Vanguard of a Strong Military | Getting Close to Wang Ji, Researcher at the National University of Defense Technology's School of Computer Science (Part I)
Charging Forward from a Wheelchair — Getting Close to Wang Ji, Researcher at the National University of Defense Technology's School of Computer Science (Part I)
■ PLA Daily Correspondents Wang Tonghua, Wang Tianyi, Zhang Lin, Kang Zizhan
Wang Ji introduces the Tianhe-2 supercomputer (archival photo). Photo provided by the author.
How large is a wheelchair?
If you regard it as a tool, the wheel radius of the wheelchair belonging to Wang Ji — researcher at the National University of Defense Technology's (NUDT) School of Computer Science — is no more than 30 centimeters, and the seat is narrower than his shoulders. After Wang Ji underwent a high-level amputation due to illness in 2013, it became the support for his free movement, and also constructed the confined world he can scarcely transcend.
How far can a wheelchair travel?
If you regard it as a companion, Wang Ji and it travel back and forth among the hospital, the campus, and his home. His daily activity radius is no more than three or four kilometers — yet time and again it has crossed obstacles that ordinary people can barely imagine, carrying him from Changsha to Beijing, Nanjing, and Shanghai, appearing at research breakthrough sites and on the podiums of academic conferences.
How fast can a wheelchair run?
If you regard it as a chariot, Wang Ji has driven it to break through one barrier after another, achieving an acceleration that astonishes people: he has led and completed more than ten major projects including National Natural Science Foundation grants and National Key Research and Development Plan projects; he has trained more than 120 master's and doctoral students for the national defense science and technology enterprise; he has served as chief technical expert for a certain national defense 973 project; and he has been awarded a first-prize Military Science and Technology Progress Award……
Body confined to a small wheelchair, heart bearing a sharp and long halberd (长戟). The tracks of the wheelchair, one after another, record Wang Ji's tenacious struggle after encountering a great upheaval in life, and also fix in place the unwavering charging posture on the journey of building a strong military (强军征程).
Charging Forward, Flattening Every Obstacle——
"As long as my brain still works and my hands can still move, I will not stop."
On the podium, Wang Ji walks and lectures at the same time, occasionally working out calculations on the blackboard. As he writes, he turns around — and the students have suddenly vanished. His heart lurches; he snaps his eyes open, only to see an empty wheelchair……
Another dream! Having lost both legs for many years, Wang Ji still frequently dreams of the days when he stood at the podium — like a computer that has malfunctioned, repeatedly restarting a certain program.
The origin point of the restart: January 23, 2013.
That year, Wang Ji was 43. Before that, he had grown at a pace far exceeding ordinary people: he entered university before the age of 14, was promoted to full professor at 33, received the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars at 38, and at 43 received a second-prize National Science and Technology Progress Award…… Some said he had "stepped on the accelerator at every turn."
That day, fewer than three weeks remained before Lunar New Year's Eve. Shouldering the twin burdens of research and teaching, Wang Ji was intensely busy: returning to campus from a business trip in the morning, making courseware at noon, studying the laboratory's development plan in the afternoon, and visiting experts attending an academic conference in the evening…… like a high-performance computer running at full load.
Then, deep in the night, a stabbing pain shot through his back — like a line of code forcibly inserted, attempting to rewrite the course of his life.
"Aortic dissection!" Once the cause was identified, the doctors broke into a cold sweat on Wang Ji's behalf. This is one of the most dangerous cardiovascular emergencies, with a mortality rate as high as 20%.
After a surgery lasting 13 hours, the loss of nearly half his body's blood, and more than ten days of continuous unconsciousness, Wang Ji pulled through. Tragically, when he awoke again, he had lost almost both legs entirely.
The swift-footed traveler had lost his legs; the brilliantly shining star had fallen into dark clouds.
What of the future? His attending physician, Yu Fang, said that people who undergo this surgery typically rest as their primary activity afterward. Colleagues lamented: "Given his achievements, lying flat and resting would itself be remarkable."
Was it really to be so? During those days, Wang Ji — normally fond of smiling — sank into an unusual despondency. But before long, he recovered the scientist's rationality and the soldier's tenacity. When an old friend came to visit and was momentarily choked with emotion, Wang Ji turned around and offered comfort: "Fortunately, I work in software. As long as my brain still works and my hands can still move, I will not stop."
At that time, the bitter winter in Changsha had just passed, and all things on earth were returning to spring. That spring, the Party's goal of building a strong military (强军目标) in the new era opened a new journey for the People's Army. On this new journey, Wang Ji — who had lost both legs — did not break his halberd; he began a new charge.
Still lying in the intensive care unit, he began revising students' papers and pushing cutting-edge articles out to everyone. When he went to Beijing for rehabilitation training, he simultaneously worked on developing his ability to care for himself independently and contacted academic colleagues, driving the establishment of the Formal Methods Technical Committee of the China Computer Federation and promoting academic research and talent cultivation in that field at the national level.
In early 2015, before his body had fully recovered, he wheeled himself back to campus. As chief technical expert, he led a certain national defense 973 project, working with everyone on research topics, teaching students, and attending academic conferences. He even quickly managed to get himself from his wheelchair into a taxi and travel alone on business trips to other cities.
The Wang Ji that people knew seemed to have returned. His workload was not much different from that of a healthy person, to the point that everyone "always forgot he was a patient."
Yet time and his body quietly recorded everything.
In early 2021, after six years of hard work, the national defense 973 project Wang Ji had led was successfully concluded. At the same time, the lurking disease made a comeback: his body showed symptoms of renal failure — uremia. He was once again classified by the hospital as a critically ill patient.
Half a year later, after his condition had just been brought under control through dialysis twice a week, he led his team to apply for and take on a project under the Science and Technology Commission of the Central Military Commission (军委科技委), led a National Natural Science Foundation project, and threw himself into National Key Research and Development Plan research…… In 2024, his body sounded the alarm again, and he was compelled to be hospitalized once more.
On one front, breakthroughs in scientific research bring good news; on another, his body's battle sets off alarm bells.
Today, Wang Ji undergoes dialysis three times a week and must stay at the hospital after work each day. During the day, he remains in the eyes of colleagues and students the "problem terminator" and "warrior clad in armor." Only at night, when he returns to the ward, is he the exhausted, weakened, pain-ridden patient.
Physician Yu Fang says that amputees develop phantom limb pain that accompanies them for life — pain that strikes without warning, like an electric shock. Some people sweat profusely and cry out in agony; some cannot sleep through the night and suffer mental breakdowns. Wang Ji once sought Yu Fang's help for this, yet his colleagues, students, and family have never heard him cry out in pain.
"What he always shows everyone is optimism and tenacity." In the heart of colleague Li Youguo, the sole exception was the time Wang Ji was rushed to the hospital in 2021.
At that time, Wang Ji — extremely weak from renal failure — no longer had the strength to get out of the car himself. Li Youguo bent down and let Wang Ji wrap his arms around his neck, then put one arm around Wang Ji's waist, gripped the car door frame with the other, and slowly shuffled backward.
In that moment, Li Youguo suddenly felt how light Wang Ji was in his arms — so light he could be lifted with one arm — and yet how heavy the things he carried were, so heavy that not one of them was something an ordinary person could bear. In that moment, this sturdy man felt a tumult of emotions inside, and tears he could not hold back burst from his eyes:
"Everyone says he charges forward without stopping — who can appreciate that he is charging forward on half a body!"
Charging Forward, Seizing the Crest of the Wave——
"Only by doing frontier scientific research is it easier to discover the frontier."
What is highly trustworthy software (高可信软件)?
If you ask today's popular large artificial intelligence models, most will tell you: in fields where matters are "life-or-death" and "no mistakes can be tolerated" — aerospace, transportation, nuclear power, military industry — ensuring that software operates with absolute reliability and ultimate security requires highly trustworthy software technology.
It concerns everyone, yet is known to few. Many years ago, Wang Ji already saw the foundational and frontier nature of this research.
At the turn of the century, the wave of the internet swept the globe. Search engines, e-commerce, instant messaging, and other software sprang up like mushrooms after rain; domestic commercial portal websites went public one after another; the bright prospect of "software defining the future" gradually unfolded. As a doctoral student in software technology, Wang Ji turned his gaze toward a different set of "events":
During the Gulf War, a certain country's air defense missile failed to intercept an incoming missile due to a defect in its control software, causing heavy casualties; in 1996, a certain type of rocket exploded on its maiden flight due to a code problem in its navigation software; in the late 1990s, the computer "Year 2000 bug" triggered global panic……
Perhaps owing to the security sensitivity and bottom-line thinking (底线思维) unique to soldiers, Wang Ji paid greater attention to software quality issues. In his view, as our military accelerated its transformation from mechanization to informatization (信息化), more and more weapons and equipment were being fitted with software "brains." Software is the guns and cannons on which lives depend — it absolutely must not jam or misfire at a critical moment.
After deep research, in 2003 Wang Ji and his doctoral supervisor jointly published the paper "High-Trustworthiness Software Engineering Technology," becoming the first in China to propose the concept of "highly trustworthy software technology" and constructing the earliest theoretical framework in this field in China — a framework still widely cited by the academic community today.
Peers who know Wang Ji all say he has "very high academic taste," with a sensitivity to the technological frontier that surpasses ordinary people.
Professor Chen Liqian still vividly remembers one episode. When he had just begun his master's studies, Wang Ji gave him a recently published foreign academic monograph and asked him to read it carefully over the course of a year. Chen Liqian did as instructed, and later benefited enormously from it when writing his doctoral dissertation. What he had not expected was that ten years later, the author of that monograph would receive the Turing Award — often called the "Nobel Prize of computing."
"How did Teacher Wang see it at the time?" Whenever Chen Liqian brings up this matter, he is always filled with admiration, and from it he has deeply remembered a saying Wang Ji often repeats: Only by standing on a high mountain can you see an even higher mountain; only by doing frontier scientific research is it easier to discover the frontier.
Where is the frontier? In Wang Ji's eyes, it is not only a new concept in academia, but also a new demand at the strategic level of the state and the military. Only when the two are tightly combined does it become "research worth doing."
In 2012, the Party's 18th National Congress made the strategic deployment to accelerate the development of national defense and military informatization construction. Facing the difficult problem of ensuring software trustworthiness in informatization construction, Wang Ji took the lead in initiating a certain major national defense project. When the project concluded, the evaluation report determined: the overall technical level was at the international forefront and domestically leading, with some comparable indicators at the international leading level.
In 2023, a new wave of artificial intelligence enthusiasm arose. Shortly afterward, a paper published three years earlier by Wang Ji's team attracted the attention of numerous researchers. It was a study on the trustworthiness of artificial intelligence — before the tide of new technology came surging in, they had already begun building a solid embankment for national and military security.
Standing at the very frontier does not mean easily advancing into "uncharted territory (无人区)"; every breakthrough and transcendence is filled with fierce competition.
On one occasion, Wang Ji's team attended an international academic conference. During a break, a foreign company was promoting its software products with brochures. However, when team members walked over, the salesperson immediately put the products away: "I'm sorry, this software cannot be shown to you."
"Software also has a hard core. That is the root technology (根技术) of this field — it cannot be bought; you can only rely on yourself." That year, Wang Ji guided Liu Wanwei, who was still pursuing his doctorate, in launching an assault on an important class of algorithms in the highly trustworthy software field. After two years of arduous research, they finally produced results. The paper was submitted, only to be told that a foreign counterpart had produced the same result two months earlier.
Unwilling to accept defeat, they pressed on. Two more years passed, and they produced superior results. From that point on, the new algorithm reduced the complexity of what had then been the globally optimal algorithm by one exponential order.
The paper they wrote over four years amounted to only a thin few pages, yet it stands like a mountain peak at the frontier of an academic domain.
Charging Forward, Willingly Digging a Deep Well——
"If something is important, someone should do it — whether in the spotlight or behind the scenes."
Gazing at a list of Wang Ji's major research projects, three figures invite deep reflection.
30 — Having engaged in highly trustworthy software research for many years, Wang Ji has led more than 30 research projects at the national and military level. Except for two years during serious illness, almost every year has seen multiple projects advancing in overlapping succession, sometimes with three or four projects being undertaken simultaneously. This is the high-intensity charge index of a scientific researcher.
50 — Of the projects Wang Ji has undertaken, more than 50% involve national defense security and cannot be disclosed, and so are referred to simply as "a certain project." This is the index of devoted warfighting focus (潜心为战) of a military scientific researcher.
75 — Of the other half with complete names, more than 75% are National Natural Science Foundation or National Key Research and Development Plan projects. This is the original innovation index of a basic research pioneer.
The three numbers function like three-dimensional coordinates, clearly locating Wang Ji's view of his career: there is a kind of charge called "willingly remaining behind the scenes (甘居幕后)" — unobtrusive, unassuming, day after day for decades, being the foundational stone, the silent mine.
"Many of the tasks we do cannot be spoken of — not a single word." When the conversation turned to a sense of accomplishment, Professor Mao Xiaoguang of Wang Ji's team stopped himself several times on the verge of speaking.
In truth, even if one could speak of it, it would be hard to explain clearly. Highly trustworthy software is called "the tool of tools, the software within software" — it is the "physician" that takes the pulse of critical software systems in major engineering projects and finds problems. Not long ago, Wang Ji's team performed an important software module verification for a certain domestically developed operating system and identified and reported back dozens of problems. The software developers found it very useful, but that was all: "When a person achieves something, they rarely credit the physician who treated them."
Even so, Wang Ji single-mindedly charges forward and burrows into major tasks.
A certain piece of equipment's critical system relies on a stable and reliable control software to operate. Should the software malfunction, the consequences are unimaginable. That year, upon learning that the control software was to undergo testing and verification, Wang Ji proactively sought out the responsible parties and recommended himself: "You absolutely must try our method."
This was nearly a year of "asking for trouble." When foreign mature tools and methods failed to uncover many problems, they built their own tool and continued probing. One vulnerability, two vulnerabilities…… as the research deepened, those long-hidden "detonation points" were discovered and defused before they could ever reach the battlefield.
"If something is important, someone should do it — whether in the spotlight or behind the scenes." Over the years, Wang Ji's WeChat name has never changed: "deep code." The name conceals a meaning; the single character "deep" (深) is Wang Ji's understanding of and soliloquy about this vocation.
This "deep" is the "deep palace and cold courtyard (深宫冷院)." Academic papers in highly trustworthy software are difficult to publish, results emerge slowly, and the application domain is narrow — it is a very hard "cold bench (冷板凳)" to sit on. A couple of years ago, when applying for a certain award, members of Wang Ji's team contacted some peers with whom they had previously collaborated, only to find that many had changed institutions or switched research directions.
This "deep" is "deep, brain-burning complexity." Wang Ji's signature technique for verifying software trustworthiness is called formal methods (形式化方法). This approach uses mathematical reasoning to guarantee software reliability; it is highly theoretical and has a very high threshold. In an online question-and-answer thread about this method, a post warning people to "avoid the pitfall" of this specialty attracted a crowd of agreeing replies.
This "deep" is "deep concealment of merit and fame (深藏功名)." Over the years, Wang Ji's research results have been widely applied in aerospace, weapons and equipment, and other fields, serving many major engineering projects — some of which are projects that have won major national and military awards — yet what his team typically receives is a single page certifying the application of their results.
"Their work is often unseen." Chinese Academy of Sciences Academician Wang Huaimin said this is an extremely challenging direction that most people find very difficult to enter.
Walking the road less traveled, seeing the scenery others have not seen. Wang Ji greatly admires the logical concepts of "meta-level (元级)" and "object-level (目标级)." He believes that basic research addresses "meta-level" problems, which may appear to be behind the scenes, but can in turn serve a greater number of "object-level" subjects.
It is not as though there were no other choices. The NUDT School of Computer Science, where Wang Ji works, gave birth to China's first 100-million-operations-per-second supercomputer, "Galaxy-I (银河-Ⅰ)," and to "Tianhe-2 (天河二号)," which claimed six consecutive world supercomputer championships. Over the years, high-profile endeavors have always been right at his side, yet he has consistently charged forward on the track of "niche, hard-core (冷门硬核)" research.
The year Wang Ji sat for the college entrance examination, the composition prompt on the Chinese language paper was a cartoon titled "There Is No Water Down Here — Let's Dig Somewhere Else." The figure in the cartoon had dug many wells of varying depths, only to give up each time just as water was about to appear.
What he wrote on the exam paper that day, Wang Ji has no memory of at all — he only remembers that he was better at mathematics and that his Chinese language score "wasn't very good."
More than 40 years later, he used the effort of a lifetime to dig a "deep well" for the nation and the military in the field of highly trustworthy software, delivering another high-scoring answer.
Charging Forward, Racing Against Time——
"We cannot stop. The projects cannot wait. The nation and the military cannot wait."
Passing through NUDT's north gate and heading south, a tall inscription wall stands upright.
On the wall, the inscribed instructions (训词) addressed to NUDT by Chairman Xi are vivid red and eye-catching. The very first sentence clearly marks the positioning of this military academy: "A high ground for cultivating high-quality new-type military personnel and for independent innovation in national defense science and technology."
In the early morning, Wang Ji gets out of his vehicle at the small plaza east of the inscription wall, then boards his wheelchair, enters Tianhe Tower through the accessible passage, takes the elevator up, exits the elevator, turns left, then right again, and enters his office…… When rounding corners, the speed of the wheelchair does not slow in the least; one large hand lightly braces against the wall at the corner, and he glides smoothly through.
"I feel like Teacher Wang's wheelchair speed is getting faster and faster — sometimes we have to jog to keep up." Master's student Liu Xingpeng said.
Team member Chen Zhenbang shares the same feeling. During last year's Spring Festival holiday, Wang Ji convened three online meetings to advance a certain project. "He was doing the work before and after every meeting — he barely rested over the New Year." Chen Zhenbang said.
Doctoral student Tao Qiren recalls that during last year's summer break, they were racing against another collaborating team to make progress. "Teacher Wang held a meeting with everyone every three days to resolve problems in the push forward." By the end of the summer, they had achieved a major breakthrough, advancing the entire project by a large step.
Professor Tang Yuhua recalls that at one project progress meeting, Wang Ji kept pressing the collaborating party to meet the agreed-upon targets, and the two sides argued from 9 in the morning straight through to noon. Because she had a class to teach in the afternoon, Tang Yuhua got Wang Ji a box lunch and hurried away. She later learned that by the time the afternoon's discussion ended, Wang Ji had not eaten a single bite of that meal.
Wang Ji, who had been critically ill from losing himself in his work, remained just as selfless after crossing the line between life and death.
It is not that no one has urged him otherwise. Sometimes, when a meeting or discussion has run long, team members or collaborating partners will ask with concern: "Teacher Wang, why not take a rest — there's no rush right now!"
"It's fine, I can do it!" Wang Ji always answers this way. Sometimes he also speaks candidly to team members: "We cannot stop. The projects cannot wait. The nation and the military cannot wait!"
In the eyes of colleagues and students, Wang Ji has squeezed his time to the absolute limit:
He undergoes dialysis three times a week, four hours each session. Patients after dialysis are extremely weak and need to rest for a period of time. Previously, the doctors scheduled him for morning dialysis and afternoon rest. Later, he proactively approached the doctors and shifted his dialysis time from morning to afternoon: "I can recover overnight, and that frees up a morning for work." He typically does not rest on weekends either, saying that the time spent on dialysis counts as his "weekend days off."
When he travels to other cities on business, he always tries to make it a same-day round trip — usually departing on the earliest flight and rushing back to Changsha on the last flight late at night: "That way it won't delay the next day's work."
"He is racing against time, and fate is racing against him." Having watched Wang Ji's body grow ever weaker over the years from insisting on high-intensity work, Professor Tang Yuhua — who was once his teacher — is heartbroken.
His wife, Huang Chun, also frequently reminds Wang Ji to take care of his health, but she — herself a military scientific researcher — understands and supports him far more than she admonishes him.
"My second life was rescued by the organization. I must use my limited life to contribute to the nation and the military." Wang Ji has a clear-eyed understanding of his own body: "It is very hard for it to get better. Being able to maintain it as it is would be the best outcome."
In 2021, while undergoing treatment for uremia, he expressed two wishes to his doctors: one was to hope that he could still do some more work and properly complete the work left unfinished; the other was to hope that he could see his daughter — who was still in primary school at the time — go to university and get married someday.
Two wishes: one for the nation, one for his family. A wheelchair carries two weighty loves, racing against every second, pressing ever forward.
"The difficulties of life all come from choices. Once there are no more choices, there are no more difficulties." In the early morning, when that wheelchair, rain or shine, always rolls on time from in front of the inscription wall and into Tianhe Tower, Wang Ji has already made his choice.