-- by Song Shiqiang of Slkor

To truly understand Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei, you cannot avoid the "shanzhai phone" phenomenon. In 2007, Huaqiangbei produced and sold 150 million shanzhai phones—one-sixth of global mobile phone output that year—catapulting the district to worldwide fame. Shanzhai phones not only gave birth to Huaqiangbei’s unique maker culture but also helped turn Shenzhen into the "Hardware Silicon Valley," and nurtured brands and design manufacturers such as Wingtech, Coolpad, G5, Longcheer, Transsion, Huaqin, and many others.

After China joined the WTO, enforcement against intellectual property infringement intensified. Huaqiangbei’s shanzhai phone industrial chain had long operated in a semi-underground state, so accessible written materials are scarce, and domestic economists have rarely described or analyzed it. Yet the role of shanzhai phones in making daily life more convenient and in boosting social development is unmistakable. This weighty history—every phone, its makers, and its users—deserves to be seen and recorded.

To document this history of Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones as objectively and thoroughly as possible, Song Shiqiang began collecting industry materials early on. In 2014, he visited the factory of OTOT Group in Xixiang’s Jiuwei area; in 2015, he inspected ZTE’s subsidiary Zhongxing Xingyida in Bao’an District’s Xinyongfeng Industrial Park to understand their international supply chain management; and in 2017, he toured OPPO’s factory in Chang’an, Wusha, Dongguan, observing the phone production lines. This article draws on authoritative sources including Harvard Business Review, research from the University of Mississippi and The Catholic University of Korea, combined with first-hand materials Song has gathered over more than a decade of navigating Huaqiangbei. It lays out the phenomena and the underlying economic principles of "Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones," leaving something worthwhile for posterity.

Photos: Song Shiqiang on factory visits to OTOT and OPPO in 2014 and 2017

Continued from Slkor Song Shiqiang – "Huaqiangbei Shanzhai Phones" Research (Part II)

VII. The Great Downfall of Huaqiangbei Shanzhai Phones

Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones rose swiftly and fell just as fast—we saw them build mansions, feast guests, and then collapse. As I, Song Shiqiang of Kinghelm (www.kinghelm.com.cn) and Slkor, see it, this was due to two main factors: the government’s aggressive crackdown and cutthroat competition within the industry. Around 2007, during the feature-phone era, besides the top tier of "Zhonghua Coolpad and Lenovo" (ZTE, Huawei, Coolpad, Lenovo), Shenzhen alone hosted over 20 brands including Konka, Skyworth, Malata, Kejian, Yulong Coolpad, Transsion, Doov, and Gaoke. Nationwide, players included Beijing’s Bird, Xiamen’s Amoi, Huizhou’s TCL, Dongguan’s Gionee, OPPO, and vivo, plus Taiwan’s Dopod—all rushing into this sprawling market. The market rule is that industrial competition often shifts from an unbalanced market with many small players in the early stage to a balanced market dominated by big enterprises, during which many manufacturers are merged or die off, eventually leading to an oligopoly of "winner-takes-all." Huawei’s Yu Chengdong once said that in the future, the world’s phone brands might only be Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and a few others—that’s the logic.

Content and source index for "Shanzhai Phone Archaeology"

After China joined the WTO, domestic market rules gradually aligned with international norms, IP protection became stricter, and campaigns against IP infringement began, dealing the first heavy blow to Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones. One day in 2012, Shenzhen’s Futian police and the industrial and commercial bureau conducted a joint crackdown on the Huaqiangbei shanzhai phone market. Merchants on the upper floors of the Manhattan Digital Plaza, unable to move their goods in time, desperately threw massive quantities of counterfeit Apple and Nokia phones straight out the windows—some even dented the roofs of parked cars. This event accelerated the industry shakeout. The first to collapse were the weaker players, such as BOWAY, OTOT, and Shengnuoda, which I had been tracking. They shifted from high-margin premium smartphones to low-end products like elderly phones, and were forced to retreat to inland rural markets and overseas regions like Southeast Asia and Africa. Their factories gradually relocated to places with cheaper land and labor, such as Yibin in Sichuan, Yichun in Jiangxi, and Huizhou in Guangdong.

Various shanzhai phones from Huaqiangbei back in the day (Source 1: "Old patterns of Shanzhai Phone ")

The second wave came from the legitimate heavyweights. Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo—larger in scale, lower in cost, more efficient, stronger in branding, and superior in quality, service, and distribution—far outmatched the shanzhai players. With wolves ahead and tigers behind, in 2011, Coship Electronics launched the "BVS" brand, poaching R&D teams from Coolpad; later, Gree Electric’s Dong Mingzhu also wanted to make phones, even setting her own portrait as the wallpaper. In 2012, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun slashed smartphone prices, with the Redmi going for as low as 799 yuan, using the internet’s low-cost, high-efficiency model to snatch market share from Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones. Lenovo, Konka, Skyworth, Yulong Coolpad, Kejian, and Gionee all felt the impact. Huawei set up its sub-brand "Honor" to counter Xiaomi’s growth momentum. Brands that emerged from Huaqiangbei, like G5, Transsion, and Sabo, avoided the heat and ventured to Africa. Later, as Huawei rose strongly, ZTE phones were pushed out of the top tier, and Lenovo and Coolpad gradually faded. Globally, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Motorola also fell.

Back in 2012, when I returned to Huaqiangbei, I was already gathering material for this shanzhai phone research. I visited OTOT’s factory in Xixiang Jiuwei and BVS’s office in Keji North. At the time, OTOT was ambitiously planning new production lines, and BVS was aiming to break into overseas markets. Today, BOWAY phones are nowhere to be seen; OTOT’s parent company has been dissolved; Coship Electronics has vanished; and the owner of Shengnuoda phones now survives on an industrial park in Huizhou.

Empty counters and used phone motherboards at Huaqiangbei’s "Feiyang Times Market"

Huaqiangbei’s phone specialty markets also suffered. At the Feiyang Times Market, transfer fees for small booths plummeted from several hundred thousand yuan to zero in just six months—and still no takers. Longsheng Phone Market even pivoted to beauty products! A few years later, as smartphone penetration grew and various apps flourished, phone accessories proliferated, forming a complete ecosystem. Phone cases, screens, power banks, and charging cables faced no IP disputes, and many booths selling them have done quite well. Ups and downs, twists and turns—opportunities for wealth can appear when you least expect them. That’s part of Huaqiangbei’s magical charm.

Transsion and Huaqin Technology have done well, leveraging the capital and technology they accumulated early on in Huaqiangbei. In 2024, Transsion shipped over 200 million phones, becoming the "King of African Phones." In 2026, Huaqin Technology listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with a market cap of approximately HK$94.5 billion. Just as "Nordic pirates" gave rise to law-abiding and courteous descendants, and Miami—once a haven for outlaws—created economic miracles, I see a similar irony at Huaqiangbei.

VIII. The Post-Shanzhai-Phone Era: Huaqiangbei’s Smart Hardware Ecosystem

By then, Uncle Song Shiqiang had gained a solid foothold in Huaqiangbei’s electronics circle. The Kinghelm and Slkor brands, under his investment and management, were making their mark both domestically and internationally. I calmed down, soaked goji berries and red dates in my thermos every day, and casually wrote 300-word vignettes. In 2015, 2016, and 2017, I was voted "Most Popular Storyteller" by the female shop owners of Huaqiangbei for three consecutive years. Uncle Song’s famous sayings—"To become a badass, you first have to talk like one" and "The easy way to do serious things is to do them unseriously"—became widely quoted around Huaqiangbei. Slkor Semiconductor won the "Outstanding Domestic Brand Enterprise" award from Huaqiang Electronics Net for three consecutive years (2023, 2024, 2025). Slkor now has three stores in Huaqiangbei, thriving with brisk turnover, adhering to the traditional "front-store, back-factory" model, staying close to customers and the market. This three-store layout helps gather market feedback more directly, feeding back to headquarters’ R&D and factory production.

Slkor awarded "Outstanding Domestic Brand" by Huaqiang Electronics Net for three consecutive years

Huaqiangbei entered the post-shanzhai-phone era, where TWS (true wireless stereo) Bluetooth earphones propped up half the market. A Huawei insider told me that Huawei’s annual smartwatch shipments have already surpassed the total of all Swiss watches combined. I recall that watches were one of Shenzhen’s major industries in the 1990s—mechanical and electronic watches led by Fiyta, with Tianwang and Ebohr also selling well in Huaqiangbei. Other smart devices and accessories, like charging cables and power banks, have much smaller volumes and unit prices. With about 3.5 billion smartphones worldwide, the TWS earphone market—roughly one-to-one with phones—exceeds 1.2 billion units annually, drawing major phone makers to follow. Apple’s iWatch and AirPods each sell over 100 million units per year; Huawei and Xiaomi have launched their own TWS products. Adding power banks, tempered glass screen protectors, phone cases, data cables, wireless chargers, batteries, screens, and repair parts, the total market is about a trillion yuan. Huaqiangbei’s massive marketplace drives the Pearl River Delta’s smart hardware supply chain—for example, nearly 10,000 companies were in the phone case business, with 5,000 in Shenzhen alone, all dependent on Huaqiangbei’s smartphone ecosystem.

Grand opening of Slkor’s third Huaqiangbei specialty store

TWS earphones involve relatively low technical difficulty and low entry barriers, so the Pearl River Delta’s "white-label" electronics ecosystem could quickly jump in. Huaqiangbei’s "white-label Bluetooth earphones" are essentially counterfeits, with their biggest advantage being rock-bottom prices. High-quality AirPods clones look almost identical, can pair with iPhones, and support features like "rename and locate, pop-up pairing, and in-ear detection"—matching Apple’s AirPods Pro functions. While authentic AirPods sell for over a thousand yuan, white-label ones go for just 50–200 yuan, meeting the needs of more budget-conscious consumers.

In 2020, Shanghai Securities Research Institute data showed Huaqiangbei white-label earphone shipments of 292 million units, compared to Apple AirPods’ 78 million. As more manufacturers joined the fray, many lacked the patience to build brands and distribution channels, instead focusing on Huaqiangbei’s white-label trade. Intensifying competition and patent infringement risks have made their situation increasingly precarious.

Market research materials on Huaqiangbei earphones from a major domestic phone maker

To be honest, the quality and operations of Huaqiangbei’s shanzhai products still need improvement. We hope more companies that build brands and deliver quality products will thrive. As a balding tech geek, Uncle Song insists on data-driven arguments. I randomly bought a shanzhai smartwatch in Huaqiangbei and ran performance comparison tests against my client’s "Beidou smartwatch." Details are shown below.

Kinghelm’s teardown report comparing Huaqiangbei shanzhai watch vs. a BDS smartwatch

From the above charts, the "Huaqiangbei shanzhai watch" matches big brands in casing, strap, app push notifications, and UI design, but its blood oxygen, temperature, blood pressure, and ECG functions call up fake backend data—it lacks even basic sensors and 4G communication, and the charging components are substandard.

Now consider the "Huaqiangbei shanzhai hairdryer." I watched a vlogger test a Huaqiangbei knockoff against a Dyson, comparing airflow, motor speed, temperature control, and hair care performance. On paper, they looked similar, but the price was just a fraction of Dyson’s. At Yuanyang Digital Plaza, I tried a counterfeit AirPods clone—it looked identical to the original but sounded much worse. The shop owner quoted 72 yuan retail, 60 yuan wholesale. Huaqiangbei knockoffs are indeed cheap, and that’s their core competitive edge.

Comparison of Huaqiangbei shanzhai hairdryer vs. Dyson, and public molds for smartwatches

Early entrants into the Bluetooth earphone supply chain have done very well. Domestic firms like Zhongke Lantian, Hengxuan, and Zhuhai Jieli compete head-on with international players like Qualcomm, Broadcom, and MediaTek (MTK), and have tied up with major phone makers on technical solutions. Zhuhai Jieli recently listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange. Huizhou EVE Energy’s "little gold bean" batteries, Kinghelm’s (www.kinghelm.net) ceramic Bluetooth antennas (KH-2012-HM1 / KH-3216-A35), Slkor’s (www.slkoric.com) Hall sensors (SL1713SH), and Will Semiconductor’s low-power MOSFET (2N7002) are all widely used in TWS earphones. Some companies with Huaqiangbei hardware DNA have grown successfully—Shenzhen-based Anker Innovations and Lanhe, as well as Duoduo Technology and Ugreen (which moved their factories to Dongguan), have also stood out.

American economist Paul M. Romer pointed out that investments in innovative knowledge must yield returns to be sustainable, hence institutional design is needed to secure innovators’ earnings. Innovation drives endogenous economic growth, which is the theoretical foundation for IP protection today. But how do we balance patents vs. innovation, protection vs. monopoly, and technological advancement vs. diffusion for the benefit of humanity? Shenzhen is a migrant city, constantly replenished by newcomers, and is hailed as the "City of Innovation." Huaqiangbei’s shanzhai phone phenomenon represents a new business model—low-cost shanzhai phones quickly reached low-income populations, with users spanning Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Huaqiangbei phone bosses jokingly likened patent protection and shanzhai products to arranged marriage versus an illicit affair: arranged marriage is upright and proper, sanctimonious, but dull and stifling; an affair is clandestine and disreputable, yet sweet and passionate, and everyone flocks to it.

At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, NVIDIA open-sourced its Alpamayo series AI models, simulation tools, and datasets. ArduPilot and Lorenz Meier’s PX4 open-sourced drone "motion control source code," enabling countless drone startups and practitioners. Not long ago, Huawei’s Xu Zhijun announced that CANN would be fully open-sourced, along with the Mind series of application software and toolchains. Elon Musk believes patent protection is a weakling’s game—continuous technological innovation and rapid product iteration are the true core competencies of modern enterprises; his companies like Tesla have followed this path. In the movie Dying to Survive, India broke patent barriers to produce generic drugs, saving many poor lives. Song Shiqiang of Kinghelm/Slkor (www.slkormicro.com)believe that "Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones," like Indian generics, have improved the quality of life for low-income groups. Such actions embody "technology for good" and offer an alternative interpretation of IP protection.

Elon Musk’s speech on patents and a still from "Dying to Survive"

French philosopher Albert Camus said, "The world is absurd." Uncle Song Shiqiang of Huaqiangbei believes that society’s complexity and unpredictability often create conflicts between the intentions of public administration and real-life outcomes. For example, when the government encourages childbirth by extending maternity leave, each additional month of leave raises female unemployment by 11.76% and lowers wages—so women end up not daring to have children. Likewise, Chinese consumers first came to know international brands like Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Pierre Cardin through ubiquitous counterfeits. Back in Beijing’s Silk Street, I even saw embassy staff buying "knockoff luxury bags"! Interestingly, we’ve discovered counterfeit "Kinghelm" and "Slkor" products in Huaqiangbei—which, in a way, shows our brands are doing well.

Barry Naughton on the integration of technology and markets

The reality is that patent protection is administered by the bureaucracy, while new technologies must merge with products to yield commercial returns—and these two spheres are largely disconnected. Data from the National Intellectual Property Administration shows that by 2025, China had over 5 million invention patents, and its PCT international patent applications ranked first globally for six consecutive years. Yet valuable innovations are few; many firms chase government subsidies. We’ve also seen a rise in "patent trolls" who abuse the rules—e.g., exploiting the Copyright Office’s lack of verification to make false registrations—and then mass-sue tech startups for profit. In just one week, Slkor and Kinghelm received three court summonses from Changsha Mituo, Guangzhou Knight, and Hanyi Fonts. The gang behind Changsha Mituo (Yang Haijun, Liu Bo, Nie Gang) extorted over 100,000 companies, winning nearly all cases. Victims including Song Shiqiang, Wang Hansheng of Wuxi Haoyijin, and Zhu Hongliang of Zhengzhou Qiaobang Electronics fought back fiercely, crushing the Mituo gang and its accomplices—Changsha Mituo no longer dares to blackmail. In 2025, a Tianjin court ruled that Visual China must pay photographer Dai Jianfeng 15,000 yuan in compensation. It turned out Visual China had stolen Dai’s works, falsely registered them, and then tried to extort more than 80,000 yuan from him—only to be countersued. In recent years, SMEs have been tormented by such patent trolls—cases like "Meet Xiao Mian" and "Jinyinhua Lotion" have left entrepreneurs struggling or even bankrupt, seriously hampering social development.

The extortion tactics and modus operandi of "Changsha Mituo" and "Visual China"

Song Shiqiang distilled the eight-character ethos—"Daring, Innovative, Resilient, Pragmatic"—which not only encapsulates Huaqiangbei’s cultural traits but also aligns closely with Shenzhen’s overall development philosophy. Shenzhen-based economist Jin Xinyi also believes that although the shanzhai phone heyday has passed, Huaqiangbei remains a critical commercial hub for Shenzhen and the nation. With the current "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" drive, Huaqiangbei’s influence over the Pearl River Delta and the broader electronics industry continues to grow.

"Shenzhen Design: Shanzhai Manufacturing and Maker Entrepreneurship"-Silvia Lindtner and others.

During its evolution, "Huaqiangbei shanzhai phones" cultivated a large pool of hardware and software R&D talent, integrated supply chain resources, and opened up distribution channels worldwide, laying the groundwork for the later rise of domestic phone brands. The massive phone market not only fed mainland IC companies such as Spreadtrum, RDA, Galcore, Maxscend, and Goodix—enabling them to grow strong in the phone supply chain—but also trained and nurtured well-known entrepreneurs like Huang Zhang (Meizu), Yu Chengdong (Huawei), Lei Jun (Xiaomi), Chen Mingyong (OPPO), Shen Wei (vivo), and Zhang Xuezheng (Wingtech).

Shanzhai phones also spurred Huaqiangbei and the Pearl River Delta’s smart hardware industry, and the subsequent smart wearables boom drove upstream and downstream sectors. In 2016, Huang Zhiqiang of Zhongke Lantian started developing Bluetooth audio chips in Huaqiangbei; these chips now account for about 60% of the white-label TWS market. Slkor Semiconductor was established in Huaqiangbei, and its Slkor ESD diodes, Hall sensors, and Kinghelm ceramic Bluetooth antennas and pogo pins are now used in Bluetooth earphones, bringing in decent profits.

Hot-selling products at Slkor’s third Huaqiangbei store

Professor Zhao Jiangning (translit.) of The Catholic University of Korea argues that Huaqiangbei’s shanzhai phone phenomenon represents an innovative entrepreneurial model. During the shanzhai phone boom, Huaqiangbei saw its peak of innovation and entrepreneurship, and its fastest internationalization. Song Shiqiang, observed that people flock to Huaqiangbei drawn by the scent of money. Its unique business model recombines production factors for dramatic efficiency gains; simple and crude incentives energize operators and enterprises. This is the underlying logic of Huaqiangbei’s "spontaneous market." With makers as core nodes and project-based collaboration as links, Huaqiangbei breaks the spatial constraints of traditional incubators, allowing talent, technology, capital, sales channels, and services to flow and recombine dynamically across the entire region, forming new cooperative relationships and generating enormous benefits.

"Shanzhai: An Emerging Entrepreneurial Model" – Jiangning Zhao

Huaqiangbei’s innovation is not about foundational technology or theoretical breakthroughs, but rather applied micro-innovations in products, following the path of "imitation → improvement → innovation." I saw a video about Wang Li of "Haoyin Acoustics," who also started from Huaqiangbei and followed the same logic. This year’s hit movie Love Letter to Grandma vividly portrayed the daring and enterprising "Qiaopi culture" of the Chaoshan region—the same spirit that characterizes the majority of Huaqiangbei’s Chaoshan bosses, blended with the boldness of Shenzhen’s migrant population. This is Huaqiangbei’s original spiritual root. In a state of "try whatever is not explicitly forbidden," it has borne rich fruit. Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that innovation is the entrepreneur’s recombination of production factors, and that risk-taking is essential to entrepreneurship.

Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen’s theory of "disruptive innovation" describes how low-cost or convenient products enter from the fringe and eventually overturn the mainstream market. Huaqiangbei’s model of disruptive innovation—breaking through from the margins to the core, moving from low-end to high-end products, using profits from low-end goods to continuously iterate and eventually create high-end market leaders—is a textbook case.

Materials from the 2025 Huaqiangbei Maker Conference

Mr. Song Shiqiang, General Manager of Kinghelm/Slkor, believes Huaqiangbei’s value exists in both physical and digital spaces. Physically, Huaqiangbei is a convergence point of people, money, goods, and opportunities—an international-grade electronic component hub that has produced countless millionaires. Over time, it has also become a magnet for makers, with spaces like "Startup Coffee," "Chaihuo Space," and "Zhi Fangzhou" fueling idea exchanges, attracting tens of thousands of visitors daily. Around Huaqiangbei, there are 4,000 R&D and testing institutions, 2,000 manufacturing firms, 100 equity investment firms, and 30 incubators and maker spaces, together forming a highly efficient collaborative ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation.

In the digital realm, platforms like LCSC, YUNHAN, Huaqiang Electronics Net, and the official sites of Slkor and Kinghelm serve as Huaqiangbei’s digital twin matrix. LCSC regularly stocks over 400,000 SKUs; Huaqiang Electronics Net lists more than 11 million popular models. JLC, YUNHAN, and Huaqiu are bridging SMT, PCBA, and CNC hardware production links, while LCSC’s EDA integrates the entire ecosystem, offering high-speed, fully equipped, one-stop R&D and production services. Building on hardware supply chain strengths, augmented by a "capable government," Huaqiangbei has become a world-renowned maker hub, propelling Shenzhen toward its "City of Innovation" status. With the aid of internet and capital, plus comprehensive supporting services, Huaqiangbei’s SMEs can rapidly scale up, ultimately contributing fresh momentum to global creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Zhuo Gao Electronics’ booth at "Huaqiangbei Maker Day"

The launch of "Huaqiangbei Maker Day" adds a veneer of technology and R&D to Huaqiangbei’s innovation. The maker community innovates by lowering the barriers to technology production and recombining technologies. "Maker spaces" are conceived as new sites for entrepreneurship, economic growth, and innovation. Building on this, Huaqiangbei Subdistrict Office proposed the vision of "Makers come in, entrepreneurs go out." The recent listing of JLC Group on the main board saw its market cap surge to 130 billion yuan on debut. Likewise, Cai Huabo of Jiangbolong—another Jiangxi native—started from a one-meter counter in Huaqiangbei. They survived and thrived through technological and model innovation. My own company, SLKOR Micro Semicon (www.slkoric.com), started with third-generation silicon carbide semiconductors and has since relentlessly pushed new processes and products to reach today’s standing. Huaqiangbei entrepreneurs are incredibly hardworking—take the couple Hu Yong of Zhuo Gao Electronics, who began with a tiny counter and a handcart, and are now well-known MCU distributors. In them, I could see Huaqiangbei’s future!

Jiang Xiangyang of Ruicai Electronics and Song Shiqiang (right) at JLC’s appreciation banquet

Kinghelm and Slkor selected as Huaqiangbei outstanding brands

The success of these companies and entrepreneurs owes much to the deep nourishment of Huaqiangbei’s industrial ecosystem, and to the long-term influence of its cultural DNA—"Daring, Innovative, Resilient, Pragmatic." Huaqiangbei is the best place for new technologies, products, and markets to converge, and its pragmatism is consistent across people (end-goal oriented, technology serving the market, no vanity titles or papers—make money from products) and business models (rapid transition from idea to product, fast turnover from production to sales). Ultimately, technology serves products, products serve consumers, and everything serves to improve consumer welfare. We hope that the smart hardware supply chain developed during Huaqiangbei’s shanzhai phone era will gradually become compliant and healthy, evolving from grey to white and even gold, making new and greater contributions to social progress and the prosperity of our people.

About the Author

Song Shiqiang honored as "Huaqiangbei Maker Mentor"

Mr. Song Shiqiang is a popular science lecturer of the China Electronics Society, an expert member of the China Association for Science and Technology’s electronic information database, a columnist, and a researcher of Huaqiangbei culture. He formerly served as CEO of an international listed company and now invests in and manages Shenzhen SLKOR Micro Semicon Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd., building the Slkor and Kinghelm brands. Both companies are national high-tech enterprises, with dozens of original invention patents and software copyrights. Slkor is currently one of China’s fastest-growing semiconductor companies, with the vision of becoming a competitive force in the global semiconductor industry.

Song Shiqiang (in red) at the Huaqiangbei High-Quality Development Conference

Mr. Song Shiqiang’s first stop in Shenzhen was Huaqiangbei, and his entrepreneurial journey began there, so he knows Huaqiangbei intimately, follows it closely, and studies it deeply. His research articles on Huaqiangbei—"Huaqiangbei Studies," "Huaqiangbei’s Transformation and Development," and "Refuting Bloomberg’s Huaqiangbei News"—have been republished by People’s Daily, Xinhua News, Associated Press, Yahoo News, and other major media. His company, Kinghelm Electronics, adhering to the philosophy "Kinghelm, Connecting the World," started with Beidou/GPS antenna RF signal cables and has since developed microwave antennas, RF connectors, and electrical signal connectors, embracing the smart, interconnected era. With years of experience in semiconductors and Beidou/GPS navigation and positioning, Mr. Song enjoys broad recognition, reputation, and influence. He has always been committed to improving Huaqiangbei’s business environment, hoping that Huaqiangbei will truly become a window on China’s reform and opening-up and a calling card for Shenzhen’s economic development.