A scientist who spent his childhood without electricity and a farm boy who taught himself English in two months have won China's highest science honour, as per Chinese media reports. President Xi Jinping handed Chen Liquan and Ben De their State Pre-eminent Science and Technology Award for 2025 at a ceremony inside Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Wednesday. Chen built the country's first lithium battery. Ben gave Chinese fighter jets the radar vision to spot enemy aircraft from far beyond the pilot's own eyesight.
The double honour lands at a moment when Beijing wants to be self-sufficient in both everyday technology and defence hardware. Xi used the ceremony to tell scientists that the country's upcoming five-year plan will be a make-or-break window for turning China into a genuine tech powerhouse. One laureate spent his career powering electric cars. The other spent his powering fighter jets. Between them, they sum up exactly the kind of self-reliance Xi was talking about.
Light At The End Of The Exam Hall
Chen Liquan was born in 1940 in a hilly corner of Nanchong in Sichuan province, in a home lit only by oil lamps. He didn't see an electric bulb switched on until the day he sat his high-school entrance exam. That single moment stuck with him. He decided then that he wanted to spend his life working with power, so that light and convenience wouldn't be a rare event for other children the way it had been for him.
