Wang Jiawu: Relentless study is the mantra

For Wang Jiawu, former chief engineer at China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, reading is the key to China's aerospace success.

Growing up in a small Anhui town, the son of factory workers with little formal education, Wang's youth was marked by relentless study — rising before dawn, returning after dark — his only companions being the stars that ignited his fascination for the cosmos. In 1980, he entered Beijing Aeronautics Institute (now Beihang University), driven by an unshakable belief that books could free him from the grip of poverty.

For 40 years, Wang dedicated himself to China's Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the desert. Aerospace, he learned, was no single discipline but a symphony of specialties — automation, mechanics, communications — each demanding relentless study.