Vice President earning 1.93 million annually resigns; HR records at Dong-E E Jiao

Ask AI · Pay raises outpace performance growth—what’s the logic behind the HR strategy?

On March 24, Dong’e E-Jiao issued an announcement. Deputy General Manager Li Qingchuan resigned. The reason was “work adjustment,” and after resigning, he switched to the position of副书记 to the Party committee.

Li Qingchuan is an post-80s executive, born in 1982. In June 2023, he was hired as Deputy General Manager. His original term was set to run until August 2027, but now he is effectively leaving the role early. In 2025, his annual salary was 1.9335 million yuan, ranking third among executives, behind the General Manager Sun Jinni’s 2.0880 million yuan and Deputy General Manager and CFO Ding Hongyan’s 1.9472 million yuan. A core executive with nearly a $2 million annual salary was moved out of the deputy general manager post after less than three years, which has sparked curiosity.

Looking at Li Qingchuan’s resume, he had worked at China Resources Sanjiu for a long time—rising from an OTC representative all the way to National Chain KA Manager and then KA platform General Manager. In 2023, he was nominated by the then General Manager Cheng Jie to join Dong’e E-Jiao. Internal reshuffling within the China Resources system is normally routine, but switching positions in less than three years suggests either his personal growth path changed, or the company came up with new ideas about the direction of this line of business.

According to the annual report data, in 2025 Dong’e E-Jiao’s revenue was 6.7 billion yuan, up 8.83%; net profit attributable to shareholders was 1.74B yuan, up 11.66%. Performance is still growing, but compared with the previous two years, the growth rate has clearly slowed: 2023 revenue growth was 16.66%, 2024 was 30.57%, and 2025 was only 8.83%. After two years of recovery-style high growth, the company is entering a period of steady development.

What’s interesting is the pay raise magnitude. Li Qingchuan’s pre-tax compensation in 2024 was 1.5317 million yuan, and in 2025 it rose to 1.9335 million yuan—a 26% increase—more than double the rate of performance growth. The entire executive team’s total compensation in 2025 was 11.9626 million yuan, averaging nearly 1.8 million yuan per person. That puts it in the upper tier among companies in the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

Dong’e E-Jiao has had quite frequent executive changes in recent years. In 2022, former General Manager Gao Dengfeng left; in 2023, Cheng Jie took over; in 2024, Cheng Jie stepped down and Sun Jinni took office. In three years, it has had three General Managers. Now the Deputy General Manager role has also changed. During 2025, the company had more than 7 personnel changes among its directors, supervisors, and senior management, and in September it appointed three new Deputy General Managers at once—Li Guozheng, Chen Longjian, and Zheng Liang.

Li Qingchuan’s resignation by itself may not be a big deal, but viewed against the backdrop of ongoing turbulence within Dong’e E-Jiao’s executive team, the adjustment of a core business executive with an annual salary of 1.93 million yuan after less than three years on the job—combined with a pay raise that far outstrips performance growth—makes the logic behind this personnel account more worth scrutinizing than the numbers themselves.