Honoring influencers of China

Winners at the annual You Bring Charm to the World awards ceremony at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Friday. Zou Hong / China Daily

A Hong Kong-based TV network has given awards to 11 people and groups who they claim are the most influential Chinese in the world.

The annual You Bring Charm to the World awards, organized by Phoenix TV and its website Ifeng.com, attempts to honor internationally influential Chinese. This year's awards ceremony was held at Tsinghua University on Friday.

This year, two men received lifetime achievement awards, the first time such an honor has been granted. The recipients were Hong Kong sinology master Jao Tsung-I and nuclear physicist Yu Min.

Jao, who will soon celebrate his 100th birthday, was a pioneer in many of his works. He is the first scholar to render the Babylonian epic Enuma Elish into Chinese and also the first person to make a comparative study of the oracle bone script and the Indus script.

"Professor Jao can speak six foreign languages and multiple dialects. He acts like a cultural bridge connecting China and the West, with most of his foreign students now being the top sinologists in the world," says Phoenix's top talk show host Dou Wentao, also the event's emcee.

Jao was born to a wealthy family in Guangdong province and grew up in a home that boasted more than 100,000 books. He addressed the event via video, saying, "the future success of sinology needs the effort of China and its people". His physical condition would not allow him to travel from Hong Kong to Beijing.

Yu, 89, known as the "father of China's hydrogen bomb", was also unable to attend the event because of health concerns. Yu's son collected the award on behalf of his father.

Chen Luyu, a popular TV host, presented Yu's award, describing the scientist as a committed pacifist who believes the world will ban nuclear weapons and eliminate all nuclear bombs in the future.

Other science winners included Chinese American HIV/AIDS researcher David Da-i Ho and meteorologist Wang Bin, famed for his creative innovation of a global system to predict climate change.

Ho is renowned for his leadership in developing a therapeutic cocktail of protease inhibitors for HIV carriers in the earliest stages of infection.