Top honour for 93-year-old engineer behind China’s first nuclear submarine
Huang Xuhua endured the deprivations of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to help realise a national ambition
For more than three decades, Huang Xuhua was little known beyond the small team of researchers he worked with to design China's first nuclear submarine.
But on Friday Huang was one of 600-plus people honoured at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for his contribution as an “ethical worker”.
The 93-year-old engineer was thrust into the spotlight when President Xi Jinping invited Huang to sit next to him for a group photo, state media reported.
It was a mark of recognition of the value of his work but the Wuhan Evening News quoted Huang as saying that he preferred to remain low profile.
Now emeritus director of China Shipping Building Industry Corporation’s Second Ship Design Institute, also known as the No 719 Research Institute, in Wuhan, Huang joined the 29-member team selected to develop China’s first nuclear submarine in 1958.
The project was launched to bolster China’s nuclear deterrence against the West, as well as the Soviet Union after Beijing and Moscow fell out over an ideological dispute.