Shaing Yi-Chaing and Liang Mong-Song have some serious beef from the past and they disagreed about SMIC’s direction. Liang made SMIC choose and SMIC chose Liang.
Shaing Yi-Chaing's accomplishments in copper interconnects alone deserve awe; he was ahead of IBM, and he did it on instinct/"the school of hard knocks."
Read his interview.