SL Agritech Corp. EVP Zhang honored

By DIEGO C. CAGAHASTIAN

IT IS reassuring that while businessman Henry Lim Bon Liong of Sterling Paper Group of Companies and SL Agritech passed away two years ago, his vision for greater rice harvests for Filipino farmers through hybrid rice production has seen the light of day in the efforts of preeminent Chinese agronomist Professor Zhang Zhaodong, the executive vice president of SL Agritech Corp. in the Philippines.

Professor Zhang was recently awarded for his contributions to  strengthening understanding and cooperation between the Philippines and China during the 2026 Award for Promoting Philippines-China Understanding (APPCU) held in Manila.

The annual recognition, conferred by the Association for Philippines-China Understanding (APCU), honors Filipinos and foreign nationals whose work has helped foster dialogue, cooperation, and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.

An outstanding expert in the field of hybrid rice in China, Zhang is formerly deputy dir­ector and asso­ciate researcher of the China National Hybrid Rice Engin­eer­ing Tech­no­logy Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter.  He became the first non-Filipino recipient of the APPCU award.

He is a dis­tin­guished stu­dent and fol­lower of Aca­dem­i­cian Yuan Long­ping, the “father of hybrid rice.” In pro­mot­ing Chinese hybrid rice to the world, Prof. Zhang became the first imple­menter of Yuan Long­ping’s vis­ion to “develop hybrid rice and bene­fit people world­wide.”

The APCU, headed by its President Raul Lambino, cited Zhang’s more than two decades of work in helping localize hybrid rice technology in the Philippines, contributing to higher productivity and food security.

Chinese Ambassador Jing Quan, who attended the event, cited Zhang’s work as an example of practical cooperation between the two countries.

According to the ambassador, farmers adopting hybrid rice technology have seen income gains of around P40,000 to P60,000 per hectare annually.

“And the yield has gone up from 45 tons to 78 tons per hectare, which means about a 60 percent increase in farmers’ income,” he added.

It must be noted that the Chinese expert’s tech­no­lo­gical achieve­ments received policy sup­port from three former Phil­ip­pine pres­id­ents — Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Rodrigo Duterte.

Could it be that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who first handled the Department of Agriculture, and whose current DA secretary has Chinese roots is not convinced of the well-documented achievements and production capacity of the hybrid rice technology that he has not endorsed it — or probably because he is averse to everything Chinese, on the prodding of his American masters?

Prof. Zhang received the “Highest Honor Award from the Phil­ip­pine Sec­ret­ary of Agri­cul­ture,” and in 2025, he was awar­ded the “Long-Term Ser­vice Award” by the Gen­eral Cham­ber of Com­merce of Chinese Enter­prises in the Phil­ip­pines.

Hailed as the first “son of hybrid rice” in China–Phil­ip­pines agri­cul­tural cooper­a­tion, Prof. Zhang is an iconic fig­ure and an epi­tome of his­tor­ical friend­ship, his story reflect­ing the power of food dip­lomacy and people-to-people friend­ship. He was praised by the Phil­ip­pine gov­ern­ment as “a his­tor­ical sym­bol of China–Phil­ip­pines friend­ship.”

As a pion­eer in 1998, he volun­teered to go to the Phil­ip­pines to develop trop­ical hybrid rice. A year later, China and the Phil­ip­pines signed the “Agree­ment on China’s Assist­ance to the Phil­ip­pines in Devel­op­ing Hybrid Rice,” and the China- Phil­ip­pines Trop­ical Super Hybrid Rice Breed­ing Project was launched. He has since worked in the Phil­ip­pines for more than 20 years.

Uphold­ing Yuan Long­ping’s philo­sophy of “root­ing in the field and innov­at­ing through change,” Prof. Zhang emphas­ized that “the way of rice is always evolving.” He has con­tinu­ously optim­ized rice vari­et­ies accord­ing to dif­fer­ent envir­on­ments, solv­ing chal­lenges such as lodging and poor grain qual­ity in trop­ical rice cul­tiv­a­tion. For over two dec­ades in the Phil­ip­pines, he has suc­cess­fully loc­al­ized Chinese hybrid rice tech­no­logy and developed high- yield, dis­aster-res­ist­ant rice vari­et­ies suited to trop­ical cli­mates.

Launched in 2021, the APPCU has recognized individuals from government, business, academe, and civil society whose work has helped build bridges between Filipinos and Chinese.

This year’s honorees were former National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos, businessman Peter Leung Ng, and Prof. Zhang.