Rashtriya Newsflash

In the spring of 2014, Wang Cheng made up his mind to found Qianshan Capital. Back then, China’s private equity industry stood on the eve of explosive growth. Eleven years later, the sector has gone through a boom and a major reshuffle, shifting from model innovation to deep-tech exploration, and from a nationwide PE craze back to professional, focused investment. Amid this profound industry transformation, Qianshan Capital has evolved from a rising newcomer to an important industry player with its distinctive rhythm and clear strategy.

“We have always been asking ourselves one question: what kind of investment institution can truly navigate through cycles?” Wang Cheng opened the interview with this thought. In the in-depth dialogue that followed, he laid out his answer through the decade-long practice of Qianshan Capital.

A Prepared Evolution

In 2014, China’s private equity industry was caught in a cycle of frenzy. The mobile internet boom spawned a flood of model innovation projects; “trend-chasing” was rampant, and countless firms flocked to the Pre-IPO arbitrage model.

It was against this backdrop that the 29-year-old Wang Cheng chose to start his own business and establish Qianshan Capital.

“The market was overheated, but we saw the other side,” Wang recalled. “Traditional industries were under pressure to upgrade, while emerging sectors such as hard tech and biomedicine were breeding enormous opportunities. Although the PE industry had top-tier institutions, it lacked professional players focused on long-term value and industrial depth.”

This judgment was rooted in two pivotal earlier experiences. During his tenure as a senior industry analyst at Western Securities, he covered high-end equipment manufacturing, energy conservation and environmental protection, building a framework for analyzing trends from macroeconomic and industrial cycle perspectives. His practical experience at Jiuding Investment gave him a full understanding of the PE fundraising, investment, management and exit cycle, especially in project evaluation and risk control.

“These two experiences together formed the core competence foundation for me as a fund leader,” Wang said.

In its early days, Qianshan Capital adopted a “wide-net” strategy, exploring multiple sectors.

“That was a phase for us to test the boundaries of our institutional capabilities,” Wang admitted. “We needed to verify our judgments through practice while accumulating industrial resources and project experience.”

A turning point came in 2018. That year, Qianshan Capital made a decision that seemed contrarian at the time: a strategic shift to hard tech, and a gradual withdrawal from still-popular sectors such as film and television.

“There were intense internal discussions,” Wang recalled. “We had already successfully invested in quality projects in the film and television sector, but from the perspective of long-term track sustainability, the industry’s reliance on short-term traffic and lack of core barriers failed to meet our three criteria: high technological barriers, long industrial cycles, and stable policy support.”

This decision did create performance pressure in the short term, but in hindsight, this “focusing by cutting back” positioned Qianshan Capital ahead of the curve in the hard-tech wave that followed.

“Track selection must focus on areas where we can deliver unique value, not blindly chase hot spots,” Wang concluded. “That is the most profound lesson we learned from cross-sector experimentation.”

If the 2018 strategic shift answered “where to go”, the “Interwoven Latitude and Longitude” project sourcing system built in 2021 solved “how to do better”.

“At its core, the Interwoven Latitude and Longitude system is a two-dimensional layout: in-depth vertical industry chain integration plus horizontal ecological chain collaboration,” Wang explained.

The “longitude” refers to mapping a complete industrial chain for each focused sector, identifying core links, key technological bottlenecks, leading enterprises and potential dark horses, and conducting systematic scanning along the line of upstream materials/equipment – midstream manufacturing – downstream applications.

The “latitude” centers on portfolio companies, sourcing high-quality projects in their upstream, downstream and collaborative fields, forming an ecosystem of post-investment empowerment and project synergy.

This system proved highly effective in practice.

Take Inspur Cloud as an example: Qianshan Capital identified the digital transformation trend of government and enterprise cloud computing via the “longitude” approach, and linked computing power demand and industrial digital resources of its portfolio companies through the “latitude” approach, recognizing Inspur Cloud’s closed-loop advantages in government-enterprise cloud services and full-stack digital solutions.

When sourcing Kunlunxin, the firm vertically focused on the general computing chip segment of the semiconductor sector, and horizontally collaborated with invested AI companies to verify the feasibility of its technology application scenarios.

This combined approach allowed Qianshan Capital to accurately target projects with long-term competitiveness.

“The core trait of our generation of investors is tech-driven and industry-symbiotic,” Wang said, defining the difference between his peers and the previous generation.

“Older investors grew up alongside China’s urbanization and industrialization waves, excelling at spotting opportunities in model innovation and channel reform. We grew up in an era of deep integration between technological revolution and globalization, placing greater emphasis on technological barriers and industrial synergy. We aim to be not just financial investors, but industrial partners for enterprises.”

In its decision-making framework, Qianshan Capital relies on data and systematization. By building industry databases and industrial chain maps, it reduces bias from subjective judgment, emphasizing ecological layout over single-project investment.

“Through this system, we identified the long-term value of projects such as Dapu Microelectronics and Kunlunxin much earlier and held them firmly,” Wang said.

The Confidence to Compete With Giants

Participating in the investments of JD Finance and JD Logistics in 2017 marked a milestone in Qianshan Capital’s development.

As a two-year-old institution, competing alongside top players including Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia China, China Merchants Group and Tencent was in itself proof of its strength.

“The key reason we could access these top projects was our profound industrial resources and precise judgment of project value,” Wang analyzed.

Back then, most institutions viewed JD Finance and JD Logistics as spin-offs of internet giants, using traditional valuation models. Qianshan Capital was among the first to recognize that the integration of JD’s consumer scenarios with finance and logistics represented the prototype of industrial digitalization, with far greater long-term value than pure model innovation.

Beyond differentiated insights, Qianshan Capital seized the financing window, gaining a competitive edge with flexible cooperation and efficient decision-making.

“We do not pursue absolute controlling stakes; our position is long-term partnership. We empower projects precisely through pre-investment strategic planning, post-investment industrial synergy and in-depth integration of upstream and downstream resources,” Wang said.

As a young firm, it had no complex hierarchy and could complete due diligence and decisions rapidly – an advantage especially obvious when co-investing with giants.

These investments laid a comprehensive and solid foundation for Qianshan Capital.

Beyond delivering strong financial returns for LPs and the firm, more importantly, they built brand credibility, earning market recognition for Qianshan Capital’s judgment.

“This laid the groundwork for attracting quality LPs and accessing more top projects later on,” Wang acknowledged.

Hard-tech investment features long cycles and high volatility. Balancing high returns and risk control is a must for every specialized institution.

Qianshan Capital’s answer is a “Three-Layer Firewall” risk control system.

The first layer is track risk control: avoiding sectors with single technological routes and high policy risks. In semiconductors, for instance, it adopts a multi-route layout to reduce risks from betting on a single technology.

The second layer is project risk control: a three-dimensional evaluation model of technological feasibility, commercial validation and team stability. For hard-tech projects, it looks beyond lab data to pilot tests, pilot production and commercial orders.

The third layer is post-investment risk control: a regular review and dynamic adjustment mechanism, with quarterly project reviews. When facing external shocks such as technological iteration or market changes, it promptly helps enterprises adjust strategies – connecting new tech resources, expanding application scenarios.

“Our fund lifetimes are generally longer than the industry average, and our LPs are mostly institutional and high-net-worth individuals with long-term capital. This allows us to withstand short-term market volatility,” Wang added.

Flexible adjustment relies on a research-investment integration mechanism, ensuring the team quickly captures industry changes and optimizes the portfolio.

The effectiveness of this risk control system is reflected in Qianshan Capital’s portfolio.

From Kunlunxin and Inspur Cloud to Dapu Microelectronics and JD Health, its investments have shown strong cycle resilience.

Taking JD Health as an example: in the first half of 2024, its total revenue reached28.3 billion yuan, up 4.6% year-on-year; non-IFRS net profit was2.64 billion yuan, up 8.5% year-on-year.

Change and Constancy: An Answer After 11 Years

Looking back from 2025, Qianshan Capital has transformed from a rising star to a mature player. Yet Wang Cheng is clear that for an investment institution committed to the long term, real challenges always lie ahead.

Qianshan Capital has a clear segmented layout for its heavyweight sectors: AI, semiconductors and smart manufacturing.

– In AI: it focuses on industrial application of large models, embodied intelligence, industrial AI and other areas deeply integrated with the real economy.

– In semiconductors: it anchors core segments of domestic substitution, concentrating on high-end chip design, semiconductor equipment and materials, advanced packaging and testing – the bottleneck links of the industry.

– In smart manufacturing: it targets industrial software, industrial robots and digital production line upgrades that genuinely improve manufacturing efficiency.

“The challenges mainly come from two sides,” Wang admitted. “First, the rapid pace of technological iteration requires us to keep improving our tech judgment and avoid being misled by short-term tech bubbles. Second, supply chain risks amid global competition – some core technologies and materials still rely on imports. We need to explore paths of self-reliance and control alongside enterprises.”

To meet these challenges, Qianshan Capital is already positioning for the future.

Synthetic biology, applied quantum computing, brain-computer interfaces – these early-stage fields are already on its research radar.

“These sectors fit our core logic of technology-driven and demand-oriented. We will gradually allocate capital through small pilot investments and co-investments, and scale up when technological maturity and commercial prospects become clear,” Wang said.

Toward the end of the interview, we returned to the opening question:

What has changed, and what has remained the same for Qianshan Capital over 11 years?

Wang’s answer was concise and profound:

“What has changed is the granularity of track focus and the depth of service capabilities. What has not changed is our original aspiration of long-term value investing.”

He further explained:

The early cross-sector exploration was to test the institution’s capability boundaries. As industry competition intensified, Qianshan Capital gradually focused on high-threshold sectors such as AI, semiconductors and smart manufacturing. Its service capabilities have also evolved from pure capital support to an integrated package of capital, industrial resources and policy connectivity.

Three milestones have defined Qianshan Capital’s journey:

1. In 2017, investing in JD Finance marked its first appearance alongside top PE firms, proving its track judgment and project selection–solving institutional survival.
2. In 2018, the strategic shift to hard tech, despite short-term pressure, laid the foundation for navigating cycles – solving strategic focus.
3. In 2021, the Interwoven Latitude and Longitude system upgraded investment from single-point breakthroughs to systematic layout, improving both project quality and efficiency – solving capability upgrading.

Eleven years on, China’s private equity industry has moved from reckless expansion to rational deep cultivation. Qianshan Capital has grown from a newcomer to an important industry participant.

In an era of uncertainty, Wang Cheng and his team have chosen a harder but more certain path:

not chasing trends, but rooting in industries;

not pursuing short-term returns, but accompanying enterprises to grow;

not expanding blindly, but building systematic investment capabilities.

This may well be Qianshan Capital’s formula for navigating cycles – and the right posture for China’s new generation of investment institutions in the hard-tech era.

Disclaimer: This press release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies (including product offerings, regulatory plans and business plans) and may change without notice. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

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