Our research institute was founded in 2003, at a time when China was blazing a path toward prosperity and integrating itself into the global industrial supply chain. The old, sprawling state-owned factories were undergoing transformation one after another. Our RTP (Rapid Thermal Processing) business originated from a key semiconductor research instrument developed for and commissioned by the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1988. At that time, RTP systems were subject to an embargo against China. My father had been leading this division at State-Owned Factory 706. However, as the factory wound down, its RTP division faced termination. Encouraged by professors from Peking University, Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Semiconductors, my father turned down an opportunity in Hong Kong, and instead, resolved to establish this company to ensure continued support for the RTP instruments already widely used and trusted by research groups throughout China.

That year, the institute occupied a walkway deep within the 798 Complex. It was a bricked-up passage on the second floor connecting two buildings—sandwiched between the factory floor and the cafeteria. A space dismissed even by the artists who had flocked to 798, yet it was leased to my father for RTP equipment research and development. Being merely a retrofitted walkway, it lacked all basic utilities: no heating, no drainage, no running water, no power supply. Everything had to be routed in from elsewhere, starting from scratch. We salvaged wooden desks, cabinets, and workbenches from abandoned workshops, along with drafting tables manufactured in East Germany during the 1950s. When winter set in, the cold was biting. As a makeshift solution, we installed rows of halogen lamps—originally intended for RTP systems—directly onto the walls to stay warm. At the time, sensors were neither as varied nor as accessible as they are today, and chillers were a rare sight. Consequently, the early RTP models from East Star were deliberately engineered to operate on tap water and single-phase power—a design choice driven by the limited resources available to researchers at the time. In the 1960s, Chinese technicians recovered a type of needle-scale potentiometer from a U-2 spy plane shot down over Chinese territory. Capable of ultra-precise resistance adjustment, this component became the cornerstone of the temperature control system for both the KST-02 and the RTP300. Ultimately, the RTP300 found its way to the United States, serving American scientific research and education. It stands as a remarkable testament to "turning swords into ploughshares"—a piece of history where technology built for hostility now fuels scientific cooperation.

Ours was a scholarly family. My great-grandfather earned the Jinshi-degree under the Qing Dynasty and stood opposite Mr. Lu Xun during the "Battle of the Papayas", representing respectively the "conservative" and the "progressive" camps. Yet a century later, the wheel of fortune has done a full circle: China has returned to championing traditional culture and honoring Confucius. Truth endures, knows no politics, nor hierarchy of status; its validation demands both practice and the test of time. My grandfather served as a professor in the History Department at Zhejiang University, before assuming directorship of the Nanjing Library and later the Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. My father was born in Chongqing in 1944—hence the character "Yu" in his name. By his birth, Chongqing had endured three consecutive years of aerial bombardment by Japanese forces. Above the wartime capital, foreign weapons of death loomed incessantly; the humiliation of that era is now hard to fathom. Spurred by this, my father's generation collectively turned to science and engineering, painfully aware of the acute shortage of technical know-how in China. The nation's shift from "right" to "left" coincided with its transition from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial one. This is not to say agriculture is backward—rather, in the age of industry, an agrarian nation could no longer secure a quiet desk from which to expound upon the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. China had to strive for "self-strengthening". I myself attended the Beijing Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (now Beihang University), majoring in aircraft design. But by that era, national policy had shifted towards prioritising wealth creation; building airliners yielded less immediate profit than manufacturing door-frames or vertical stabilizers for Western aircrafts. Today, as China faces critical technological blockades in commercial aviation and semiconductors, time and practice have once again put before us this ancient wisdom: one must seek not only prosperity, but also strength, and above all, independence through self-reliance. The principle that East Star has pursued, pursues now, and will continue to uphold is thus: integrity and wisdom that stand the test of time, be it "East" or "West".

He Ning

Beijing,