THREE Shenzheners are among 100 people nationwide to receive a State award for their outstanding contributions to China’s reform and opening up, as yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the policy.

They stood out from 1,000 individuals nationwide to be selected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

The three Shenzheners are Yuan Geng, Yu Guogang and Pony Ma.

Yuan, a Shenzhen native who passed away at 99 years old in 2016, was the former executive vice chairman of China Merchants Group and former director of Shekou Industrial Zone Management Committee.

Yuan is known for being a bold innovator. He put forward a series of new concepts adapted to the market economy and carried out a number of reforms, helping make Shekou the birthplace of China’s reform and opening up.

Yuan established China’s first export-oriented industrial park in Shekou, which nurtured a number of excellent enterprises, such as China Merchants Bank and Ping An Insurance.

Yuan’s courage to explore and innovate has provided valuable experience while making important historical contributions to China’s reform and opening up, said the DT News, a news app under the Shenzhen Special Zone Daily. He was awarded the Gold Bauhinia Star by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2003.

Yu, former vice manager of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE), witnessed and participated in the birth and development of China’s capital market.

The 74-year-old was responsible for the preparation of the SZSE in 1988 and learned from foreign securities market laws and regulations to lay the institutional foundation of the SZSE, which significantly promoted the standardized development of China’s securities market.

Yu, a native of Ankang in Shaanxi Province, has also pushed ahead the SZSE’s digital services, making the SZSE a well-known stock exchange in the Asia-Pacific region, and even the world, and leading its securities trading system to occupy a leading position globally.

Ma, a native of Shantou in Guangdong, is the chairman of the board and CEO of Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd. Benefiting from reform and opening up, Ma, now 47, founded and led Tencent from a small business with only five people to one of the most influential Internet companies in the world.

Ma is also hailed for promoting the “Internet+” concept and Internet applications, such as WeChat and QQ, and functions like mobile payment, which gave a boost to the digital transformation and upgrading as it relates to people’s livelihood, government affairs, production and consumption, and life and health, as well as protecting the ecological environment. He has also won “Distinguished Chinese Private Technology Entrepreneur” and “Southern Guangdong Outstanding Contribution” awards.

The other award-winners include Li Yining, a leading voice for the transformation of State-owned companies into joint stock companies, whose advocacy led to the establishment of China’s stock markets in 1990, and Zhong Nanshan, a pulmonologist who discovered the SARS coronavirus in 2003.

(Zhang Yu)