How a Chinese accountant turned a dying state-owned factory into BOE Technology Group – world’s No 1 display maker supplying Apple, Huawei

Wang Dongsheng was 35 when he pooled money with his colleagues to take over the state-owned vacuum-tube factory that they worked at. That was 1993, when Beijing Electronic Factory, first set up in the 1950s with help from the former Soviet Union, found itself teetering on bankruptcy after being unable to compete as the economy began to open up under the reforms initiated by the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

Fast-forward to 2019 and the reborn BOE Technology Group has a market valuation of about US$18 billion, employs more than 68,000 workers, operates in 19 countries and is the world’s biggest display panel maker, with customers that include Apple and Huawei Technologies. In May, two days after receiving the David Sarnoff Industrial Achievement Prize in San Jose, California, company chairman Wang, now 62, told reporters he plans to step down this year.

Not bad for the former accountant, whose rule that panel-performance metrics must at least be doubled every 36 months for a given price point came to be known in the industry as “Wang’s Law”.

“BOE was founded 26 years ago, and since its founding day, we have never stopped growing,” Wang said in May. “The key for us has been staying focused and committing to innovation … I have full faith in BOE’s bright future, whether I am at the helm or not.”

Wang is handing over leadership of the Shenzhen-listed company at a time when it is poised to tackle the coming era of 5G mobile connectivity, which experts see as the enabling technology to connect everyday devices and usher in the industrial internet.