Building Better Worlds: All of them, better worlds...
Chin Hua Heavy Industries was the largest privately-owned corporation in the Eastern Bloc for many years. A conglomerate, it had divisions involved in almost every area of industry and commerce, from steel mills and asteroid mining, to consumer electronics and financial advisors. They built starships, had their own shipping line, and processed food additives.
And then the Vin Shriak came and destroyed the Eastern Bloc. With most of their physical facilities destroyed or heavily damaged, and large proportions of their employees and customer base dead, the company went into a steep decline. Several of its divisions were sold off to Anshin Heavy Industries, its longtime competitor, who had weathered the Vin Shriak invasion better due to doing more business in Federation space and being less focused solely on the Eastern Bloc market. What was left of the company reorganized itself to focus on the one hand on industries supporting the rebuilding of the shattered infrastructure of the former Eastern Bloc worlds, as they were repopulated with new settlers from the Federation core worlds; and on the other hand on military contracts for the Federation Military to satisfy the Clarke regime's insatiable demand for armaments to continue the long and futile war against the Bugs.
Season Eight Alternate Timeline[]
When the Vin Shriak came and destroyed the Federation, Chin Hua Industries eagerly moved into new markets and made a fortune off of rebuilding the shattered infrastructure of former Federation worlds, for example being the lead subcontractor in building the Yang Liwei Spaceport on Jennifer's Star. Chin Hua replaced Harrington Industries as the largest company in human space.
Behind the Scenes[]
Chin Hua began as a running gag in illustrations Martin Hohner created for the Season Eight game, inspired in part by the ubiquity of the Blue Sun Corporation in Firefly. Its first appearance was as a logo on the Cargo Pods carried by James Welthammer's freighter Resolve.