China recognises statesmen, engineers, entrepreneurs and diplomats whose skills played a vital part in reforming economy and elevating country to powerhouse status
China honoured 10 foreigners on Tuesday, including Singapore’s late founding father Lee Kuan Yew, for their part in realising the policy of reform and opening up that propelled China’s economic miracle.
The recipients of the China Reform Friendship Medals are foreigners Beijing regards as having played a key role in helping China open up to the world economically and diplomatically.
Lee, once praised by Chinese President Xi Jinping as “an old friend of the Chinese people”, was awarded for leading Singapore to “deeply engage” in China’s reform and opening. The city state has been an inspiration for China on how to achieve economic prosperity under one-party rule.
Two Japanese – former prime minister Masayoshi Ohira and industrialist Konosuke Matsushita – made the list, lauded respectively for their contribution to normalising Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations and bringing electronics giant Panasonic to China’s newly opened market.
Maurice Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, is also an award recipient. Greenberg was among the first American people to do business in China following Richard Nixon’s efforts to re-establish ties in the 1970s.
Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based commentator, said that by hailing the contribution of foreigners, Beijing was seeking to ease concerns over its commitment to economic reform.
“The environment China is facing has been deteriorating amid the Sino-US trade war, and many worry China may not continue to open up,” Hu said.
“By praising these foreigners’ contributions, China is trying to stabilise the inflow of foreign investment, and to reaffirm that it would keep expanding external exchanges, including technology, human and education.”
Mérieux, a French businessman and the chairman of Institut Mérieux, a medicine and public health conglomerate specialising in diagnostics, immunotherapy and nutrition, is recognised for his contribution to China’s health care industry.
Since his first visit to China in 1978, Mérieux, grandson of Marcel Mérieux, the founder of the institute, worked closely with China, especially on major public health issues, including outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and H7N9 bird flu, according to a report by Yicai.
Institut Mérieux has set up research centres in China, most notably the country’s first high-security biosafety laboratory in Wuhan, Hubei province in 2014. That can handle Class 4 pathogens (P4) – viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission, such as those that cause haemorrhagic fevers like Ebola.
Gerich was described as the first foreign factory director of a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
The German engineer, then 65, arrived in 1984. Gerich, along with two other Germans, was sent by the Bonn-based Senior Experten Service, which is a voluntary organisation that puts the expertise of retired German professionals to work in other countries. He was first hired as a consultant at a state-run diesel motor factory in Wuhan, in central China.
