&#34;90s beauty host took office as secretary of the board and resigned after 11 days. Multiple eye-catching elements have made ChemPartner (300149.SZ), an established CRO (Contract Research Organization), once again a topic of conversation in the industry.
According to ChemPartner's announcement on the evening of December 12, its board secretary Gao Yingying has applied to resign from the position due to job adjustments. Before the new board secretary takes office, the responsibilities of the board secretary will be temporarily handled by the chairman and CEO WOOSWEELIAN (Hu Ruilian).
The focus of industry attention is that ChemPartner only announced the appointment of Gao Yingying as board secretary on December 1, with the original plan for her term to last until the end of the company's sixth board. At that time, Gao Yingying's label as a '90s former television host' had already sparked heated discussions and doubts from the outside world.
However, an important position in a listed company seems to be treated lightly, with an outsider taking office for 11 days and then urgently resigning. The behind-the-scenes story not mentioned in this announcement is enough to pique public interest. The Sing Tao Global Network previously called ChemPartner's board secretary office, and the response was that information regarding the board secretary's changes should be based on the announcement.
The Sing Tao Global Network found that Gao Yingying, who just resigned from ChemPartner, is actually an employee of other holding entities controlled by ChemPartner's actual controller Hu Ruilian. The change in the board secretary position is closely related to the company's ongoing four-year struggle for control.
<h2>The Aftermath of the Board Secretary's Sudden Resignation</h2>
Public information shows that the recently resigned board secretary Gao Yingying was born in 1994 and is currently pursuing a master's degree in business administration at Shanghai Normal University. From July 2016 to September 2022, she worked as a host, planner, and director at Yangjiang Broadcasting and Television Station and Zhongshan Broadcasting and Television Station. In November 2022, she began working as the promotion director at Zhongshan Anxin New Retail Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Anxin New Retail) and became ChemPartner's new board secretary on December 1 after leaving in November 2025.
Board secretaries of listed companies often need to have a solid background in finance, law, or industry expertise. Therefore, even with three years of experience as a promotion director in a retail company, it is inevitable that an ex-television host without a professional background would face external doubts when serving as a board secretary of a listed company.
However, just 11 days later, Gao Yingying, who attracted attention with the label '90s beauty host,' has already 'run away,' and some investors even suspect that this incident is a publicity stunt by ChemPartner's chairman Hu Ruilian.
Tracing the clues reveals that the quick in-and-out 'farce' of the new board secretary may be one of the measures taken by ChemPartner's actual controller Hu Ruilian to cultivate internal forces after regaining power following a four-year struggle for control.
However, Hu Ruilian did not expect that he would ultimately be 'duped' by the new board secretary.
After checking the information, the Sing Tao Global Network found that Gao Yingying's former employer, Anxin New Retail, is controlled by Jiangmen Anxin Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as: Anxin Investment), and the actual controller of Anxin Investment is Hu Ruilian. This relationship is sufficient to transfer Gao Yingying from Anxin Investment to ChemPartner
Before Gao Yingying's high-profile arrival, it is necessary to mention the tangled equity struggle of ChemPartner.
In fact, due to the control struggle over ChemPartner and related cases, Hu Ruilian was ousted in October 2021 and was replaced by Zeng Xianwei as the chairman of ChemPartner.
The turning point came in December 2023, when Zeng Xianwei resigned from his position as chairman and all other roles at ChemPartner. In 2024, he faced administrative regulatory measures from the Guangdong Securities Regulatory Bureau due to issues such as non-compliance with goodwill impairment and irregular information disclosure, and he received a warning letter.
After Zeng Xianwei's departure, Hu Ruilian began to return to ChemPartner in January 2024 and publicly announced his reappointment as chairman in December 2024. During this period, ChemPartner also experienced a series of internal power shifts, including changes in executive personnel, changes in business scope, and changes in investors.
Considering this background, the recent appointment of Dong Yingying as the secretary of the board at ChemPartner seems more like a continuation of Hu Ruilian's internal reshuffling within the company.
<h2>Contemporary &#34;Palace Drama&#34;</h2>
Looking back at ChemPartner's development over the past few years, the frequent changes in chairmanship alone could be considered a large-scale &#34;palace drama.&#34;
ChemPartner was formerly known as ChemPartner, founded in 2003 by Shanghua Pharmaceutical, and became one of the earliest domestic contract research organizations (CROs) alongside WuXi AppTec, Kanglong Chemical, and Tigermed. Riding the wave of innovative drug development, the domestic CRO industry rapidly developed, and ChemPartner once stood shoulder to shoulder with WuXi AppTec.
The founder of ChemPartner was not Hu Ruilian, but Hui Xin from a family of pharmaceutical researchers and his father, Hui Yongzheng. After Shanghua Pharmaceutical, controlled by the Hui family, was privatized from the New York Stock Exchange in 2013, it gradually injected related businesses into ChemPartner and began promoting the latter's backdoor listing in 2017.
In July 2017, the GEM-listed company Quantum High-Tech, which focused on oligofructose and health products, planned to acquire 90% of ChemPartner's equity. The relevant share transfer was ultimately completed in 2018, making ChemPartner a holding subsidiary of Quantum High-Tech, which was renamed &#34;Quantum Biology&#34; at the end of the year.
It is worth noting that at that time, the actual controller of Quantum High-Tech was Zeng Xianjing, while the actual controller of ChemPartner was Hui Xin. Hu Ruilian was seen as a key figure in promoting the acquisition transaction, but at that time, he was more of a third-party financial investor.
Before the aforementioned acquisition transaction began, Mega Star, controlled by Hu Ruilian, had acquired 23.5% of ChemPartner's equity for approximately 540 million yuan, which created a connection between the two.
After the backdoor transaction was completed, Zeng Xianjing held 20.58% of the shares, while the Hui family held 10.39%. However, in June 2019, Zeng Xianjing resigned as chairman, and Hui Xin took over as the top leader. In 2020, the company, which had been renamed &#34;Quantum Biology,&#34; was renamed &#34;ChemPartner.&#34;
In August 2020, Hu Ruilian provided a loan of 200 million yuan to Baben Investment, controlled by Zeng Xianjing. There is also a claim online regarding this loan, stating that it was provided to assist Zeng Xianjing in successfully completing the acquisition of ChemPartner due to a shortage of funds caused by foreign exchange controls and other reasons
Regardless of the purpose, after Hu Ruilian provided the loan, in the case of unsuccessful collection upon maturity, both parties agreed to offset the debt with approximately 6% of the shares of ChemPartner held by Zeng Xianjing.
Based on this agreement, if the share transfer is completed in the future, Hu Ruilian's shareholding in ChemPartner will increase from 9.67% to 15.7%, while Zeng Xianjing's shareholding will decrease from 16.31% to 10.27%, leading to a change in the company's actual controller.
This also laid the groundwork for the subsequent struggle for control.
In January 2021, Huixin, the chairman who had been in office for only two years, announced his resignation, and Hu Ruilian was appointed as chairman. However, just two months later, Hu Ruilian was criminally detained for being involved in a shareholding dispute related to Jilin Jifucan Biotechnology and was suspected of embezzlement; in October of the same year, Hu Ruilian resigned from his positions including chairman and only retained the title of strategic advisor, while Zeng Xianjing's brother, Zeng Xianwei, became the new chairman.
With the departure of the key figure Huixin and the continuous changes in management, multiple directors and executives of ChemPartner began to resign in 2021, leading to a significant loss of research and development personnel. The company's business operations were greatly affected, resulting in a continuous decline in performance, with stock prices and market value shrinking.
As of the close on December 16, ChemPartner reported a share price of 9.48 yuan, with a market value of 4.721 billion yuan, which is almost negligible compared to peers like WuXi AppTec.
<h2>Conclusion of the Struggle</h2>
In December 2023, Hu Ruilian returned to ChemPartner as a candidate for a non-independent director and was re-elected as chairman in January 2024. During the years when Hu Ruilian was out and then returned, the struggle for control between Zeng Xianjing and Hu Ruilian continued.
Due to the previous agreement to offset the debt with shares, the share transfer controlled by Zeng Xianjing's Baben Investment had not been completed, leading to disputes between Hu Ruilian and Zeng Xianjing regarding the transfer of ChemPartner shares since 2021, ultimately evolving into a struggle for control of the company. In July 2024, Hu Ruilian chose to file a lawsuit, and both parties officially went to court.
After nearly a year, Hu Ruilian finally obtained the transferred shares in May 2025, becoming the true controlling shareholder of ChemPartner.
However, by this time, ChemPartner had already lost its former glory amidst the turmoil in management.
According to Sing Tao Global Network, ChemPartner's revenue in 2021 was nearly 1.7 billion yuan, but it recorded a net loss for the first time. In the following three years, revenue continued to decline, and losses gradually expanded, with a cumulative loss of 2.2 billion yuan from 2021 to 2024.
Returning to the forefront, Hu Ruilian was also well aware of the heavy blow that the turmoil in management and the struggle for control had brought to ChemPartner, stating that the core issue of the company's predicament lies in the &#34;lack of strategic stability and disordered organizational structure.&#34;
However, Hu Ruilian also began to frequently appear in the media, promoting his transformation plans and developments, such as re-establishing three core strategies, focusing on ADC (antibody-drug conjugates), small nucleic acids, and multi-peptides on the business side, vigorously promoting the &#34;one-stop service&#34; model, and simultaneously advancing global layout, such as establishing a research and development center in Boston and designing a biopharmaceutical park in Malaysia
At present, Hu Ruilian's focused strategy seems to have shown initial results, but in a situation where the industry landscape has already taken shape and the market is changing, how much of the lost past ChemPartner can recover remains a question mark.
Editor: Liang Jingqin

300149

ChemPartner erupted in a "palace intrigue" incident, as the 90s-born beauty host Gao Yingying resigned just 11 days after taking office as the secretary of the board, attracting industry attention. Gao Yingying was originally an employee of Hu Ruilian, the actual controller of the company, and other holding entities. Her resignation is related to the ongoing four-year struggle for control of the company. The announcement did not mention the reason for her resignation, and the outside world is full of curiosity about this matter

ChemPartner exploded with a "palace intrigue" battle as a post-90s beauty company secretary resigned urgently after just 11 days in office