Veteran engineer honored for scientific dedication

Zhong Jue, a veteran engineer, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor at the Central South University in Hunan province, was awarded the July 1 Medal — the Communist Party of China's highest honor — at a ceremony in Beijing recently.

For more than six decades, Zhong has been a driving force in China's heavy industry, from steelmaking to aerospace manufacturing, embodying the spirit of scientific dedication and patriotic service.

After she was conferred the award, Zhong told her colleagues,"I feel deeply unworthy of this honor," adding that her achievements were possible only "under the Party's guidance, with the help of comrades and the support of friends".

Born in 1936 in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, Zhong grew up amid the turmoil of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

Her family fled to Chongqing and the sight of a nation ravaged by war left an indelible mark on her young mind.

"Only when the motherland is strong can its people live in peace," she said in reference to a long-held belief.

That determination crystallized during a high school visit to a steel plant.

Watching workers skillfully handle flying sparks, a teenage Zhong resolved to devote herself to the country's heavy industry.

She enrolled at the Beijing Institute of Iron and Steel Technology (now the University of Science and Technology Beijing), becoming one of the only two women among more than 300 students that year to major in metallurgical machinery.

After graduating in 1960, Zhong joined the Central South Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (now the Central South University) in Changsha, Hunan province, where she dedicated herself to metallurgical machinery.

She worked alongside steelworkers at major steel companies, taking night shifts and swinging sledgehammers. She also led students in emergency repair work, climbed several stories to fix equipment and returned covered in grease and oil.

One of her most celebrated achievements came in the late 1970s, when Wuhan Iron and Steel imported a hot-rolling mill from overseas. During no-load trial runs, critical components failed, and foreign experts immediately blamed Chinese operators for improper maintenance.

Zhong, then a lecturer, and her team vehemently denied the false accusation.

Using a theory they had developed independently, they demonstrated that the failure resulted from design and manufacturing flaws in the imported equipment rather than operator error.

Faced with irrefutable evidence, the foreign supplier acknowledged responsibility, paid compensation and revised the design based on the Chinese team's recommendations.

"If we had lost, we would have lost national dignity," Zhong said."It was our finest victory."

In 1986, Zhong turned her attention to another national challenge — aluminum.

At the time, China relied on imports for 70 percent of its high-performance aluminum products, while its domestic bauxite was of relatively low quality and reserves were expected to last for less than a decade.

In her 60s, Zhong became chief scientist of a major State research program aimed at improving aluminum production technology.

For nearly a decade, she led a collaborative effort involving more than 100 researchers from various universities, research institutes and enterprises.

The team's innovations extended China's bauxite resource security to about 60 years, broke foreign technology blockades and enabled many high-performance aluminum products to be produced domestically instead of being imported.

Now in her late 80s, Zhong remains active in scientific research, leading efforts to develop manufacturing technologies for super-large aluminum-alloy components used in heavy-lift carrier rockets. Her team has successfully produced key components and equipment, providing crucial support for China's aerospace industry.

Beyond research, Zhong has mentored hundreds of graduate students during her more than six decades as an educator.

Her first graduate student, Yang Yongxue, said she was "extremely strict" in academic supervision but "like a mother" in daily life, always attentive to her students' well-being.

Zhong joined the CPC in 1986 and has remained true to her principles ever since.

"The shelf life of a Party member is a lifetime," she said.

These days Zhong leads a simple life, carrying her work documents in a cloth bag and eating her meals in the campus canteen.

"If we fail to cultivate the talent the nation needs, we are unworthy of this era," she added.