China’s information landscape is popularly depicted as a black box - China's government increasingly restricts foreign access to a range of data sources, particularly corporate record databases that provide information on company ownership and investments. However, the picture is more complicated than this. When conducting due diligence on corporate ties, there exist a range of alternative publicly-available sources in China that can fill in the mosaic of relationships, including from public company disclosures, regulatory and financial filings, and online media. These alternative sources provide crucial contextual information around transactions and investments that can provide clues to indirect relationships and beneficial ownership.
Chinese corporate databases, while useful at identifying an entity's direct owners, are unwieldy in incorporating this contextual information, which requires an investigator's skill in using incomplete information to make inferences and map connections. Moreover, it's precisely because China publishes such an abundance of corporate record data — even if this data is increasingly fire walled to foreign access — that individuals who wish to hide corporate affiliations often resort to obscuring corporate affiliations through intermediaries, such as family members and offshore entities.
A recent case of a semiconductor executive's indirect ownership, through his wife, in two competitors in China highlights the importance of using alternative sources when conducting due diligence. On April 26, 2026, the Financial Times reported that Tokyo Electron Limited, a Japanese manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, had cut ties with veteran executive Jay Chen (陈捷) following the discovery of investments by his wife in two Chinese competitors: Suzhou WST Semiconductor Technology (苏州芯慧联半导体科技有限公司; “WST”) and Britech Semiconductor Equipment (盛红晔半导体设备（上海）有限公司; “Britech”). According to the article, Chen’s wife, Takako Ohtori (凤昂子) was a founding shareholder of WST and, through an intermediary entity, is one of Britech’s largest shareholders. Tokyo Electron reportedly learned of Chen’s family investments in the autumn of 2024, and replaced him in February 2025, though he stayed on as an advisor until September 2025.
What other public sources might have been useful to establish Chen’s connection with WST and Britech?
First, even before knowing their marital relationship, there is Chen’s business connection with Ohtori. In October 2022, Shanghai GenTech Co., Ltd (上海正帆科技股份有限公司; SH:688596), a supplier of manufacturing systems for the integrated circuit industry, notified investors in a public filing that Chen, as an independent director, was set to acquire shares in a GenTech subsidiary from an investment vehicle that had invested 5 million yuan of subscribed capital in the subsidiary. A subsequent December 2024 disclosure on the buyout of the subsidiary’s minority shareholders showed that another, likely off-shore, entity owned shares equal to Chen’s 5 million yuan of subscribed capital. According to a Chinese press report, this entity was wholly owned by Ohtori. While the filing did not reference Chen, the amounts of capital contribution were the same, suggesting that Chen’s stake was transferred to the entity owned by Ohtori.
Second is WST and Britech. According to corporate filings, in June 2024 WST split off part of its assets into a newly established entity – Wisdom SemiTec (Suzhou) Technology Co., Ltd. (芯慧联新(苏州)科技有限公司). In October 2024 and January 2025, Dalian Bio-Chem Co., Ltd. (大连百傲化学股份有限公司; SH:603360), a Chinese producer of industrial chemicals, acquired, through a subsidiary, a controlling stake in WST and a 10.4% stake in Wisdom SemiTec, respectively. Following the acquisitions, WST chairman LIU Hongjun (刘红军), another former executive of Tokyo Electron, became a director of Dalian Bio-Chem. In February 2025, WST acquired a 9.9% stake in Britech, according to Dalian Bio-Chem’s filings. In September 2025, Chen became a director and deputy chairman of Dalian Bio-Chem. In short, we have identified that within the span of a few months, Dalian Bio-Chem made a major investment in WST, which in turn invested in Britech – both companies affiliated with Chen through Ohtori.
Digging through the potential goldmine of Chinese media, financial and regulatory filings, and public company disclosures can reveal indirect connections between individuals and companies. China does publish a great deal of data on corporate ownership, even if this data is increasingly fire walled from the rest of the world. Ironically, China’s transparency around corporate ownership compels individuals and companies to mask direct involvement through intermediaries, such as family members and offshore entities. Conducting due diligence on Chinese entities therefore requires using contextual information found in alternative sources to fill in the mosaic of relationships, transactions and beneficial ownership.
According to corporate records seen by the FT and people familiar with the matter, he left soon after the Japanese giant discovered his ties to investment vehicles ...
https://www.ft.com/content/dcc1b342-0d2a-4c1d-8e69-8d201dd2dec6?syn-25a6b1a6=1
