Zhang Liangang (middle) works at the Qingdao Port with his colleagues. [Photo/Dazhong News]

Zhang Liangang, one of the delegates to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, is a specialist in port technology in Qingdao, East China's Shandong province.

Unlike many others of his age, the 61-year-old man has not retired but is still working hard to develop autonomous and controllable port equipment.

Not long ago, he and his team successfully developed an intelligent command and control system for the Qingdao Port's container terminal, making it the world's most efficient automated terminal for the ninth time.

Zhang has been working at the Qingdao Port since 1983, growing from a maintenance technician to a well-recognized expert in port technology. He has participated in a group of technological innovation projects since the 1990s.

Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with lung cancer just as he was immersing himself in finding new innovations. He received the first medical operation in Shanghai in the summer of 2011 and returned to work when he recovered from the life-threatening disease in early 2013.

In that very year, he was elected as a leader of an automated wharf project and quickly plunged into it with his team despite his poor health and various difficulties, such as the tech-monopoly of foreign countries and a lack of domestic experience for reference.

Zhang led his team in a race against time to address challenges one after another. During the following three and a half years they had more than 3,000 meetings and conducted over 100,000 tests. A complete wharf design plan and an integration solution were worked out in only 15 months.

With their unremitting efforts, the country's first independently developed fully automated container terminal was opened on May 11, 2017.