UQ professor awarded China's highest honour for foreigners
University of Queensland entomologist Professor Gordon Gordh has been awarded China's highest honour for foreigners - the China Friendship Award.
Given by the Foreign Experts Bureau in the name of the Chinese Government, the Award recognizes foreign experts working in China to help in the modernisation process.
Of the 82,000 foreign experts who visited China in 1998, only 46 received the award.
Professor Gordh said his work with the experts' program began in 1995 and had focused on Shandong, a coastal agricultural Province between Shanghai and Beijing, with a population of 83 million, including 65 million farmers.
His work has involved the development of an integrated pest management program for the control of insect pests attacking cotton and vegetables using biological control agents and user-friendly plant chemicals which affect insects but not the environment.
"Pesticide-free food is a very high priority of the Chinese government," he said.
Professor Gordh received his award which included a China Friendship Medal, a bronze plaque and a bronze replica of a 4000 year-old Chinese urn at a reception and banquet at the People's Hall in Beijing.
The reception was attended by Chinese officials including Premier Zhu Rongji, Lee Peng, President Jiang Zemin, Director-General of the Foreign Experts Bureau Wan Xueyuan, and former Foreign Minister and now Vice-Premier Qian Qichen.
The Foreign Experts program was established during the 1950s by Chairman Mao and for many years the Soviet Union and eastern European countries contributed all technical support. More recently, experts from other parts of the world have become involved, including Australia.
Professor Gordh said he would leave the University in November to take up a new position as director of U.S. Department of Agriculture's Subtropical Agricultural Research Center in Texas.
"The research program involving pesticide-free food is also a high priority in America and the research will continue at SARC," he said.
For more information contact Professor Gordon Gordh (telephone 3365 1747 or email g.gordh@mailbox.uq.edu.au).
