Famous Chinese Engineers

Chinese business magnate Ma Huateng, or Pony Ma, is best known as the founder, chairman, and CEO of the technology giant Tencent. His company owns the messaging app WeChat. One of CEOWORLD’s Most Powerful People in the World, he was a delegate of the 12th National People's Congress.

Ren Zhengfei is a Chinese engineer and entrepreneur. He is credited with founding Huawei, the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones and the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world. He also serves as the CEO of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. In 2005, Ren Zhengfei was named in Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world list.

Born in Shanghai, An Wang studied electrical engineering before moving to Harvard to get his PhD. The Wang Laboratories co-founder is remembered for inventing the magnetic core memory, which was the main component of computers till the invention of the microchip. He also developed many word-processing systems.

Chinese industrial engineer Duan Zhengcheng initially taught at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, his alma. An avid inventor, too, he studied manufacturing and automation of machinery. He was part of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He died of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, at age 85, in 2020.

Yang Xiaobo had been the mayor of Huangshi and was a qualified structural engineer. He also boasted of an MBA from the U.S. The Chinese Communist Party member, who had also been the president of the Central South Architectural Design Institute, died of COVID-19-induced pneumonia in Wuhan in 2020.

Believed to be the Director of Imperial Workshops during the reign of Shi Hu, a Later Zhao period emperor, Wei Mengbian devised numerous wheeled vehicles along with Palace Officer Xie Fei. Among their inventions was a cart mill, which grinded wheat as the cart moved forward and a twenty-foot long four-wheeled carriage, decorated with water sprouting dragons.