Zhong Nanshan : The Medal of the Republic laureate

Zhong Nanshan

President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, presents the Medal of the Republic to Zhong Nanshan at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on September 8, 2020

Dr Zhong Nanshan is a renowned respiratory disease expert in China. He received the Medal of the Republic, the highest state honor, for his outstanding contribution to fighting the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. 

Dr Zhong was born in October 1936 in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. In 1960, he graduated from Beijing University Medical School and worked at the School. During 1979 to 1981, he studied at the Edinburgh University and London University as a fellow scholar, majoring in research of hyperoxia and hypoxia and their impacts on pulmonary blood circulation. Zhong became president of the Chinese Thoracic Society in 2000 and became president of the Chinese Medical Association in 2005. He is currently the director of the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Thoracic Disease.

Zhong discovered the SARS coronavirus back in 2003 and played an important role in the country's fight against the epidemic as a leading scientist. He was voted one of China's top 10 scientists in 2010. He is also one of the most respectable and trusted figures during China's battle against

COVID-19 and serves as an adviser to the government in managing the crisis.

Zhong Nanshan was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.

Source：The Press Office, International Department of the CPC Central Committee