A time to honor national role models is at hand

It was with a sense of solemnity and awe that I witnessed Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, conferring the July 1 Medal on the honorees on Tuesday.

The process also had grandeur and at times was emotionally touching.

Before the ceremony, the recipients of the medal were received with courtesy on par with that given to visiting heads of state: a motorcycle escort, a warm welcome from pupils waving bouquets and rolling out of the red carpet.

They also arrived, side by side with Xi, at the Great Hall of the People, a place that has also seen the president conferring the Friendship Medal on Russian President Vladimir Putin and presenting the Medal of the Republic to honorees such as the "Father of Hybrid Rice" Yuan Longping and Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou.

Many of the recipients arrived at the hall in wheelchairs, some being attended to by a close relative. Some of the medals were conferred posthumously. Chen Hongjun, commander of a People's Liberation Army infantry battalion, died in a border conflict with India in 2020 and Huang Wenxiu, a college graduate who led poverty alleviation efforts, lost her life in a flash flood in 2019.

But all the medal recipients share one common characteristic: They are all ordinary Party members making extraordinary achievements in their everyday lives and work.

They come from various occupations, different ethnic groups and diverse education backgrounds. And during the ceremony they all struck me with their modesty, simplicity and down-to-earth manner.