The Tamesis
CChina’s push for self-sufficiency in semiconductor manufacturing benefits companies across the supply chain. The latest to receive a boost is Hubei Dinglong, which supplies materials necessary for the chip manufacturing process. Its Shenzhen-listed share price has soared nearly 116% in the past year, pushing co-founders Zhu Shuangquan and Zhu Shunquan into the three-comma club.
The company’s 61-year-old chairman Shuangquan and brother Shunquan, 57, who serves as chief executive, each hold about 15% of the shares. Forbes Based on Friday’s closing price of $64.19, the siblings are estimated to be worth $1.3 billion. Hubei Dinglong did not respond to a request for comment on the identities of the two billionaires.
The Wuhan-based company is a major player in China’s chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) field, a process that flattens the surface of silicon wafers so that circuits can be printed and chips can be stacked. The company says it is the only supplier in China that covers the full range of CMP materials, from semi-liquid slurries for leveling to cleaning fluids for removing post-process residues.
Since the U.S. imposed chip-related export controls on China in 2022, Dinglong has expanded its business into photolithography materials, a major obstacle to China’s self-reliance in the semiconductor field, which uses ultraviolet light to print circuits onto silicon wafers. On the lithography side, Dinglong makes photoresist, a chemical that captures circuit designs, although its most advanced products can only be used in low-end chip manufacturing.
Earlier, the company also expanded into advanced semiconductor packaging materials. Its products include temporary adhesives, a special glue used to bond silicon wafers to a piece of glass so that they can be ground thinner than a human hair and then stacked to make chips such as high-bandwidth memory.
In the first quarter of 2026, Dinglong’s net profit soared 78% year-on-year to 251 million yuan ($36.9 million), and revenue increased 24% to 1 billion yuan, mainly due to its CMP materials business. Dinglong said that its advanced chip packaging materials and photoresist business are still in the early stages, but have entered a “stable, small-volume supply stage.”
Although there is no comprehensive breakdown of first-quarter revenue, more than half of Dinglong’s 3.7 billion yuan revenue in 2025 will come from semiconductor-related businesses. In addition to materials for CMP, advanced packaging and lithography, the company also produces materials for OLED displays. The rest of sales come from printer materials and components, such as toner; the company has divested some of its printer-related businesses to focus on semiconductor materials. During this period, approximately 70% of its revenue was generated domestically.
Before joining Dinglong, Shuangquan and Shunquan served as managers of state-owned enterprises Hubei International Economic Foreign Trade Corporation and Hubei International Economic and Technical Cooperation Corporation respectively. The brothers co-founded Dinglong in 2000 with the hope of reducing China’s reliance on imports. They started with chemicals used in printer toner, an area then dominated by Japanese and Western chemical giants. The company has since expanded into other printer consumables and has become a major supplier of color printing chemicals in China.
In 2010, Shuangquan and Shunquan listed Dinglong on the GEM of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange at a price of 458 million yuan. Two years later, they moved to CMP materials, aiming to replicate their success in the printing industry by targeting the dominance of foreign players. Interviewed by a state-owned newspaper Securities Times In February of this year, Shunquan recalled that the expansion was triggered by the team’s discovery that CMP materials and toner materials share some common chemical elements.
In a separate interview with a state-owned newspaper Changjiang Daily In 2019, Shuangquan shared their secrets of success. “In the early stages of entrepreneurship, Chinese private enterprises have nothing but an idea, a drive, market insight, and an innovative product opportunity. They all rely on the spirit of ‘burning the pot and sinking the boats’,” he pointed out. “Dinglong will never lose this motivation. There is a wider world out there waiting for us to conquer.”
