markets.
Historically, Dinglong’s revenue was also supported by its legacy business in printer materials and components, such as toner. However, the company has strategically begun divesting portions of its printer business to sharpen its focus on the higher-growth and more strategically important semiconductor sector. Approximately 70% of Dinglong’s current revenue still originates from the domestic Chinese market, highlighting its foundational role in China’s localization efforts.
Leadership Vision and Entrepreneurial Philosophy
The success of Hubei Dinglong is also a testament to the enduring entrepreneurial spirit of its founders. Before establishing Dinglong in 2000, Zhu Shuangquan and Zhu Shunquan honed their management skills at state-owned enterprises, Hubei International Economic and Foreign Trade and Hubei International Economic and Technical Cooperation, respectively. This background provided them with insights into industrial supply chains and the broader economic landscape.
Their shared philosophy, particularly relevant in the current geopolitical climate, was eloquently captured by Zhu Shuangquan in a 2019 interview with Changjiang Daily. He stated, "At the beginning of starting a business, besides ideas, enthusiasm, and insights into the market or innovative product opportunities, Chinese private enterprises have nothing. They only rely on the spirit of ‘burning bridges’ to get things done." This metaphor underscores a commitment to relentless innovation and a refusal to retreat, pushing forward despite challenges. He concluded, "Dinglong will never lose this spirit. There is a much bigger world out there waiting for us to conquer." This proactive and ambitious mindset has been crucial in navigating the highly competitive and technologically demanding semiconductor industry.
Industry Reactions and Broader Implications
The emergence of Hubei Dinglong’s founders as billionaires underscores a significant trend: the localization of critical technology supply chains in China is not just a policy goal but a tangible economic reality yielding substantial returns. Industry analysts widely concur that the US export controls, while intended to slow China’s technological progress, have inadvertently spurred unprecedented domestic investment and innovation.
"The rise of companies like Hubei Dinglong is a direct consequence of Beijing’s aggressive localization strategy, intensified by external pressures," states Dr. Li Wei, a senior analyst at a Beijing-based tech consultancy. "While foreign giants still dominate the most advanced segments, Chinese firms are rapidly closing gaps in materials, equipment, and packaging for a wide range of chip production, particularly for mature nodes." This shift means that while China may still struggle with producing cutting-edge logic chips below 7nm without advanced foreign equipment, its ability to produce a vast array of other essential chips and their components domestically is growing.
This development has profound implications for the global semiconductor supply chain. It suggests a potential long-term bifurcation, where distinct ecosystems develop with limited interdependencies. For foreign suppliers, it signals increased competition in the Chinese market, as domestic alternatives gain traction and government support. For China, it moves the nation closer to its goal of technological sovereignty, reducing its vulnerability to external sanctions and ensuring a more resilient industrial base.
Challenges and Future Outlook
Despite the significant achievements, Hubei Dinglong and China’s broader semiconductor industry still face considerable challenges. While Dinglong has made strides in photoresist technology, achieving parity with global leaders in advanced lithography materials, particularly for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) processes, requires enormous R&D investment and years of technological refinement. Similarly, scaling up production of advanced packaging materials to meet the surging demand for HBM and other high-performance chips will necessitate continuous innovation and manufacturing excellence.
The geopolitical landscape remains volatile. Further tightening of export controls or new technological barriers could emerge, requiring continuous adaptation. However, the "burning bridges" philosophy espoused by Dinglong’s founders suggests a resilient approach to these hurdles. The company’s continued investment in R&D, its strategic focus on filling critical gaps in the domestic supply chain, and its demonstrated ability to innovate and scale position it as a key player in China’s quest for technological independence.
The success of Zhu Shuangquan and Zhu Shunquan is more than a personal financial triumph; it is a powerful symbol of China’s determined march towards self-sufficiency in the vital semiconductor industry. As the nation continues to pour resources into this strategic sector, Hubei Dinglong stands as a prominent example of how domestic ambition, coupled with geopolitical catalysts, is reshaping both individual fortunes and the global technological order.
