State-owned enterprises serve as a crucial platform for young people to pursue their careers and realize their potential. In recent years, state-owned assets and central enterprises have actively shouldered social responsibilities, exploring all avenues to create more opportunities and making significant contributions to stabilizing and promoting graduate employment. This report highlights typical examples of young employees in central enterprises who, facing challenging environments and arduous tasks, choose to take root at the grassroots level and demonstrate bold initiative. It vividly portrays how these young people strive and advance in the vast frontline arenas, answering the call of the times with their actions.
How should young people find their own path in this era? In today's China, young employees of central enterprises are providing a resounding answer through their deeds. On the challenging road to promoting high-quality economic development, a group of daring and enterprising youth are dedicating themselves to the broad fields of new energy, new industries, and new equipment. Their footprints are left in the depths of the Gobi Desert, on the frontlines of scientific research, and in manufacturing plants, allowing the flowers of their youth to take root and bloom where the motherland needs them most.
**Anchoring Youth's Course with Choice**
Choices often determine a person's future direction. For some young people, it is precisely the choice to gain experience at the grassroots level that has given their lives a clear course. In Santanghu Town, Balikun Kazakh Autonomous County, Hami City, Xinjiang, on the seemingly endless Gobi Desert, hundreds of wind turbines over a hundred meters tall stand in rows, while dark photovoltaic panels shimmer like the sea. This is China's first "desert-Gobi-wasteland" new energy transmission base—the Xinjiang Tianshan North Slope Gobi Large Wind-Solar Power Base. Its new energy installed capacity exceeds 70%, capable of transmitting over 216 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to Chongqing annually.
When construction began in 2023, the area was desolate for dozens of kilometers. That year, dozens of university graduates from across the country packed their bags and arrived, braving the sands to form a "Desert-Gobi-Wasteland" Large Base Youth Assault Team. Their average age was only 28, yet they all made the same choice: to advance into western China and shoulder the responsibility of safeguarding national energy security.
"We knew it would be tough here, we knew it would be hard, but the sweat we shed can contribute to ensuring national energy security. We find it deeply rewarding," said Ma Zijian, a member of the youth assault team from Xinjiang Huadian Tianshan Power Generation Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Huadian Xinjiang Company.
By the end of 2025, China's cumulative installed capacity of wind and solar power is projected to exceed 1.8 billion kilowatts. The transformation of the new energy industry is profoundly reshaping the global energy landscape and supply chain system, generating employment demand across the entire chain from planning and design, equipment manufacturing, to construction, and operation and maintenance. More young people, like the members of the youth assault team, are finding paths to realize their life's value on the frontlines of energy supply.
Keeping the nation's major concerns in mind enables steady and far-reaching progress. For young people, the grassroots level is precisely where they can realize themselves and dedicate their passion.
**Broadening Growth Stages with Opportunities**
As industrial upgrading and national strategic layouts continue to advance, the landscape of frontline work is undergoing profound changes. Positions that were once rarely sought after are now becoming hubs for new technologies and industries, opening up vast arenas for young talent to showcase their abilities.
Looking back today, members of the Luo Yang Youth Assault Team for hydrogen energy drones at AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Industrial (Group) Co., Ltd., who are in their post-90s generation, admit that everything has exceeded their initial expectations.
"Initially, we ventured into this exploration simply because the domestic hydrogen energy drone sector was a blue ocean. We never imagined this long-endurance, quiet hybrid hydrogen energy drone could actually progress to productization, let alone anticipate the wave of the low-altitude economy," said team member Tang Peng, a graduate of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.
Starting from scratch in 2022 to explore hydrogen power technology, they have now developed a product-level drone that integrates hydrogen energy, lithium batteries, and solar power—a "three-energy-in-one" system. They have set a domestic record for a long-endurance, quiet hybrid hydrogen energy drone with a continuous flight time of 30 hours.
Today, their drones are not only proving highly effective in domestic fields like forest patrol but have also become a shining "Chinese name card" in the low-altitude economy sector.
Favorable winds lend power to ascend to great heights. As the Luo Yang Youth Assault Team for hydrogen energy drones sends their aircraft into the sky time and again, they themselves are riding the spring breeze of the times.
According to forecasts by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, China's low-altitude economy market size is expected to exceed 35 trillion yuan by 2035. Below a thousand meters, opportunities are boundless. This blue ocean of employment is opening its arms to young people, waiting for them to explore infinite possibilities in the vast world.
**Forging Competence through Perseverance**
The grassroots frontline has always been the best classroom for honing talent and forging backbone personnel. By settling down, taking root in their posts, enduring solitude, and delving deep into research, young people temper their formidable skills through day-after-day perseverance.
In the heavy-duty gas turbine manufacturing workshop located in Deyang, Sichuan, the precision casting production line operates around the clock. The young members of the Dongfang Turbine precision casting technology team repeatedly optimize parameters to ensure the turbine blades of heavy-duty gas turbines can withstand the challenges of high temperature, high pressure, high rotational speed, and high corrosion during operation.
"The turbine blade is the core component of a gas turbine. We were previously constrained by foreign technology. Its technology is complex, the precision casting process is long, and over 160 influencing factors are intertwined. We must find the optimal solution amidst these contradictions," said team member Zhang Qiongyuan.
Upon learning that Dongfang Electric Group was establishing a laboratory in Deyang to tackle critical "bottleneck" technological challenges, a group of ambitious young graduates from universities like Tsinghua University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, and Xi'an Jiaotong University came one after another. For over a decade thereafter, they devoted their youthful passion to laboratories and workshops, determined to overcome this challenge in the equipment manufacturing industry.
After more than ten years of relentless research, in 2020, China's first domestically developed F-class 50-megawatt heavy-duty gas turbine (G50) achieved full-load operation for the first time. In 2023, this model successfully connected to the grid for power generation and officially entered commercial operation.
Zhang Qiongyuan still remembers the day the G50 achieved full-load operation. Team members hugged each other and wept, followed by a stream of news about various awards. "It felt like a breath we had been holding in our chests was finally released. For researchers, there's no greater sense of accomplishment than seeing your own research bear fruit," he said.
A strong youth makes a strong nation; capable youth drives powerful development. From mega-projects solidifying the development foundation to technological breakthroughs opening future tracks, from safeguarding people's livelihoods and protecting the well-being of millions to serving the broader context and fulfilling missions and responsibilities, central enterprises shoulder heavy responsibilities and build platforms. They attract batch after batch of young students to devote themselves to the grassroots level and pursue their dreams for the future, writing a youthful answer on the questionnaire of the times that is worthy of their prime years and their mission.
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