Award ceremony scene

In May 2021, Li Haibing conducted a field earthquake investigation in Maduo, Qinghai

In September 2022, Li Haibing led a team conducting a field earthquake investigation in Luding, Sichuan

In February 2014, Li Haibing measured the Yutian earthquake fault zone in Hoh Xil

On April 28, the grand conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and the commendation of national model workers and advanced workers was held, at which a total of 1,670 national model workers and 756 national advanced workers were commended. Li Haibing, a researcher at the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and director of the Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics of the Ministry of Natural ResourcesLi Haibing was among those honored,and he is also the only awardee in the natural resources systemrecommended by the central and state organs。

As a renowned geologist, Li Haibing enjoys an outstanding reputation in the field, not only for his remarkable achievements in the study of active faults and earthquakes, but also for his persistent spirit of rooting himself on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau for decades and pursuing the mysteries of earthquakes.

The Wind Chaser — Investigating strong earthquakes at the first opportunity

The research team on "active tectonics and faulting" led by Li Haibing has been the domestic team with the most earthquake emergency investigations over the past 20 years. Whenever news of a strong earthquake arrives, the team rushes to the epicentral area as quickly as possible to conduct on-site emergency investigations, determine the cause and type of the earthquake, and collect large amounts of post-earthquake data and information at the fastest speed. For more than 20 years, they have never been absent from the investigation of any domestic strong earthquake of magnitude 6.8 or above.

Li Haibing's intense focus on active faults and earthquakes began in 2001.

On November 14, 2001, a great earthquake of magnitude 8.1 struck Hoh Xil in the East Kunlun. Li Haibing participated in the post-earthquake investigation. Faced with a surface rupture 435 kilometers long, the 35-year-old Li Haibing was deeply shaken, and his academic career was thereby divided into two stages — before this, he focused on ancient traces of crustal movement, with emphasis on the deformation structures of orogenic belts; afterward, he locked onto "fresh" crustal movement, concentrating on the active tectonics and earthquake mechanisms of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

If the East Kunlun great earthquake merely lifted a corner of the curtain on the active period of continental earthquakes in China, then the world-shaking Wenchuan great earthquake of May 12, 2008 formally opened that curtain.

From May to June 2008, Li Haibing and his colleagues conducted more than 30 days of investigation and research on the coseismic surface rupture zone in Wenchuan, Beichuan, Qingchuan and other places. With mountains collapsed and roads displaced, and devastation everywhere, they braved the danger of frequent aftershocks, traversed the various traces left by the awesome power of nature, carried out meticulous grid-based surveys and analytical assessments, obtained a large amount of scientific data, and promptly formed an understanding of the seismogenic mechanism. Amid this extremely high-intensity work, Li Haibing also felt a powerful urge — to delve into the mysteries of earthquakes and reduce such shocking casualties and property losses. This was his inescapable responsibility as a geologist!

More and fresher basic data must be obtained! Only in this way can we better understand earthquakes and their mechanisms: which fault is active? How does stress migrate? Where will there be danger in the future? What special conditions lead to earthquakes? What special phenomena occur? ...

April 2010 in Yushu, Qinghai; April 2013 in Ya'an, Sichuan; February 2014 in Yutian, Xinjiang; November 2016 in Akto, Xinjiang; August 2017 in Jiuzhaigou, Sichuan; May 2021 in Maduo, Qinghai; January 2022 in Menyuan, Qinghai and September 2022 in Luding, Sichuan; January 2024 in Wushi, Xinjiang; January 2025 in Dingri, Tibet... The footprints of Li Haibing's team as they "chased" earthquakes have also come together to form a spatiotemporal distribution map of China's strong earthquakes in recent years.

It is precisely on the basis of such long-term tracking that he led his team to determine the geometric distribution of major fault zones on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, such as the Altyn Tagh, East Kunlun, Longmenshan and Xianshuihe fault zones, and to study the slip rates of the faults, the recurrence intervals of strong earthquakes and the trends of earthquake migration, providing a scientific basis for regional stability assessment, medium- and long-term earthquake prediction and the deployment of earthquake monitoring.

In 2013, Li Haibing (second from right) during the emergency investigation of the Lushan earthquake

In 2008, Li Haibing surveyed the Yutian earthquake in the uninhabited area of the West Kunlun

The Climber — A Dream Chaser on the "Roof of the World"

In Li Haibing's view, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the place closest to his dreams.

Most of the strong earthquakes in China since the beginning of the 21st century have occurred on and around the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and Li Haibing has already walked on the plateau for 37 years.

From 1988, when he graduated with his bachelor's degree and set foot in the Qilian Mountains, and 1992, when he went to the East Kunlun to investigate and study fault zones for his master's thesis, his footprints have gradually extended southward from the Qilian Mountains, the Altyn Tagh Mountains and the East Kunlun Mountains to the West Kunlun, the Pamirs, Qiangtang, the Karakoram, the Himalayas, the Longmenshan, the Xianshuihe, the Jinsha River, the Nujiang River, the Lancang River and the Red River.

The intensely active Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with frequent earthquakes, many strong earthquakes, diverse tectonic faults and a full range of earthquake types, is a natural laboratory for studying active tectonics, especially earthquakes. But fieldwork here is extremely arduous and fraught with danger.

In the late autumn of 2003, amid wind and snow on the Karakoram Mountains, Li Haibing had already been doing fieldwork here for more than four months. Just as the fieldwork was about to end, a cold induced pulmonary edema, and he fell ill in a mountainous area at an altitude of more than 5,000 meters, with poor transportation and few people, and his life was in critical danger. His teammates rushed him to the People's Hospital of Ngari Prefecture in Tibet, and the doctor said at first glance that there was little hope. After a week of all-out rescue, his teammates drove continuously for several days to transport him to Lhasa at a lower altitude for treatment. He stayed in a military hospital in Lhasa for a week, and after he was slightly stabilized, he hurried back to Beijing and stayed in the hospital for more than another month, finally surviving, but leaving behind a lingering ailment — severe pulmonary fibrosis.

Although doctors strictly forbade him from going to the plateau again, his work area is on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, his research projects are on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and his scientific dreams are on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, so Li Haibing never wavered.

People are often willing to pay any price for what they love. The following year, Li Haibing set foot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau again. To this day, he still does fieldwork on the plateau for at least two or three months every year, and his scientific achievements have risen like the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau itself, growing ever more abundant and attracting ever more attention: to date he has published more than 400 academic papers, of which more than 230 are formally indexed by SCI, more than 130 as first author or corresponding author, and 7 monographs.

In early 2025, the project "Non-uniform Crustal Deformation Evolution in the Central Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Controlling Role of Its Major Fault Zones," which he led, ranked second among the Top Ten Scientific and Technological Advances of 2024 of the China Geological Survey and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Looking further back, in the "Top Ten Geological Scientific and Technological Advances" of the China Geological Survey and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences for 2023, 2022, 2020 and 2014, Li Haibing's leading projects — "Deformation Mechanisms of Major Seismic Fault Zones on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," "Rupture and Propagation Mechanisms of Strong Earthquakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," "New Discovery and Determination of the Holocene Active Fault South of Mugecuo on the Xianshuihe Fault and the Selaha Compressional Step-over, Effectively Serving the Planning and Demonstration of Major Projects," and "Mechanism of the Wenchuan Earthquake" — were also prominently listed.

His colleagues saw with their own eyes his fearless advance in the face of life and death during the Wenchuan earthquake investigation and his superhuman sleeplessness; they keep in their hearts how, after the Maduo earthquake in Qinghai, he trekked dozens of kilometers along the surface rupture zone, his face peeled by the cold wind and intense ultraviolet rays. With such a leader, who among the team members could fail to be fired with passion and give their all? Under his influence, batch after batch of young people have grown up, and the Belgian active tectonics expert Marie-Luce Chevalier (Ma Xiaoli) also came to join them, attracted by his reputation. Today, Li Haibing's team has been selected as a key field scientific and technological innovation team of the Ministry of Natural Resources and has become an important force in the study of active tectonics, faulting and earthquake mechanisms at home and abroad.

In 2006, Li Haibing (third from right) during fieldwork in the West Kunlun

Li Haibing making a field sketch

The Driller — Seeking Answers Through Unremitting Exploration

Li Haibing's father worked at the Anhui 324 Geological Team, drilling and prospecting in the field year after year. Influenced by this environment, Li Haibing was admitted to the Wuhan College of Geology in 1984, beginning a geological life that led him to the same destination as his father by a different path.

After graduating from university, Li Haibing was assigned to the Institute of Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and soon afterward he followed Xu Zhiqin, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to various parts of western China to conduct field geological surveys. From 1992 to 2004, Li Haibing continued his studies, successively under three academicians — Mo Xuanxue, Xu Zhiqin and Paul Tapponnier — increasing his knowledge, tempering his courage, and maturing through hardship.

When the scattered memories are gathered together again, they form vivid fragments one after another —

In the East Kunlun, Li Haibing, with a geological bag containing rock samples hanging around his neck and a field notebook and topographic-geological map wrapped on top of his head, risked crossing a rushing river. The water, mixed with chunks of ice of all sizes, struck his chest, cold to the bone.

In the West Kunlun, he trudged through endless flying snow at more than minus 30 degrees Celsius, with the mountains behind him and the wilderness beneath his feet all a vast expanse of white.

And there was the embarrassment of sinking into a swampy mire in Yushu, Qinghai; the thrill of dodging rolling rocks in the high mountains of Lushan, Sichuan; and the silent struggle against altitude sickness in the uninhabited Qiangtang area...

Li Haibing also has two other identities: one is director of the National Field Scientific Observation and Research Station for Continental Deep Hole Crustal Activity in Donghai, Jiangsu; the other is chief geologist of the national major science and technology project "Wenchuan Earthquake Fault Scientific Drilling Project."

Of the two scientific deep drilling projects, the former is devoted to four research directions — "deep earth structure and evolution," "crust-mantle materials and cycles," "continental deformation and deep processes," and "continental mineralization and deep constraints" — and after drilling is completed, it observes subtle deep crustal changes and small earthquakes in eastern China, revealing crustal activity information including that of the Tan-Lu fault zone; the latter, relying on six scientific cluster boreholes in the Wenchuan earthquake fault zone, carries out multidisciplinary research in geology and tectonics, earthquake geology, rock mechanics, chemistry and physics, earthquake physics, fluid action and rheology, and, through integrated geophysical logging, cores, and active and passive seismic source imaging and observation, identifies various structural elements of the active fault, measures the width and damage intensity of the fault fracture zone, and determines the structural and deformation properties of the fault. After drilling is completed, it observes how the fault zone heals and how stress adjusts after a great earthquake, conducts multidisciplinary four-dimensional integrated observation and monitoring of the source areas of great earthquakes and recurrent small earthquakes, and reveals the physical and chemical mechanisms controlling fault activity and earthquake occurrence.

As a "scientific probe" reaching deep into the Earth's crust to explore the mysteries of earthquakes, the Wenchuan scientific drilling, which responds rapidly to great earthquakes, has occupied more of Li Haibing's time and energy, and the continuous observation lasting more than ten years has also brought him a series of breakthrough and even subversive new understandings — in particular, the first discovery of the rapid healing process of the fault zone after a great earthquake, which changed the traditional understanding that a fault zone requires a long time to heal slowly after an earthquake, solved a major scientific problem that had troubled the fields of earthquake geology and earthquake physics for decades, advanced the theory of seismic faults, and accurately assessed the future strong-earthquake danger zone of the Xianshuihe fault zone, providing important experience for medium- and long-term earthquake prediction.

Research on active faults and earthquakes requires perseverance on an even longer timescale.

Li Haibing knows that only time can converge into answers, and that all he can do is to be single-minded and keep moving forward. At present, he remains as devoted to his research as ever: on the one hand, through the national science and technology project on deep earth and key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, he continues long-term, systematic, multi-parameter geophysical and geochemical monitoring of the Longmenshan and Xianshuihe fault zones, and conducts in-depth research on the mechanics and deformation mechanisms of the Xianshuihe fault to explore the mechanisms of earthquake occurrence; on the other hand, he carries out special investigations of the tectonic evolution and framework of the entire Chinese continent.

His persistent selfless dedication and selfless striving have won Li Haibing widespread respect and also brought him many honors: "Advanced Individual in Theoretical Innovation of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Geology and Major Breakthroughs in Prospecting" of the Ministry of Land and Resources, "National Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand Talent," "National Young and Middle-aged Expert with Outstanding Contributions," "Outstanding Geological Talent" of the China Geological Survey, "Most Beautiful Geological Team Member" of the national geological exploration industry, as well as the May 1st Labor Medal of the central and state organs in 2021, the National May 1st Labor Medal in 2023, and the National Advanced Worker in 2025.

In terms of goals and working methods, scientific research is very different from exploration drilling, but Li Haibing always keeps his father's example in his heart: only by drilling ceaselessly toward the goal can one drill through the hard strata and fulfill one's mission. From chasing earthquakes to deep drilling into the Earth's crust, he has proved with the journey of a lifetime that the ultimate mission of scientific exploration is to uncover nature's riddles for humanity and pave the way to a safe future.

Break through heavy obstacles and advance into the unknown. Perhaps this is the meaning of life.