Companies in Hangzhou

Wanxiang Group's story is one of China's most famous entrepreneurial rises: in 1969, a 24-year-old farmer named Lu Guanqiu started a small repair shop for agricultural machinery in his village near Hangzhou, with just 4,000 yuan of borrowed capital. The shop began making universal joints (wanxiang jie in Chinese — hence the company name) for tractors, and Lu's obsession with quality turned it into the world's largest maker of automotive universal joints. The group now spans auto parts (driveshafts, bearings, brakes, and its stake in US-listed Wanxiang America — one of the earliest Chinese manufacturers to build plants in the US), clean energy (batteries, solar, and a stake in electric vehicle maker Karma), and finance. Its auto parts business supplies GM, Ford, and most global automakers, and its A123 Systems acquisition brought American lithium battery technology into the fold. With tens of thousands of employees and annual revenue near RMB 100 billion, Wanxiang is one of the few Chinese companies that built a genuine global brand in auto components. Lu Guanqiu, who died in 2017, was celebrated as a model of the reform-era entrepreneur — and Wanxiang remains a benchmark for how a village workshop can become a multinational.