On the evening of October 23, 2026, Sanan Optoelectronics issued an announcement, once again 林秀成Pushed into the spotlight: The company received notification from the family of the actual controller that Lin Xiucheng was arrested by the prosecutor’s office on suspicion of official embezzlement and misappropriation of funds. At the close of the day, Sanan Optoelectronics’ stock price was 10.10 yuan, with a total market value of approximately 50.4 billion yuan.
Highlight moment 三安光電The market value once exceeded 200 billion yuan and was considered a promising next-generation semiconductor leader. Lin Xiucheng, the founder of the company, was once named the richest man in Fujian.
With the arrest announcement, this once ambitious and domineering industrial and capital wavemaker finally reached the point where it was difficult to recover.
Lin Xiucheng’s story starts from a pile of scrap metal.
In the 1980s, this young man who was born in Anxi, Fujian Province, made his first pot of gold by purchasing scrap steel scraps from steel mills and selling them to factories, earning him the nickname “Scrap Iron King” in southern Fujian.
In 1992, Lin Xiucheng established the San’an Iron Works as a joint venture with the Sanming Iron and Steel Works, transforming himself from a bankrupt to an industrialist. By 2002, Sanan Group’s total assets reached 2.6 billion yuan and approximately 6,000 employees, ranking 14th among the top 100 enterprise groups in Fujian Province.
林秀成從 Don’t put your eggs in one basket, and never stay in one industry.
What really changed Lin Xiucheng’s destiny was the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair in 1999.
There, he was exposed to LED technology for the first time. At that time, the core technology of LED chips was held by American and Japanese companies, and domestic production was almost entirely imported. Lin Xiucheng, who was optimistic about the prospects, decided to dive in and make local LED cores.
According to the media, he personally went to the United States to inspect technology, introduced core talents with high salaries, spent heavily on purchasing production equipment, and cooperated with the American EMCORE company to build a R&D and industrialization center.
In November 2000, Sanan Electronics was established in Xiamen. In the first three years, this new business suffered a cumulative loss of about 600 million yuan, which almost wiped out the profits of the steel sector. However, he still has not stopped, and he is not ready to stop.
In 2002, Sanan developed the first epitaxial wafer; in 2003, it achieved mass production of full-color ultra-high-brightness LED chips, breaking the long-term dependence on imports of domestic LED chips.
During the same period, Sanan also bet on solar cells for space use. At that time, Sanan people announced that they would use batteries made in Xiamen for domestic satellites. More than two decades later, Sanan’s gallium arsenide multi-junction solar cells have indeed been used on commercial satellites.
During this period, Lin Xiucheng, who was engaged in high technology, also ran into traditional industries to “touch” it. He took 54% of the shares in Anxi Tea Factory, the largest oolong tea factory in the country, and about 70% of its “Fengshan” special grade Tieguanyin is exported overseas.
An old employee of the tea factory later commented on the new boss: “He’s very shrewd and very financially savvy.”
Three years later, Lin Xiucheng transferred all his shares in the tea factory.
In October 2007, Lin Xiucheng began a larger operation. A long-suspended Hubei listed company *ST Tianyi, the majority shareholder’s equity was forced to be auctioned by the court – the predecessor of this company was a washing powder brand that was popular all over the country. 活力28“. San’an Group invested only 16.781 million yuan and acquired 45.43% of the equity; including the purchase of bankruptcy reorganization assets and debt repayment, the entire I invested about 149 million yuan and borrowed the shell of a listed company.
In July 2008, Lin Xiucheng completed the injection of Sanan Electronics’ LED assets, and *ST Tianyi changed its name to Sanan Optoelectronics and resumed trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In just a few years since then, the Lin family’s paper wealth has increased more than 10 times.
But the more prosperous he is, the less Lin Xiucheng shows up.
Industry insiders describe him as a “typical Anxi businessman in southern Fujian”: Very aggressive, but not talkative.He rarely gives interviews, and it is difficult to find him on Sanan’s official website.
It was not until November 2012 that Lin Xiucheng appeared at a public press conference for the first time, not in Xiamen, but in Taipei. When facing the media in Taiwan, China, he had a conservative attitude and basically answered according to the script he had prepared in advance; only when he talked about talents did he obviously open up his chat box.
Reusing all kinds of talents is also the way to success for Lin Xiucheng’s continuous cross-border challenges.
That trip to Taipei was a footnote to Sanan’s rise to the top.
In November 2012, Sanan Optoelectronics announced that it would invest 505 million yuan in Canqi Optoelectronics, a Taiwanese LED chip factory, holding approximately 19.9% of the shares and becoming the largest shareholder. This is the first time a mainland LED company has invested in a Taiwanese counterpart.
Lin Xiucheng said in Taipei, To improve the industrial status, the first is to expand economies of scale, and the second is to enhance employee salaries and benefits.Therefore, this money “must be used in Taiwan” to make employees feel happy and competitive.
At that time, the Taiwanese industry was both wary and helpless towards Sanan: while accusing it of lowering prices to accept orders and poaching engineers from Taiwanese manufacturers, it watched its production capacity increase.
By 2017, Sanan’s MOCVD equipment has increased from more than 10 units in 2012 to about 360 units, with a global market share of about 12%, and it is still sprinting towards the 30% goal.
International manufacturers such as Samsung and Philips simply handed over their chips to Sanan and gave up on expanding their own production. Because Lin Xiucheng’s style of play made it uneconomical for them to produce on their own, and they had no chance of winning.
This scale of impact has objectively changed the pattern of the global LED industry. Chip prices have been significantly lowered, and the popularity of LED lighting and displays has accelerated. China has transformed from an importer of LED chips into the world’s largest production base.
During this period, Sanan also opened the door to domestic LED chip equipment.
In 2017, Sanan had installed the Prismo A7 MOCVD of China Microelectronics Corporation. At that time, he was the general manager of Sanan. 林科闖According to public evaluation, AMEC is a partner that can meet its advanced technology requirements. As the largest LED chip factory in China, the introduction of Sanan has opened a window for verification and expansion of domestic MOCVD in a market dominated by international giants.
What supports Lin Xiucheng’s rapid expansion is a set of highly replicable formulas: the local government provides land, subsidies, and industrial funds, and San’an provides projects, production capacity, and employment.
Under this model, San’an bases have sprung up one after another in Wuhu, Quanzhou, Changsha, Ezhou, and Chongqing. Among them, Quanzhou Sanan has a total planned investment of 33.3 billion yuan (including public facilities); Hubei Sanan Mini/Micro LED project budget is 12 billion yuan; Hunan Sanan silicon carbide base has a total investment of 16 billion yuan; Chongqing’s silicon carbide joint venture plant has a total investment of about 3.2 billion U.S. dollars, and Sanan has invested another 7 billion yuan to build its own supporting substrate factory.
In the golden age of LED, scale itself was a moat.
The local government wanted industry, and San’an needed funds. The two agreed and hit it off.
According to incomplete statistics from some media, Sanan Optoelectronics has received more than 11.3 billion yuan in government subsidies since its backdoor listing. According to Times Finance, state-owned assets in Hubei, Changsha, Chongqing and other places have invested more than 20 billion yuan in industrial funds for the San’an system in the past few years.
At the same time, Lin Xiucheng’s shares of listed companies were pledged time and time again in exchange for cash needed for expansion.
There have long been gray tracks on this road. Former Executive Vice Mayor of Xiamen 鄭雲峯The public judgment documents of the bribery case show that Zheng Yunfeng accepted property from Lin Xiucheng from 2003 to 2010, and provided advice on corporate tax refunds, headquarters land and other matters.
The biggest fear of leverage is not that it is expensive, but that the cycle will turn around.
Lin Xiucheng’s leverage soon caused huge trouble.
In recent years, the LED industry has experienced a rapid U-turn, with overcapacity and fierce price wars, and Sanan’s fundamentals have continued to be eroded. Silicon carbide, which has high hopes, has also caught up with the price war brought about by the global expansion of production. The production line is still climbing, and depreciation has been pressed up. Also, government subsidies are on the decline, ranging from hundreds of millions to hundreds of millions per year.
And the latest”Lin Xiucheng’s capital operations and even his cooperation with local governments are bound to be filled with other mysteries due to accusations of “official embezzlement and misappropriation of funds.”
Sanan’s operations continued to deteriorate as a result.
In 2025, Sanan Optoelectronics’ revenue was 17.949 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.45%, but the net profit attributable to the parent company was a loss of 353 million yuan – this was the first annual loss since its backdoor listing in 2008.
In March this year, as soon as the news of Lin Xiucheng’s detention came out, Sanan Optoelectronics fell by the limit, losing 24% in 5 trading days. The real chain reaction also occurs at the controlling shareholder level: creditors intensively initiate risk control, loan early expiration clauses are triggered, and recoveries follow one after another.
As of October 14, 1.312 billion shares of Sanan Optoelectronics held by Sanan Electronics and Sanan Group have been 100% judicially frozen, accounting for 26.30% of the total share capital; superimposed on the waiting list for freezing, the cumulative number of shares waiting for freezing has reached 8.213 billion shares, equivalent to 625.89% of their shareholdings. in other words, Every strand of San ‘an Optoelectronics in the Lin family’s hands was stared at by more than six layers of sealing queues.
In June this year, Lin Suzhen, a natural person creditor, applied to the Xiamen Intermediate Court for bankruptcy reorganization of Sanan Electronics and Sanan Group, but it was withdrawn on September 2. On October 15, a new reorganization application came in, and the sponsors were changed to Hubei Changjiang Anxin Industrial Investment Fund and Hunan Lugu Development Group.
The investors back then are now lining up to become creditors.
This is the most intriguing scene in the whole story: it was the local industrial capital that was deeply tied to Sanan in Hubei and Changsha that applied for the reorganization of Sanan’s controlling shareholders.
The expansion achieved through staking will ultimately be settled with control. Lin Xiucheng was made possible by “making economies of scale bigger”, but the leverage added to scale is backfire on the kingdom he built with his own hands.
In July 2017, Lin Xiucheng resigned as chairman of Sanan Optoelectronics, and his eldest son Lin Zhiqiang took over. Sanan built a “wall of separation”: the founder resigned from all positions in the listed company, the second generation took charge of the board of directors, and the professional manager system maintained daily operations.
This wall is legally established. Lin Xiucheng himself does not work for a listed company. The announcement did not disclose which unit the alleged crime of job embezzlement and misappropriation of funds occurred. The outside world cannot and should not directly equate it with the problems of listed companies.
But in reality, Lin Xiucheng never really went far.
He has always been the chairman and general manager of Sanan Group; according to reports, in February 2025, when Chongqing leaders met with the president and CEO of STMicroelectronics, it was “Sanan Group Chairman Lin Xiucheng and his party” who were present.
He withdrew from the list of listed companies, but did not withdraw from Sanan’s poker table.
The people inside the wall still have the surname Lin. The chairman is the eldest son Lin Zhiqiang, the director and deputy general manager are the second son Lin Zhidong, and the vice chairman and general manager Lin Kechuang is Lin Xiucheng’s son-in-law.
A San’an insider said that successor Lin Zhiqiang is “as low-key as his father,” he dresses and eats casually, doesn’t talk much, and rarely interacts with employees except at work.
On the equity side, Lin Xiucheng still holds 59.68% of Sanan Group, which together with Lin Zhiqiang is about 71.83%. Sanan Group then controls Sanan Electronics. Management was given to the son and control remained with the father.
This wall has been hit hard once this year.
On March 30, Lin Kechuang stated at a press conference that the retention of the actual controller was a personal matter and had nothing to do with the company, and announced that he and Lin Zhiqiang would increase their holdings. Only a week later, on April 7, he himself was detained by the Chongqing Yuzhong District Supervisory Committee and opened for investigation. The lien was lifted on October 5, and Lin Kechuang resumed his duties; his share of the commitment to increase holdings was fulfilled by Lin Zhiqiang, who accumulated a total of 3.57 million shares and spent approximately 49.86 million yuan.
The general manager was absent for half a year, but the company continued to operate and deliver to the outside world as usual. From an operational perspective, this wall withstood the first round of impact. Operating data shows the pressure never left.
In the first half of this year, Sanan Optoelectronics’ revenue was 6.468 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 28.04% (mainly due to the fact that revenue from precious metal scrap recycling was no longer recognized, and the year-on-year increase was 8.97% after excluding this factor); the net profit attributable to the parent company was a loss of 98 million yuan, and the loss after deducting non-compliance was 504 million yuan; only the provision for inventory price decline was 329 million yuan.
Taken apart, it is a picture of an alternation between the old and the new: LED epitaxial chip revenue is 3.103 billion yuan, an increase of 11.81%, and the old bank has stabilized amid price increases and high-endization; integrated circuit business revenue is 1.268 billion yuan, a decrease of 15.40%, and filters and silicon carbide are still the biggest drag on profits.
The new bright spot comes from AI. Sanan’s optical chips have established cooperation with four of the top ten optical module manufacturers in the world. 400G and 800G optical chips are shipped in batches, and 1.6T products are sent for sample verification. Sanan is planning to expand its monthly production capacity from 2,750 pieces to 4,500 pieces. Chongqing’s silicon carbide joint venture project announced in March this year that it would enter mass production.
After local subsidies faded away, the pressure of heavy assets put Sanan into a new dilemma: Hunan Sanan’s silicon carbide project had a budget of 16 billion yuan, and as of the end of June, the cumulative investment had reached 21.163 billion yuan, more than 30% over the budget; the Hubei Mini/Micro display project was delayed for two years; the Chongqing substrate project had a budget of 7 billion yuan, but only 1.159 billion yuan was invested.
In the expansion of semiconductors, we are afraid of heavy investment, and we are even more afraid of running out of food halfway through the investment.
Now, after Lin Xiucheng’s arrest was approved, Sanan Optoelectronics must answer at least three test questions:
The first step is how to deal with the frozen 26.30% shares. If the court accepts the reorganization, there will be new investors at the controlling shareholder level, and control of Sanan Optoelectronics may change hands. Who the new shareholders are, at what price they come in, and what resources they bring will directly determine where the semiconductor platform will go next.
The second question is how to resolve the debts of the controlling shareholder. Some media have compiled estimates that the public rigid debt of Sanan Electronics and Sanan Group system is about 12 billion to 15 billion yuan. This accounting is unclear, and it is difficult for listed companies’ financing capabilities, bank credit and funding arrangements for major projects to completely get rid of the discount of “related risks”.
The third question is whether Lin Zhiqiang can prove that the second generation of governance is truly independent. Legal isolation is not equivalent to credit isolation.What suppliers, customers, banks and local governments look at is not only the employment list in the industrial and commercial registration, but also whether the company can still get orders, get money, and make products without leaving the founder’s relationship network.
Whether the separation wall can stand does not depend on how many times it is written “has nothing to do with the company” in the announcement, but whether Sanan can earn back its own money in the days without Lin Xiucheng.
Lin Xiucheng dared to make a big bet in a completely unfamiliar industry, and he was “good” at using the power of place and capital to continuously amplify the bet. Sanan can become an important platform for China’s compound semiconductors, and China can transform from an importer of LED chips into a global production base, which is inseparable from this gambling spirit.
But this gambling nature has piled up a high balance sheet, and also piled risks into his own future and destiny.
Rely on “courage + local resources + capital leverage”After making the company bigger,How to pass it on to the next generation, so that the next generation of enterprises can rely on governance and transparency to survive for a long time?
This is not the proposition of Lin Xiucheng alone, but of a large group of people.要過的關。
[1]Sanan Optoelectronics’ “Announcement on the Progress of Compulsory Measures Taken against the Company’s Actual Controller”
[2]Sanan Optoelectronics’ “Announcement on the Application for Bankruptcy and Reorganization of Controlling Shareholders and Indirect Controlling Shareholders”
[3]Sanan Optoelectronics “2026 Semi-Annual Report”
[4]Business Times “San’an Chairman Lin Xiucheng: Giving Taiwanese Talents a Sense of Happiness”
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