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Amber Wang

Huang Xuhua, the chief designer of China’s first generation of nuclear submarines, died in Wuhan in the central province of Hubei on Thursday. He was 98.
Huang’s funeral committee said on Friday that the engineer had been receiving medical treatment but did not specify the nature of his illness.
Huang began working on the top secret “09 Project” in 1958 to develop China’s first nuclear submarine and rose to become one of its leading scientists.
Cut off from Western and Soviet technology, the project’s small team worked with researchers in other fields on the Type 091 nuclear-powered attack submarine and the Type 092 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.
Launched in 1970 and commissioned in 1974, the Type 091 made China the fifth nation to possess such advanced hardware.
Huang’s name and his role in the programme remained largely unknown in the outside world until 1987 when the information was declassified and a magazine was allowed to publish a report on him, according to mainland media.

In a tribute from China State Shipbuilding Corporation on Friday, Huang was hailed as one of the “pioneers and founders” of China’s nuclear submarine undertaking.
Born in the southern province of Guangdong in March 1926, Huang was the third child of two doctors.
After a childhood in the shadow of war, he entered Shanghai Jiao Tong University to study shipbuilding in 1945.
Graduating in 1949, Huang joined the Communist Party and started his career in the nation’s shipbuilding industry.
When he joined the nuclear submarine project, China had little knowledge of the technology but had been urged by Mao Zedong to realise the goal “even if it takes 10,000 years”.
Work on the project was disrupted between 1959 and 1961 during the Great Chinese Famine but Huang was able to continue with his research throughout the Cultural Revolution – even during his stint in the countryside on a pig farm, mainland media reported.
The top-secret nature of the project meant that Huang did not see his mother for three decades. When he was finally able to visit her in the late 1980s, she was in her 90s and his father had died.
“I believe that loyalty to the country is the greatest form of filial piety to my parents,” Huang later told a television programme.

In 1988, at the age of 62, Huang reportedly became the first chief nuclear submarine designer in the world to take part in a highly risky extreme depth diving test.
In the following years, Huang earned numerous awards for his contributions, including the Medal of the Republic and the country’s top science award. He became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1994.
In 2017, Huang was thrust into the spotlight when President Xi Jinping invited him from hundreds of honoured “ethical workers” to sit next to him for a group photo.
While some media referred to him as the “father of China’s nuclear submarines”, Huang rejected the title, saying: “China’s nuclear submarines were a collective effort … I was just doing what I was supposed to do in my position.”


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Military

Huang’s involvement in the project was little known in the wider world – and a secret even to his family


Huang’s involvement in the project was little known in the wider world – and a secret even to his family.


Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Huang Xuhua, chief designer of China’s first nuclear submarine, dies aged 98

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Huang’s involvement in the project was little known in the wider world – and a secret even to his family

Huang’s involvement in the project was little known in the wider world – and a secret even to his family