The story of Jinqiao Equipment Town is just unfolding its prologue.
Recently, the 26th China International Industry Fair - Integrated Circuit Exhibition (ICES) opened at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai). In the vast exhibition area, the largest exhibitor was not a single company, but a "town". With a booth of nearly 500 square meters, more than 20 companies formed a delegation: etching machines, cleaning machines, metrology and inspection equipment, vacuum valves, probe cards, precision motion platforms, fluid control components... With the strength of one town, an entire industry chain was brought into the exhibition hall.
It is called Jinqiao Equipment Town, located in the southern part of Jinqiao, Pudong—surrounded by four roads: Longdong Avenue, Huadong Road, Huaxia Road, and Chuansha Road, enclosing an industrial space of about 4 square kilometers.
As soon as this "town" made its debut, it attracted high attention from the industry. What is its origin? How can it gather a complete industry chain in just two years? The answer begins with a national project from more than thirty years ago.
A Production Line Nurtures the Industrial DNA
In the 1990s, the vast majority of domestic integrated circuits relied on imports, and independent advanced production lines were nearly blank. To cultivate and accelerate the independent construction of the microelectronics industry, the state deployed and implemented the "909" Project. The undertaker, Hua Hong Microelectronics, was established in April 1996, with Hu Qili, then Minister of the Ministry of Electronics Industry, serving as the first chairman.
Why did the state land the "909" Project in Jinqiao? That is because this land was fully capable of supporting it.
The area where Jinqiao Equipment Town is located can be traced back to the Wangqiao Industrial Zone. As early as the 1960s, community and brigade industries such as spray painting and transformers were established; by 1984, the total output value of village-run enterprises had reached 620,000 CNY. In September 1990, the State Council approved the establishment of the Jinqiao Export Processing Zone—the first national-level development zone named "Export Processing Zone" in the country; in 1992, Shanghai Bell broke ground in Jinqiao, and subsequently built the world's largest production base for stored program control exchanges; in 1997, SAIC General Motors settled in Jinqiao.
In September 1999, the first 8-inch integrated circuit production line in mainland China was completed here. Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co., Ltd. officially went into production, 7 months ahead of schedule, and turned a profit in the same year it started production. The significance of this production line goes beyond just producing chips: as the production line operated, it created a continuous demand for equipment, materials, and components, and also cultivated and gathered a group of integrated circuit manufacturing talents.
The gears of history continue to turn forward. In 2004, 60-year-old Yin Zhiyao led 15 Silicon Valley experts to settle in Jinqiao and founded Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment. In 2007, the first dual-reactor-chamber etching machine was delivered, and the company won all its international lawsuits. During the same period, Wang Shumin founded Anji Technology, starting from chemical mechanical polishing slurry, and making the slurry domestically leading and ranking among the top globally. In 2019, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment and Anji Technology became the first batch of companies listed on the SSE STAR Market.
Also growing in Jinqiao and settling their new headquarters in the Equipment Town is a group of enterprises deeply engaged in core components. In 2019, Yinguang Semiconductor was founded by Professor Yang Xiaofeng from Fudan University and senior industry engineering expert Wu Liwei. Settling in Jinqiao, Pudong, it focuses on key components such as precision motion systems, and its products have been batch-supplied to leading domestic wafer fabs. In 2026, the company submitted its prospectus for the SSE STAR Market and will build a headquarters base in Jinqiao Equipment Town.
From a single production line to a group of enterprises and talents whose upstream and downstream serve as scenarios for each other, the integrated circuit industry has taken root in Jinqiao, becoming the industrial DNA here and laying the foundation for the subsequent construction of the Equipment Town.
A Town Bearing the Mission of the Times
In recent years, a new round of scientific and technological revolution represented by artificial intelligence has been accelerating. The training and inference of AI large models have continuously increased the demand for high-performance computing chips and high-bandwidth memory, driving global wafer fabs to accelerate capacity expansion. According to forecasts by SEMI, in 2026, global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will reach 165.9 billion USD, a year-on-year growth of about 20%, and are expected to grow for five consecutive years. Amid the surging demand, the global supply of equipment and core components has become tight, and the delivery cycle of some key components has been significantly lengthened.
Integrated circuit manufacturing equipment is the cornerstone of the integrated circuit industry, and the precision and reliability of the whole machine ultimately depend on its internal core components. A valve, a probe card, a set of motion platforms—these seemingly inconspicuous core components directly determine the performance limit of the equipment, yet they are segments in the industry chain with extremely high technical barriers and very long customer certification cycles.
"Equipment components represent the segment with the highest technical barriers, the most severe bottlenecks, and the toughest challenges in the entire semiconductor industry chain. But to achieve independence and controllability, we must overcome this hurdle," Zhuang Yong, Deputy Director of the Jinqiao Administration, stated in an interview. How to solve this problem and what is the way out?
Looking across the country, Shanghai is one of the regions with the highest concentration of integrated circuit industries and the strongest comprehensive technical strength in China. Integrated circuits, along with biomedicine and artificial intelligence, are listed as Shanghai's three leading industries, with an industrial scale accounting for about a quarter of the national total. In Shanghai's "one body, two wings" industrial layout for integrated circuits, Pudong, as the main body, bears about three-quarters of the city's industrial scale. As an important supporting part of the integrated circuit manufacturing industry, equipment components are a key link for the independence and controllability of the integrated circuit industry chain. In 2023, at integrated circuit-related meetings, according to the overall layout plan of Shanghai, Pudong focused on the layout of integrated circuit equipment and component industries in the Zhangjiang and Jinqiao areas, leveraging Pudong's advantage in the agglomeration of integrated circuit manufacturing enterprises to drive the coordinated development of the equipment and component industries.
Relying on this round of industrial layout, Jinqiao has once again stepped into the spotlight. Over the past thirty years since the "909" Project, the context from chip manufacturing to equipment and materials has continued here, and the number of engineers and professional talents in the field of high-end manufacturing in Jinqiao has exceeded 110,000. Jinqiao has long focused on the three leading industries of intelligent vehicles, hard equipment, and new communications, with complete manufacturing functions and comprehensive supporting facilities.
Why has Jinqiao become the "chosen one"? In Zhuang Yong's words, it comes down to "the right timing, the right location, and the right people." The right timing is the concentrated emergence of the demand for the independent development of integrated circuit equipment and core components. The right location means that the equipment component industry is deeply symbiotic with production lines; equipment validation, component iteration, and on-site services all rely on production line support. Pudong has agglomerated high-density integrated circuit production lines, creating an urgent need to build an industrial agglomeration zone like a professional town to guide upstream and downstream enterprises to cluster around the production lines, forming an integrated supporting supply system. The right people refers to the large pool of integrated circuit professionals accumulated here over the years.
In October 2024, at an integrated circuit-related dispatch meeting, Shanghai clearly laid out the Equipment Town, with the first phase covering about 4 square kilometers and a planned expansion of about 7 square kilometers. It will build a national-level source of innovation for high-end equipment, an industrial ecology benchmark with global influence, and cultivate a world-class cluster of integrated circuit equipment and component enterprises. Thus, the construction of Jinqiao Equipment Town has officially kicked off.
On January 14, 2026, at the "Chain Gathering in Pudong, Chip Starting the Future" industrial ecology conference, Jinqiao Equipment Town was officially unveiled. On September 17, a brand-new brand logo was released—a logo with the core concept of "silicon wafers progressively advancing towards chips", drawing the industrial positioning, historical heritage, and future ambition of a town into the circle and square.
How much can a logo bear? For Jinqiao Equipment Town, it carries far more than just a graphic: the circular foundation, the square units, and the agglomerated ecology represent an industrial memory that has continued from the "909 Project" to the present day, and it is also a footnote of the times for China's semiconductor equipment moving from "single-point breakthroughs" to "ecological breakthroughs".
A "2+X+3" System Linking an Entire Industry Chain
As the town's logo indicates, when countless "squares" gather into an ecology in Jinqiao, a single grain of silicon can also grow into a "chip" forest. After two years of construction, the town's "chip" forest has become lush and green.
In terms of industrial pattern, the town has built a "2+X+3" industrial system: "2" means strengthening the two major equipment industry chains of high-end optics and advanced storage; "X" means focusing on core equipment such as advanced packaging, thin film deposition, and metrology and inspection, as well as key component tracks such as optics, vacuum, electronic control, precision motion, and fluid; "3" means building three public service centers for supply chain services, testing and validation, and innovation incubation.
In terms of spatial layout, it has agglomerated three core professional parks: Jichuang Park, Jiguang Park, and Jihe Park. Together with other surrounding semiconductor industrial carriers, the total construction area is nearly 900,000 square meters, forming a carrying pattern with clear division of labor and complementary synergy. Jichuang Park focuses on innovation incubation and intelligent manufacturing of complete equipment. As the core industrial agglomeration platform of the town, it is equipped with high-standard factories, R&D offices, roadshow centers, and talent apartments to meet the needs of Industry 4.0 high-end intelligent manufacturing; Jiguang Park is deeply engaged in the track of optical equipment components, specializing in semiconductor optical components, precision optical supporting parts, optoelectronic inspection components, and other segmented fields, creating a regional characteristic professional agglomeration zone for optical components; Jihe Park focuses on core precision components for semiconductors, focusing on key tracks such as light sources, vacuum, electronic control, fluid, and precision motion, concentrating efforts on promoting the localization of core components and consolidating the supporting foundation of the high-end semiconductor equipment industry chain.
Relying on the carrier advantages of the three professional parks, the town has gathered a group of leading enterprises in the fields of semiconductor equipment, core components, and industrial services, forming a good industrial pattern of "chain leader guidance, supporting agglomeration, and coordinated development". In the field of complete equipment, enterprises such as Huahai Qingke, Yuwei Semiconductor, SEICHI Technologies, and Aixin Semiconductor have settled and laid out, focusing on the R&D and manufacturing of advanced process and advanced packaging equipment; in the field of components and materials, enterprises such as Hengyunchang, Shenzhou Semiconductor, Lianhe Guangke, Shaoguang Xincai, and Shiguang Microelectronics continue to make up for the supporting shortcomings in segmented tracks; in the field of precision instruments, the fluid direction has agglomerated Gaokai Precision and Xingqi Microelectronics, the electronic control sector has laid out Hengyunchang and Shenzhou Semiconductor, the vacuum field has gathered Zuolin Valves, Shenkeyi, and Ebara, the light source direction has settled Yuanchuang Jingxin, Kuangyingsai, Fuxiyuan, and Huaxin Quanzhu, and the precision motion sector has introduced Yinguang Semiconductor, building a multi-dimensional and multi-category precision supporting system.
The agglomeration and driving effect of leading enterprises has continuously improved the localization supporting level of the regional industry chain and also brought rapid growth to enterprises. Zuolin Valves, a high vacuum valve enterprise, is a typical example. This market has long been dominated by the Swiss company VAT. Zuolin Valves is a start-up enterprise, and its scale was still small when it signed a contract and settled in the town in 2024; relying on the open production line validation by chain leaders in the park, Zuolin has continuously received orders, subsequently expanding its site twice, growing rapidly, and achieving doubled annual revenue growth.
Customers live side by side, the upstream and downstream industry chains are within close reach, and joint validation is convenient and efficient. Relying on agglomeration advantages, the park has formed an internal industrial circulation ecology where upstream and downstream are customers of each other and collaborate nearby. The dual expansion of leading complete machine and component enterprises promotes the deepening of collaboration from R&D supporting to large-scale mass production. The advantages of localized supporting in the R&D stage have been fully verified, and core components are docked nearby, greatly compressing the supply chain cycle and reducing validation costs. With the release of capacity of multiple complete machine enterprises, the "customers of each other" ecology will be upgraded to large-scale commercial supply, forming a virtuous cycle of "complete machine traction, component follow-up, and two-way empowerment".
"For enterprises, getting orders is the most practical thing." Zhang Hao, General Manager of Jinqiao Equipment Town, said that when enterprises are close to each other and can do business with each other, the ecology comes alive. What the town needs to do is precisely to be the "carrier" for industrial landing, the "incubator" for testing and validation, and the "cultivator" for the industrial ecology.
Ecology Wins: Why an Equipment Town Can Gather an Entire Industry Chain
Since the start of construction, the landing of town projects has been continuously accelerating. As of now, dozens of enterprises have settled. These settled projects are all integrated R&D and production, entity-landing enterprises, mostly leading entities in segmented tracks.
Focusing on the needs of enterprise landing and growth, Jinqiao Equipment Town has built a support system from multiple aspects such as platforms, capital, orders, services, and talents.
Platform support directly hits the pain points most cared about by semiconductor enterprises. The town focuses on building a digital supply chain center, a maintenance center, a testing and validation center, and an innovation incubation center. Over the past year, the town's digital supply chain center has successfully sourced over 20,000 semiconductor component part numbers for 212 enterprises, providing the most powerful guarantee for the supply chain security of these enterprises. Addressing the problem that components "cannot be tested or pass validation", in terms of testing and validation, it has also completed the docking of testing and validation for nearly 196 projects for 24 enterprises.
Capital empowerment guides patient capital to accompany enterprise growth. Equipment component enterprises have large R&D investments and long return cycles, and especially need long-term capital support. In terms of financial support, the town has a complete fund matrix from seed funds and angel funds to CVC funds and S funds, with the scale of government industrial guidance funds exceeding 100 billion CNY, ensuring that "good projects will never lack financial support".
Order traction helps enterprises enter the leading supply chain. Jointly with the municipal economic and informatization departments, it continuously carries out the "Chip Chain Shanghai" supply chain docking action, organizing the procurement and technical expert teams of chain leader enterprises to dock and negotiate with local equipment component enterprises one by one, promoting enterprises to enter the leading supply chain. The transformation effect is obvious. In the most effective event, tracked for two months after the meeting, more than ten local enterprises entered the chain leader supplier system.
Service escort uses public services to lower the threshold for setting up factories. Combining the 5- to 15-minute living circle, the park follows the layout of "one horizontal, three vertical, one ring, and multiple points" to build a three-level industrial service system covering six major service elements, bringing sci-tech reception rooms, industrial service boxes, and industrial service points to the side of enterprises. For example, the park centrally carries out the certification of heavy industrial parks to solve the electricity demand of enterprises.
Talent settlement allows talents to live nearby and take root with peace of mind. In terms of talent guarantee, Pudong's "Mingzhu Talent" policy covers leading sci-tech innovation talents, and enterprise R&D personnel can enjoy a package of subsidies such as housing rental. The town also joins hands with well-known domestic universities to build industrial training bases, ensuring talent supply from the source. In response to the social and sports needs of young people, the park organizes "Xinlian Elite" matchmaking parties and sports communities such as tennis and fitness to help them settle down, make friends, and start families here.
In the eyes of the builders, supporting facilities are not just about convenient living, but more about cultivating an industrial ecology where enterprises are neighbors and talents are familiar with each other. Focusing on supplementing, nurturing, and strengthening the chain in key links of the industry chain, and promoting the integration of enterprises, platforms, scientific research, and capital—once such an ecology is formed, it will be the most enduring competitiveness of the region. According to the predetermined goals, by 2029, Jinqiao Equipment Town will agglomerate 60 billion CNY in output value and 200 enterprises, and add 50,000 semiconductor professional talents.
In Veldhoven in the southern Netherlands, because of a globally leading lithography equipment enterprise, a town has gathered a huge and precise high-end equipment industry, and this town is also called the "Lithography Town" by the industry. Veldhoven has proved that a town is sufficient to support a country's right to speak in the cutting-edge industry.
From the first gene buried by the "909" Project, to the equipment town benchmarking the world, to the stunning debut at this year's ICES—over the past thirty years, the most cutting-edge manufacturing has gradually grown relying on core components one by one and a complete industrial ecology. The story of Jinqiao Equipment Town has just begun its prologue.
Text | Nan Yi Editor | Liu Chengxing