He was the first hero of the two major industries in Shanghai, but passed away silently in regret

There needs to be a group of people in government with eyes on change and the frontier .

“It’s too bold to build two chip production lines in five years.”
When the microphone of the National Integrated Circuit “Tenth Five-Year” Strategic Seminar was handed over to Jiang Shangzhou, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Economic Commission, he told the experts at the scene:
“Not two, Shanghai, ten in five years.”

He made the hardest chip in China

In 1997, 50-year-old Jiang Shangzhou got a new position, deputy director of the Shanghai Economic Commission.
This is a standard second-generation Red. His father, Jiang Yizhen, was an old Red Army veteran who participated in the Long March. He served as Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Health and Secretary of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee.
He was also a rare student official in that era. He was sent by the state government to study at the Higher Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, where the most famous alumnus was named Einstein.
This time, he got a difficult game.
At that time, Shanghai, the largest industrial city in China, was going through the throes of transformation.
Textiles, steel, petrochemicals… These former glory of Shanghai are gradually becoming the “burden” of Shanghai. In the central development plan, Shanghai’s future depends on high-tech and emerging industries.
As the deputy director of the Economic Commission, Jiang Shangzhou’s core task is to screen out the strategic industries that will lead Shanghai’s future development. One of his answers: It is the integrated circuit.
Over the past two decades, China’s integrated circuit engineering has been stop-and-go. Under the technological blockade of the West, China can only buy “second-hand production lines “ that have been eliminated by developed countries. In addition to the delay and the time to digest and digest, once the production line is good, it will fall behind by three generations. In any case, it will not be able to get out of the vicious circle of “introduction – construction – production – backward – re-introduction”.
The independent 908/909 projects failed one after another, and the entire integrated circuit industry was depressed. Coupled with the sluggish global chip industry at that time, industry profits have been greatly reduced
Therefore, at the National Integrated Circuit “Tenth Five-Year” Strategic Planning Seminar, the mainstream tone is: to develop chips, and to develop two 8-inch production lines within five years.
But when the microphone was handed over to Jiang Shangzhou, he faced the experts in the audience and said Shanghai’s plan:
During the “Tenth Five-Year Plan” period, ten 8-inch chip production lines will be built in Shanghai.
As a technical official with a professional background, Jiang Shangzhou’s words have their own reasons.
In his view, the chip is one of the most serious industries in my country, and it has to be won no matter how difficult it is.
By the year 2000, chips were the largest imported product in my country, exceeding the import volume of the five major strategic materials (minerals and grains), and more than all energy imports. 100% of China’s TV and mobile phone chips are imported.
With this plan, Jiang Shangzhou returned to Shanghai.
After reviewing the history of Hsinchu Industrial Park in Taiwan, China and comparing the advantages and disadvantages of Shanghai, he suggested to Shanghai decision-makers: Zhangjiang Microelectronics Development Zone with a planned area of ​​22 square kilometers in Pudong and three times that of Hsinchu Industrial Park in Taiwan.
In Jiang Shangzhou’s view:
In the semiconductor industry, the Chinese are a wonderful group with one of the best talent accumulation and network in the world. Shanghai is not only the mainland city most favored by international capital, but also has a solid industrial base. As long as it builds a nest and attracts phoenixes, it will surely surpass Taiwan in the future.
Therefore, Jiang Shangzhou spared no effort to go to Taiwan, China to recruit talents. He found Zhang Rujing, who is well-known in the chip industry.
In Shanghai, Zhang Rujing got the most powerful promise: you can do whatever piece of land you want in Zhangjiang.
But according to the production process at that time, to build 10 production lines, at least tens of billions of investment are needed. Where does the money come from? Jiang Shangzhou thought of introducing foreign capital.
SMIC, which is built according to foreign-funded enterprises, has introduced a large amount of Chinese and foreign capital in a very scattered manner, including even Goldman Sachs and Walden in the United States. This ingenious plan not only allowed SMIC to obtain capital, but also bypassed the restrictions of the Western blockade, obtained a large number of semiconductor equipment, and quickly joined the track.
On August 24, 2000, he led SMIC to officially lay the first pile in Zhangjiang, Pudong. After only 13 months, the trial production was realized, and 4 8-inch production lines and 1 production line were established within 3 years. 12-inch production line, this speed is unprecedented in the world.
By 2003, SMIC had rushed to the position of the fourth largest foundry in the world, and the speed of its rise was staggering.
With the efforts of Jiang Shangzhou, a group of chip talents entered Shanghai to set up enterprises. In less than 5 years, Shanghai has built and under construction 18 8-inch IC production lines, exceeding the expected goal.
Jiang Shangzhou firmly believes that at this rate, his prediction in 1998 that “the mainland’s chip industry will surpass Taiwan’s in 2015-2020” will surely be realized.

Against all odds, the big plane landed

Compared with integrated circuits, Jiang Shangzhou’s other big deal is commercial aircraft.
Jiang Shangzhou became attached to the large aircraft in 2003. At that time, he served as the leader of the State Council’s major special project demonstration team and participated in the formulation of the national medium and long-term scientific and technological development plan.
But what no one knew was that this was the third year he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
As the leader of the demonstration team, “large civil aircraft” became the first project he selected, and it was also the most difficult “hard bone” to demonstrate.
For half a century, we have had a very difficult journey to build a large civil aircraft. From the Yun-10 to the C919, there have been many twists and turns.
At that time, the argument that “building is worse than buying, and buying is worse than renting” was rampant. Due to the technological monopoly of developed countries, the research and development of commercial aircraft in my country at that time faced the problems of high cost and long payback period. Moreover, the large aircraft project is also mixed with a complex game of interests.
However, Jiang Shangzhou understands that large commercial aircraft are the crown jewel of modern industrial technology. “Large aircraft must be developed. This is not only an economic issue, but also involves national strategic security.”

▲ When Jiang Shangzhou investigated the aircraft manufacturing factory, he experienced the aircraft cockpit
In fact, what developed countries really want to contain is not a certain aircraft technology, but a platform on which the entire technical capability is developed. Jiang Shangzhou saw early on the far-reaching significance of the large aircraft project to the adjustment of my country’s industrial structure.
“If you have 100 technologies, you won’t necessarily be able to build a big airplane. On the contrary, if you build a big airplane, you can drive the development of 100 technologies.”
The development of large aircraft can drive group breakthroughs in key technologies in the fields of new materials, electronic information, and automatic control, and will also drive major progress in many basic disciplines such as fluid mechanics. Therefore, the inclusion of large aircraft in the national major strategic development plan is to establish a leader for all related industries such as machinery, electronics, materials, and metallurgy in China.
More importantly, Jiang Shangzhou saw that Shanghai has the strength to manufacture large planes – as early as the 1970s, Shanghai had independently produced the “Yun 10” large-scale civilian passenger plane, and had cooperated with McDonnell Douglas in the United States for many times. rich technical experience.
To this end, he defied all opposition and organized a three-year-long discussion in academia and industry.
In the past three years, Jiang Shangzhou has been going back and forth between Shanghai and Beijing until February 26, 2006, when the State Council approved the project and included the “large aircraft” as a major national science and technology development project.
The C919 airliner project has taken its first steps.

“Don’t be a big official, do big things”

Jiang Shangzhou does big things, but this is another person who can’t be an official. His career was full of twists and turns.
Before the age of 40, Jiang Shangzhou was just a “scholar”. In 1965, Jiang Shangzhou was admitted to the Radio Department of Tsinghua University. He only stayed at the school for more than 9 months due to the “Cultural Revolution”.
For more than ten years, he never stopped studying, and he and his classmate and later wife Wu Qidi (former vice minister of the Ministry of Education) taught themselves university courses. In 1978, they both returned to their alma mater. Since the reform and opening up, he has become the first batch of intellectuals to study abroad.
In 1987, Jiang Shangzhou came to Sanya, Hainan.
This is a new city that has just been upgraded from a county-level city, so it has an unimaginable backwardness-because there are not more than 1,000 telephones in Sanya, and the telephone numbers here are only three digits.
Eight years of overseas study experience has given Jiang Shangzhou a forward-looking strategic vision. However, because of his “advance”, he is often controversial and not understood.
For example, he wants to build a science city in Sanya and China’s “Hawaii”. However, in 1990, the GDP of the mainland was only US$387.8 billion. At that time, the GDP of Hong Kong, with a population of just over 5 million, was as high as 20% of that of the mainland.
At that time, China had to solve the problem of food and clothing for 1.1 billion people, and the importance of the high-tech industry and the tourism economy was difficult for most people to understand.
Concepts such as creating urban public space and establishing a land transaction system have long been applied to urban management today, but at that time they also encountered a lot of resistance due to being “advanced”.
Therefore, in the 1989 election, Jiang Shangzhou was defeated as the deputy mayor of Sanya. At that time, Jiang Shangzhou’s father Jiang Yizhen was also the vice president of the “Hainan Development Promotion Association”, but his son who also served in Hainan was not elected.
Interestingly, he did not choose to leave, but continued to work as an assistant to the mayor, trying to push Sanya to turn into an international tourist city. With this hard work, Jiang Shangzhou was elected vice mayor with a high vote in the 1991 election.
That year was the third year that Jiang Shangzhou entered his career. At the age of 43, he was as energetic as a 23-year-old boy, and he always went to the grassroots for research non-stop.
Regrettably, in the route of “travel” or “agriculture”, Sanya at that time chose the latter, and Jiang Shangzhou had to leave, and the fact of Sanya today undoubtedly proves Jiang Shangzhou’s vision.
Jiang Shangzhou became the director of the Yangpu Development Zone Administration after being retained by Ruan Chongwu, then secretary of the Hainan Provincial Party Committee.
Yangpu in 1993 was an experimental field for my country’s reform and opening up. There, Jiang Shangzhou brought the concepts of “seeking the market, not the mayor” and “minimum administrative intervention, maximum economic freedom”.

▲ Jiang Shangzhou (first from left) with colleagues from Hainan Yangpu Development Zone
The experience accumulated by Yangpu at that time, such as the pioneering of the civil service recruitment system, centralized procurement, public finance, etc., has successively entered the foreground of China’s administrative reform in the following 10 years.
However, because of being “too advanced”, Jiang Shangzhou once again broke down in Yangpu.
It was not until September 2007 that the State Council approved the establishment of Yangpu Bonded Port Area, and the development of Yangpu ushered in new opportunities. This seems to be an affirmation of Jiangshangzhou’s development of Yangpu in that year, but Jiangshangzhou had already left Hainan for Shanghai at this time.

Is it the “loser” or the hero behind the scenes?

Because it is too threatening, since its establishment, SMIC has been repeatedly attacked by the industry leader TSMC and faced high compensation.
In 2009, Zhang Rujing, one of the founders, was forced to resign from the company, and Jiang Shangzhou was appointed as the chairman of the board, but what no one knew was that at this time, he had advanced lung cancer.
Facing the predicament, Jiang Shangzhou’s pressure can be imagined. Despite his hard support, he has never stopped thinking about the development of China’s chip industry.
“In terms of semiconductor technology, we don’t have to be proficient in everything, as long as we have a few things ahead of foreign countries, we can walk out of our development path.”
This may be Jiang Shangzhou’s advice to the Chinese chip industry in the last years of his life. On June 27, 2011, Jiang Shangzhou died of illness. Since then, SMIC has quickly fallen into chaos. During the two-year-long infighting, high-level executives have left one after another, and development has almost stagnated.
During the same period, the national chip industry is also experiencing the darkest moment. It was not until the establishment of the National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund with a scale of 100 billion in 2014 that the entire industry gradually got out of the haze and started a new glorious journey.
However, whether it is the ARJ21 new regional aircraft (which officially entered the market in 2015) or the C919 passenger aircraft, Jiangshangzhou has not been able to wait for the day when they really fly in the blue sky.
Looking back on Jiang Shangzhou’s life, from a worldly perspective, he may be a “loser” full of tragic. However, he is also a true unsung hero.
Relying on the foundation laid by Jiang Shangzhou, today’s Shanghai has become the vanguard of integrated circuits and China’s commercial aviation.
In 2021, Shanghai’s integrated circuit output value will reach 250 billion yuan, and the industry scale will account for about 1/4 of the country’s.
Today, Shanghai is the region with the most complete integrated circuit industry chain and the highest comprehensive technology level in China. From design, manufacturing, packaging and testing, to materials, equipment, and five key areas of the chip industry chain, Shanghai has leading enterprises.
SMIC, China Micro Semiconductor, Shanghai Microelectronics, Ziguang Zhanrui, Shanghai Xinsheng… These companies that have been more or less ” supported ” by Jiangshangzhou represent the hope of China’s chip industry to break through the blockade in different fields.
Just this year, Jiangshangzhou initiated the landing of the large aircraft project, which is only the last step away from delivering its first customer, China Eastern Airlines. A new era of commercialization of domestic passenger large aircraft will also begin.
Looking back, Jiang Shangzhou has never been “fashionable”, but has maintained an unusually calm attitude towards Shanghai’s positioning and industrial economy.
Jiang Shangzhou believes that Shanghai, as one of the most resource-intensive manufacturing areas in the world, should strive to occupy the industrial highland and drive the upgrading and adjustment of traditional industries across the country.
Now it has been 11 years since Jiang Shangzhou left us. When we miss him, what are we missing?
I am grateful for his strategic vision, admire his hard-working and diligent character, and regret that his ambitions were not fulfilled. The merit is in the contemporary era, and the benefit is in the future. Perhaps his life is the best interpretation.
“The government needs a group of people who have their eyes on change and the frontier. The changes he brings to the economy are not necessarily reflected in the present, but play a vital role in the development of the next 30 years.” Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference In Wan Gang’s eyes, Jiang Shangzhou was “ahead of his life”.