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087 china
Praying for Success
In Shanghai
Short on profits but long on Christian faith,
chipmaker SMIC evangelizes its workers
By Bruce Einhorn and Chi-Chu Tschang
SHANGHAI
On a gray Sunday morn-
ing, some 800 people are
crammed into Thanksgiving Church
in Shanghai. Among the congregants
is Wang Cuimei, a 21-year-old from
a village in northern China. She just
started working at Semiconductor
Manufacturing International Co.,
whose headquarters are down the
street. While Wang isn’t a Christian,
she decided to attend the service after
hearing about it from the leader of her
BUSINESSWEEK I J U LY 14 & 21, 2008
new-employee training program.
It didn’t hurt that top SMIC execu-
tives had helped set up the church.
“The leaders care about us,” Wang says.
“Apparently everyone is a Christian,
so we wanted to take a look.” Adds her
friend Liang Shuihong, 21: “We have a
responsibility and a duty as employees
to go.” So the pair made the five-minute
walk to the church from their SMIC
dorm. Following a sermon from the
government-approved pastor, and
much singing of hymns (with Chinese
lyrics projected onto giant screens
SMIC CEO
Chang in the
Thanksgiving
Church he built
in Shanghai
suspended from the ceiling), Wang says
she is impressed and plans to return.
“There is a lot of kindness in this place,”
she says.
That’s good news for Richard Chang,
the Taiwanese-American chief execu-
tive of SMIC. Chang, who eschews
the expensive suits, flashy watches,
and other bling favored by China’s
new business class, says spreading the
gospel is a key part of his work. He and
his colleagues “were called to China
to share God’s love,” Chang says. That
sort of talk is rare in a country ruled by
a Communist Party that is officially
atheist and has a long history of hostil-
ity toward Christianity. Yet Chang,
60, feels no hesitation in describing
the role his faith plays in his business
life. “The Lord says, ‘Do good things to
those in need,’” he says.
Chang could use some help himself.
He spent nearly three decades at Texas
Instruments and other semiconductor
companies before launching SMIC in
2000. Since then, he has built the com-
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pany into China’s largest chipmaker,
with operations in five cities, and the
world’s No. 3 foundry, or contract man-

ufacturer of semiconductors. But even
with a slew of A-list customers such as
Qualcomm, Toshiba, Broadcom, and
Freescale, Chang has struggled to make
the company profitable. SMIC lost
$19.5 million on sales of $1.5 billion last
year, and its New York-traded Ameri-
can depositary receipts have dropped
more than 80% since the company’s
initial public offering in 2004.
help from above
Righting the ship is now Chang’s big-
gest business challenge. In April, SMIC
announced it had phased out memory
chips, which once contributed a major-
ity of the company’s revenue, because
it’s so difficult to turn a profit in that
cyclical business. Instead, SMIC is
focusing more on higher-end chips. In
December the company signed a deal
to license advanced chip manufactur-
ing technology from IBM. And SMIC
says it’s talking with potential strategic
investors interested in taking a stake in
the company to help fund new, multi-
billion-dollar chip plants. “We knew
there would be challenges [in China]
but we knew the Lord would help us to
solve the difficulties,” Chang says.
Chang’s efforts are part of a grow-
ing focus on China by evangelical
Christians from the West. Although
Beijing requires all congregations to
adhere to a one-size-fits-all Protes-
tant church that doesn’t differentiate
among Methodists, Baptists, or others,
there are signs that evangelicals are
gaining popularity. Geoff Tunnicliffe,
BUSINESSWEEK I J U LY 14 & 21, 2008
Evangelical
Christianity
is growing in
China, despite
restrictions
CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance,
traveled to China in April, and Franklin
Graham, Billy Graham’s son and heir,
gave a Sunday sermon in May to 12,000
people in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
Few mix the Bible and business as
openly as Chang. He helped fund the
church in Shanghai—which opened
on Christmas Day 2005—and several
others across the country. He empha-
sizes that the money is his own, not
SMIC’s, and says the company doesn’t
force anyone to attend services. “If they
want to know more about Christianity,”
he says, “we encourage them.” Adds
Richard Chang
Born: 1948, Taiwan
Job: CEO, Semiconductor Manufac-
turing International
Education: PhD, Southern Methodist
University
Career: Spent three decades at Texas
Instruments before returning to Taiwan
in 1998 to launch Worldwide Semicon-
ductor Manufacturing. Sold that
company in 2000, then moved to
Shanghai to start SMIC.
Religion: At age 3, Christianity
became more important after his
mother recovered from TB. Says he
was “born-again” as a teenager.
Str / AP Photo
Guiding belief: “We were called to
China to share God’s love.”

Pastor Shen Xuebin, associate general
secretary of the Shanghai Christian
Council, the government body that
oversees official Protestant churches in
the city: “This is not a foreign company
that built a church here. China’s church
built this church.”
christian leadership
Chang, who says he was born-again as
a teenager in Taiwan, has helped draw
many other evangelicals to Shanghai.
Matthew Szymanski, an evangelical
Christian who joined SMIC in 2007
after working as a legislative aide on
Capitol Hill for the Republican House
leadership, estimates there are 1,000
Christians among the company’s
12,000 employees, including “a sub-
stantial minority” of top managers.
For instance David Lin, the 54-year-
old senior director of chip design
services, became a Christian in 1993
while working for AT&T Bell Labs in
Pennsylvania. Lin and his wife have
been active in various churches since
arriving in Shanghai in 2002. “Our de-
cision to come to China was primarily
because we hope to spread the Gospel,”
he says.
For his part, Pastor Shen says he’s
happy to get support from Chang
and other SMIC executives. There’s
no conflict, he says, between the
Party’s goals and what the Christians
are doing. “We are contributing to
economic reforms,” says Shen. Indeed,
for a government that antagonizes the
Vatican by appointing its own bishops,
suppresses the indigenous Falun Gong
religious movement, and vilifies the
Dalai Lama, Chang and his Christian
community at SMIC might even be
helpful. “The government realizes the
value of good religion,” says Chang.
Still, religion is a sensitive subject,
and Chang makes it clear that his good
works aren’t just church-related. He
has, for instance, funded schools and
set up training programs for young
SMIC workers, and the company do-
nated $140,000 to victims of the May
earthquake in central China. He boasts
that SMIC was one of the first Chinese
companies to provide psychological
counseling services for employees.
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And SMIC provides stock and op-
tions to every worker. “With the Lord’s
blessing, we believe that stock options
may significantly benefit employees,”
he says. And if more of those employ-
ees drop by Thanksgiving Church on
Sunday mornings, all the better. ^
Links
A Blessing for Food Exports
Although China has almost no
Jews and few Chinese know the
meaning of “kosher,” the country is
the world’s fastest-growing
producer of kosher food. Nearly
1,500 mainland factories now
make kosher products, National
Public Radio reported on Feb. 5.
That’s not because Chinese diners
are giving up pork and shellfish,
but because it’s good for
business. After the recent spate of
tainted-food scares, kosher
certification helps boost
confidence in foods and additives
exported from China.