Since the founding of New China 70 years ago, China's silicone industry has gone through 68 spring and autumn years. At present, China's silicone production capacity reaches 3 million tons per year, ranking first in the world, and has successively broken through foreign technology monopoly.——

Over the past 68 years, with the efforts of several generations, the silicone industry has become one of the few industries in the domestic chemical industry that truly rely on independent innovation and have independent intellectual property rights. It has made remarkable achievements both in technology and in scale, and has become an indispensable part of the world silicone industry. The important power of neglect.

The research and industrialization of silicone industry in China originated in the early 1950s. In 1951, Yang Donglin, a researcher of Beijing Chemical Engineering Laboratory, Ministry of Heavy Industry, used Grignard method to synthesize organosilicon monomers and produce silicone resin, which pioneered the research of organosilicon industry and application in China.

In 1957, Shenyang Research Institute of Chemical Industry built an intermediate test workshop for organosilicon, and carried out direct stirred bed synthesis of methyl chlorosilane and Grignard method synthesis of phenyl chlorosilane, and trial-produced organosilicon polymer. In 1958, at the on-site meeting held by the then State Science and Technology Commission and the Ministry of Chemical Industry, a complete set of technical data and drawings of the workshop were provided to relevant units throughout the country for promotion. So far, China's silicone industry has begun the first round of industrialization process. In the same year, Shanghai Resin Factory built a production plant for direct synthesis of methyl chlorosilane, and successively produced silicone resin, silicone oil and silicone rubber products.

But until the end of 1970s, China's silicone industry has been in its infancy. Polymer production capacity is only tens to hundreds of tons. Silicone products are expensive. They are mainly used in military industry or in some special industries. The implementation of the reform and opening-up policy has made the world's manufacturing industry shift to China, promoted the wide application of organosilicon products in China, and brought the spring of development to the organosilicon material industry.

Over the past decade, other industries have introduced technologies to establish joint ventures or wholly foreign-owned enterprises, while the silicone industry has done little. Foreign companies attempt to monopolize and manipulate the silicone market in China. They do not transfer the production technology of methyl monomers, nor build factories in China, nor even have joint ventures in post-processing products. In this case, domestic enterprises have made breakthroughs in technology by burying their heads in research. In 1998, the 10,000-ton methyl monomer production unit of Lanxing Sparkling Chemical Plant operated normally, and the silicone industry in China has entered a rapid development stage since then.

Under the market economy environment, some methyl monomer production enterprises quit the field because of backward technology or industrial restructuring; while the backbone enterprises such as Starfire Chemical Plant, Xin'an Chemical Group Company and Jilin Petrochemical Company quickened the pace of development, and some enterprises of downstream organosilicon products and related industries also joined in. The construction of methyl monomer production units is in the ranks.