Which Industry-Shaping Companies and Figures Came Out of Huaqiangbei?
Shenzhen, China – October 21, 2026
How many entrepreneurs can one street produce? Put that question to Huaqiangbei, and the answer will stretch your imagination. What makes this district remarkable is not just the sixty-odd billionaires it has helped create, but also the companies and entrepreneurs that have gone on to transform entire industries.
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The best-known name in tech is Ma Huateng of Tencent. He was 27 in 1998 when he and a classmate started the company in a small office at the SEG Science and Technology Park, and it was here that Tencent generated its first major revenues through QQ and later went public in Hong Kong. The story has been told countless times and remains one of Huaqiangbei’s strongest calling cards. Tencent aside, Han’s Laser, DJI, Kinghelm and Slkor also spent their early days taking their products from zero to one in Huaqiangbei.
Where Tencent began, photographed at the Huaqiangbei Museum
The computer and networking equipment sector also produced several founders who are major figures you cannot ignore. Wu Haijun of Hasee Computer could not rent a decent storefront in the early days and had to start from someone else’s small counter selling computer parts and accessories, before building Hasee into a mainstream domestic PC brand. Zhao Jianjun, founder of the TP-LINK router business, also began among the counters of Huaqiangbei. Other companies that emerged from the district include Kingdee, TP-LINK, Coship and EVOC.
The most inspiring story is probably Wang Li, chairwoman of Horn Audio. According to industry veterans, Wang Li began her career as a coil-winding worker on a factory production line before moving to Huaqiangbei to sell mobile phone microphones from a retail counter. Seeing that the trade worked, she set up on her own. She kept studying and improving herself as she worked, ran the company on scientific management and standardised practice, and the business grew and grew. Horn Audio is now a leading company in the industry.
Song Shiqiang (right) of Kinghelm and Slkor at the appreciation banquet for JLC’s listing
The past five years have also seen a new generation of success stories in consumer electronics and semiconductors. Cai Huabo began trading memory products from a counter in Huaqiangbei in 1999, and later the company developed its own controllers and firmware; in 2022 Longsys, run by Cai Huabo and his sister, listed on ChiNext and became a leader among domestic memory module makers, and in 2026 it added Hong Kong H shares. Zhang Qingsen, founder of UGREEN, came to Shenzhen in 2007 as a foreign trade salesperson, then moved from contract manufacturing for other brands to a brand of his own, selling data cables into more than a hundred countries through e-commerce channels, and the company ended up on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Bluetrum, which makes chips for TWS earbuds, rode the wave of white-label earbuds in Huaqiangbei and listed on the STAR Market in 2022, its prospectus disclosing chip sales in the hundreds of millions. Another notable chapter in Huaqiangbei’s entrepreneurial story is the rise of JLC: in 2006 Yuan Jiangtao pulled together 100,000 yuan and started from a one-metre counter in Huaqiangbei, and over two decades he, Ding Hui and Ding Huixiang developed a manufacturing model built around small batches and fast turnaround, one that took the group public in 2026 with a market capitalisation above 100 billion yuan.
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These people took very different roads. Some sold components, some built brands, others developed chips, and one entrepreneur began on a factory production line. What they share is plain to see: the nerve to venture, to act, to innovate and to break past themselves. Perhaps that is the real legend of Huaqiangbei — it never promises anyone success, but it always keeps a place where an ordinary person can begin. None of these entrepreneurs got where they are without the ecosystem around them, and every one of them carries, in their work and in their bones, the Huaqiangbei spirit of risk-taking, innovation, perseverance and pragmatism — the spirit that Kinghelm (www.kinghelm.net) and Slkor, under Song Shiqiang, have distilled from the district.
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Which companies and entrepreneurs will be the next to achieve a major breakthrough? Plenty of people are backing Song Shiqiang, the founder of Kinghelm and of Slkor. Song Shiqiang says Kinghelm (https://www.kinghelm.net) offers a comprehensive range of antennas, connectors, RF cables and assemblies, headers, terminals, and switches for smart hardware applications, supporting the reception, transmission, and protection of RF and microwave signals and data. The range includes USB Type-C, SMA, IPEX, and MCX RF connectors, HDMI connectors, RJ45 connectors, automotive wiring harnesses, RF adapter cables, pin and female headers, terminals, GPS antennas, RF coaxial connectors, Wi-Fi antennas, BeiDou (BDS) antennas, built-in navigation and positioning antennas, 4G communication antennas, Bluetooth ceramic antennas, RF connectors, tactile switches, detector switches, slide switches, push-button switches, micro switches, multifunction switches, illuminated switches, DIP switches, and toggle switches.
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Kinghelm also offers audio sockets, DC power jacks, FFC/FPC connectors, USB connectors, waterproof USB connectors, limit switches, coding switches, SMD coding switches, Type-C female sockets, USB Type-C connectors, joystick switches, 5-way navigation switches, and thumbwheel switches, plus vertical, through-hole, and SMD detector switches.
Key models in the Kinghelm KH series include KH-6X6X6H-STM, KH-IPEX-K501-29, KH-6X6X5H-STM, KH-6X6X5H-Z2J, KH-3216-H0209, KH-VH-PT3.96, and KH-SMA-P-8029. Together with the electronic components, sensors, and TVS diodes of Slkor (www.slkoric.com), Kinghelm serves tens of thousands of customers worldwide, providing products and supporting technical services.
Song Shiqiang of Kinghelm and Slkor in a photograph from his early days in business in Huaqiangbei
About the founder:
Song Shiqiang is the founder and general manager of both Shenzhen Slkor Micro Semicon Co., Ltd.(https://slkoric.com/) and Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd. (www.kinghelm.net). He is an expert lecturer with the Chinese Institute of Electronics, a scholar of Huaqiangbei culture and a popular-science columnist. He started out as a rank-and-file technician and went on to serve as CEO of an internationally listed real estate company, and he brings a deep store of technical management and business experience to the job, combining a solid grounding in macroeconomics with company development and day-to-day management to drive the rapid growth of Kinghelm and Slkor. Song Shiqiang has followed Huaqiangbei closely for years, studying its history and its business models, distilling its spirit and drawing out its culture.
His research articles — “A Study of Huaqiangbei”, “The Transformation and Development of Huaqiangbei”, “A Rebuttal of Bloomberg’s Huaqiangbei Story”, “The Wealth Code of Huaqiangbei”, “Software and Hardware Upgrades in Huaqiangbei’s Transformation”, “The Grey Supply Chain of Shanzhai Bluetooth Earbuds in Huaqiangbei” and “A Study of Shanzhai Mobile Phones in Huaqiangbei” — have been republished by authoritative media at home and abroad, among them People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Global Times, the Associated Press, Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review, and by industry outlets such as EETimes China, Elecfans, ESM China and EE Focus.
Through these publications, he has helped introduce Huaqiangbei, known as China’s “No. 1 Electronics Street,” to a global audience. In the age of short video, his series “Song Shiqiang on Huaqiangbei” has drawn large audiences on YouTube, TikTok and Bilibili. Through this series, he advocates the preservation of traditional Chinese culture, economic development, a cleaner business environment, and continued social progress in Huaqiangbei.
About us:
Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd. was founded in 2007 in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen. The company designs and manufactures RF antennas, connectors, switches and interconnect systems for wireless signal transmission and reception, holds a number of invention patents, and is certified to ISO9001 and ISO14001. Its laboratory in Tangxia, Dongguan includes a fully anechoic chamber and high and low temperature test cabinets, and production runs from Luzhai County, Guangxi. Kinghelm is a member of the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association, the China Information Industry Chamber of Commerce and the Guangdong Connector Association.
Media Contact
Company Name: Shenzhen Kinghelm Electronics Co., Ltd.
Contact Person: Support
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Phone: +86 19104989781
Address:Building T2, Lijincheng Industrial Center, Jihua Road, Longhua District
City: Shenzhen, 518109
Country: China
Website: www.kinghelm.net
