People July 3, 2008, 5:00PM EST

Praying for Success in Shanghai

(page 2 of 2)

Chang in the Thanksgiving Church he helped build Andrew Rowat

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He helped fund the church in Shanghai—which opened on Christmas Day 2005—and several others across the country. He emphasizes that the money is his own, not SMIC's, and says the company doesn't force anyone to attend services. "If they want to know more about Christianity," he says, "we encourage them." Pastor Shen Xuebin, associate general secretary of the Shanghai Christian Council, the government body that oversees official Protestant congregations in the city, stresses that it wasn't SMIC that built the Thanksgiving Church. "China's church," he says, "built this church."

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP

Chang, who says he was born again as a teenager in Taiwan, has helped draw many other evangelicals to Shanghai. Matthew Szymanski, an evangelical Christian who joined SMIC in 2007 after working as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill for the Republican House leadership, estimates there are 1,000 Christians among the company's 12,000 employees, including "a substantial minority" of top managers. For instance David Lin, senior director of chip design services, became a Christian in 1993 while working for AT&T Bell Labs in Pennsylvania. Lin and his wife have been active in various churches since arriving in Shanghai in 2002. "Our decision to come to China was primarily because we hope to spread the Gospel," he says.

Pastor Shen says he's happy to get support from Chang and other SMIC executives. There's no conflict, he says, between the Party's goals and what the Christians are doing. "We are contributing to economic reforms," says Shen. Adds Chang: "The government realizes the value of good religion." Indeed, for a government that antagonizes the Vatican by appointing its own bishops, suppresses the indigenous Falun Gong religious movement, and vilifies the Dalai Lama, there might even be some propaganda benefits in courting Chang and his Christian community at SMIC.

Still, religion is a sensitive subject, and Chang makes it clear that his good works aren't just church-related. He has, for instance, funded schools and set up training programs for young SMIC workers, and the company donated $140,000 to victims of the May earthquake in central China. He boasts that SMIC was one of the first Chinese companies to provide psychological counseling services for employees. And SMIC offers stock and options to every worker. "With the Lord's blessing, we believe that stock options may significantly benefit employees," he says. And if more of those employees drop by Thanksgiving Church on Sunday mornings, all the better.

Links

A Blessing for Food Exports

Although China has almost no Jews and few Chinese know the meaning of "kosher," the country is the world's fastest-growing producer of kosher food. Nearly 1,500 mainland factories now make kosher products, National Public Radio reported on Feb. 5. That's not because Chinese diners are giving up pork and shellfish, but because it's good for business. After the recent spate of tainted-food scares, kosher certification helps boost confidence in foods and additives exported from China.

A table accompanying "Praying for Success in Shanghai" (What's Next, July 14 & 21) erroneously stated that Richard Chang, CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMI), was born in Taiwan, where he was raised. He was born in Nanjing, China.

Einhorn is Asia regional editor in BusinessWeek's Hong Kong bureau. Tschang is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Beijing bureau.

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