(Yicai) June 24 -- Li Deren, a Chinese remote sensing expert, and Xue Qikun, a condensed-matter physicist, have won China's top annual science awards.

Li from Wuhan University and Xue, president of Shenzhen's Southern University of Science and Technology, received the 2023 Highest Science and Technology Awards in Beijing today. The prize is CNY8 million (USD1.1 million) for each.

After a two-year pause to adjust the selection criteria, the latest move shows that China has restarted giving the highest acknowledgment in science and technology. Established in 2000, the award has been given to 37 scientists, two per year at most.

Xue, 61, is the youngest winner of the award. His team made the first experimental observation of the quantum anomalous Hall effect which can potentially be applied in low-power-consumption electronics. They also opened a new direction of research in the field of high-temperature superconductivity. Xue was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005. Last year, he became the first Chinese national to win the Oliver E. Buckley Prize, a prestigious prize in solid-state physics.

Li, 85, is one of the pioneers who helped develop key technologies for China’s high-precision positioning and mapping system. Thanks to him and his team, China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is similarly accurate as the Global Positioning System, owned by the United States.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine