The CPCA and China’s Electronic Circuit Industry: Past and Future

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Wang Longji is the honorary secretary-general of the China Printed Circuit Association. He is a senior engineer and an industry leader and used to be the production manager of the first imported PCB manufacturing line in China. Mr. Wang is also a well-known child actor and a “national treasure;” one of his most famous characters was San Mao in “The Winter of Three Hairs.”

“If you want to have great achievements, you need to end your anxiety first.” I often wonder: what is the purpose of living in this world? What is the meaning of human life? After thinking seriously about it, I realize that the meaning of life is to constantly encounter difficulties on the way and solve them. This is true for people, and running a business can use the same philosophy. If we do not meet difficulties and are not able to solve them, whether people or enterprises, life will be meaningless.

Over the past two years, great changes have taken place in the pattern of our manufacturing industry and the external environment. These changes have brought pains, but I believe right now is the best opportunity for the development of the industry. In this article, I will review the development of the China Printed Circuit Association (CPCA) and China’s electronic circuit industry in the past 30 years as well as the future of the industry landscape in China.

Arduous Pioneering
Fifty years ago, I entered the printed circuit industry (renamed the electronic circuit industry in 2015) when it was still in its infancy in China. At that time, our predecessors—professors like Yao Shouren, Li Shihao, Gu Changyin, and Wang Tiezhong—were leading young people to study hard in the lab on single-sided, double sided, and multilayer printed circuit boards (PCBs). The earliest professional “circuit workshop” in China was in the Shanghai No. 20 Radio Factory, which consisted of less than 40 people, and all of the circuit boards were produced manually. I also returned to Shanghai from the Fuzhou Military Region. Fortunately, I did not go to the Film Bureau or Shanghai Film Studios (I could return to the Wang Longji literary and art circles at that time), but instead, went to the circuit workshop in the Shanghai No. 20 Radio Factory. Since then, I have fallen in love with this industry.

In the 1960s—without information, equipment, and technology—we manually produced single-sided PCBs for seven-tube and eight-tube semiconductor radios. At that time, the width of the line was about 0.8 mm, and the aperture was over 1.0 mm. They were the simplest, low-level PCBs, but they made headlines in major domestic newspapers at that time.

To read this entire article, which appeared in the November issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here or download the PDF to your library.