Recently the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security released the Notice on Finalization of List of Talents Included in the 2020 National New Century Talent Program (RSB [2020] No. 56). According to the Notice, Professor Li Yongyi from the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures of Chongqing University is selected as a talent under the Program and is dubbed as a “Young and Middle-aged Expert with Outstanding Contributions”.

The “National New Century Talent Program” is a major talent program co-initiated by seven ministries and commissions of China, including the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education, in an effort to cultivate young and middle-aged technical leading talents. It was first launched in 1995 and played an important leading role in expediting building of high-level technical talent teams. In the Implementation Plan for National New Century Talent Program released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in 2012, in the 10 years following 2012, this Program will bring about 4,000 national high-level young and middle0aged “engineering” talents, who are able to lead and support the leap-forward development of key scientific and technological areas of China, and compatible with the frontiers of the world science and technology.

Li Yongyi has been engaged in study of Latin poetry, which has been scarcely studied in China. He has systematically translated and studied the works of ancient Roman poets like Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Gaius Valerius Catullus, Ovid, and Lucretius. In this area in China, Li is playing a leading role. The Translation of Collected Works of Horatius, the Translation of Collected Works of Catullus, the Translation of Elegiae of Ovid, the Translation of Fasti, the monograph on study of Horatius and the monograph on study of Catullus he has written are all first of its kind in China. Li was appointed as the chief expert on the “General History of Latin Poetry (multi-volume)”, a major project launched by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social, and was the winner of the 7the Lu Xun Literature Prize Literary Translation Award. He has also been included in the New Century Outstanding Talent Program under the Ministry of Education and hailed as a China-USA Fulbright Scholar. Throughout his life, Li has published 24 translated books, 5 monographs, 45 CSSCI journals, including 7 papers in Foreign Literature Review. Renmin University of China has reprinted 9 of his papers, and Xinhua Digest has reprinted 1. Li has also won the second prize of the 8th Outstanding Achievement Award for Scientific and Technological Researches in Colleges and Universities (for humanistic and social science), the 9th Award for Social Science Achievements of Chongqing, and the 7th and the 8th Literary Award Translation Award of Chongqing.