Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent founders nominated along with deceased national role models in honours list marking 40 years of economic reform

The founders of China’s three biggest technology companies, Baidu, Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings – collectively known as BAT – are expected to receive national honours for their contributions to economic reform, putting them on the same pedestal as the first female Chinese Nobel laureate and deceased Communist Party role models.

Up to 100 individuals will be honoured as part of the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening up, according to Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, which published the nominee list on Monday as part of a five-day public review.

Robin Li Yanhong, chairman and chief executive of Baidu, is acknowledged for “pushing forward the development of artificial intelligence and big data, and technological implementation in fields including manufacturing, automobiles, education, finance and services”, as well as social governance, according to the announcement.

The commendation committee also gave a nod to Li’s decision to return to China from the US in 2000 to establish Baidu, which it said has become the “second largest” search engine in the world. Google, the world’s largest search engine, quit the China market in 2010 due to censorship and hacking issues, allowing Baidu to capture most of the Chinese market.

Under Jack Ma, Alibaba has become one of the world’s top 10 companies by market capitalisation and has enabled China to advance its competitiveness in e-commerce, internet finance and cloud computing, People’s Daily wrote about Ma’s nomination.

“The electronic world trade platform (eWTP) proposed by [Ma] was included in the G20 communique [in Hangzhou in September 2016] and is now an important private sector force behind the Belt and Road Initiative,” it added.