Chairman of the Central Military Commission Xi Jinping recently signed an order conferring a first-class merit in defense science and technology on Yang Yong of Unit 91548 of the People's Liberation Army.
At 20:00 on July 30, CCTV-1 broadcast the special program "Zhisheng" (Victory) in prime time. The first episode, "Zhanqi Suoxiang" (Where the Battle Flags Point), spent more than six minutes telling the story of carrier-based fighter pilot Yang Yong and his team. As an outstanding soldier from Nanyang, Yang Yong's deeds have triggered strong reactions across all sectors of society, and his hometown people feel greatly honored.
Yang Yong was born in 1981 in Nanyang, Henan Province. His father, Yang Peidong, is a retired soldier who served in a unit in Beijing and was transferred to work at the Nanyang Oilfield in 1978 after leaving military service. Yang Yong attended school at Shuanghe in the Nanyang Oilfield. Influenced by his father, he developed from an early age the ideal of serving the country in the military. In 1999, Yang Yong was recruited as a pilot candidate from Nanyang and admitted to the Changchun Flight Academy. He has served in the military ever since and has been awarded one first-class merit, three second-class merits, and four third-class merits. In 2021, he was conferred the title of "Role Model of the Times" by the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee.
Carrier-based aircraft are the core combat force of an aircraft carrier and a new type of combat force for the People's Navy. Carrier-based fighter pilots are universally recognized as one of the world's most dangerous professions, known as "dancers on the edge of a blade." As one of the first batch of carrier-based fighter pilots, Yang Yong practiced day and night to perfect his flying skills. With superb technique, exceptional courage, and fearless training, he and his comrades completed the carrier-landing mission in just over three years. After moving from being a carrier-based pilot to becoming a "seed instructor," Yang Yong and his comrades constantly challenged boundary-condition flights, refined experience through testing, then trained trainees, gradually building a talent-cultivation system from shore-based to carrier-based and from theory to practice, forging a "Chinese model" of carrier-based flight personnel training with their youth, blood, and even their lives.
The large-scale integrated-media film "Zhisheng" (Victory), co-produced by the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and China Media Group, is an annual tribute work celebrating the 99th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. It combines ideological depth, military substance, and visual impact, and comprehensively, from multiple angles and in three dimensions, showcases the People's Army's reforms to build a strong military and its confidence in victory in the new era. In more than six minutes, the film tells how Yang Yong, as a pioneer of China's domestically produced carrier-based aircraft, held fast for 13 minutes to preserve all test data when his cockpit depressurized at an altitude of 10,000 meters; and how, facing test-flying missions with no mature experience to draw on, he and his comrades repeatedly polished their work, overcame multiple test-flight difficulties, and blazed a brand-new path for Chinese aircraft carrier combat operations.
From a child of the Nanyang Oilfield to chasing dreams across sea and sky, Yang Yong has written a hero's glory. The order signed by Chairman Xi Jinping conferring a first-class merit in defense science and technology is a new honor that fills every Nanyang elder and fellow townsman with excitement and pride. Even more proudly, Yang Yong is not an isolated case. In recent years, the number of Nanyang-born military personnel who have received meritorious awards has continued to rise, and the "Nanyang strength" emerging on the road to a strong military demonstrates the family-country devotion and iron-blooded responsibility of this red revolutionary land.
