Innovators break foreign monopoly on copper

Today, the material not only supports China's heavy-ion accelerator projects but is also used in semiconductors, electronics and other emerging industries.

In recognition of her contribution, Wang was honored as one of the outstanding members of the Communist Party of China earlier this year.

She insists the achievement was never about a single individual. More than 80 percent of the project's core team are Party members.

"From the R&D team to the pilot production team, Party members were always on the front line," Wang said. "Their leadership by example and willingness to take on the toughest tasks made all the difference."

She still remembers weekends spent in the workshop, where engineers worked through the night, waiting for test results before immediately adjusting the next production process.

"Once a task was assigned, everyone simply got to work," she said. "No complaints. No hesitation."

The determination behind the breakthrough was forged long before Wang became a company executive.

After graduating with a degree in electrical automation in 1994, she joined Jinchuan as a maintenance engineer. Her classroom was the factory floor, where she followed technicians through equipment installation and commissioning, learning not only how machines worked but also how materials were made.

"The equipment serves the process, and the process serves the product," she said. "The more I understood the equipment, the more I wanted to understand how better materials could be made."

That curiosity gradually led her from equipment maintenance into materials research.

Over the next three decades, Wang helped transform Jinchuan from a conventional copper processor into a producer of high-end strategic materials.

One milestone was the development of large-diameter seamless cupronickel pipes for marine engineering. Built on more than two decades of technological accumulation, Jinchuan's products have reached internationally leading standards, replacing imported products while also serving customers around the world.

The years of steady accumulation also laid the technical foundation for the later breakthrough in high-purity oxygen-free copper.

Today, alongside managing one of China's leading precision copper producers, Wang spends much of her time mentoring young engineers. Many of the company's innovation teams are led by engineers in their 20s and 30s, while senior experts provide technical guidance.

She often shares with them the lesson that has defined her own career.

"There are no shortcuts in scientific research," she said. "Real innovation begins on the factory floor."