On the National S&T Awards Conference jointly held by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council in Beijing on January 9th of 2009, the award for technology innovation in enterprises was for the first time included in the National S&T Progress Award. The award went to five enterprises, i.e. Chery Automobile Co., Ltd., China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery (Group) Company Limited and China National Heavy Machinery Research Institute. Vice Minister LI Xueyong of Science and Technology met with representatives of the five companies.

By awarding the prize to enterprises for their efforts in technology innovation, the government paid more attention to management of innovative enterprises so as to encourage them to strengthen technology innovation.