Zheng Yuanjie, a renowned Chinese writer for children's literature, was honored as one of the 2011 Hot Figures by New Weekly magazine. Zheng was awarded this prize after using his microblog to participate in many ongoing topical issues in society, such as supervising environment protection departments and launching online voting on Beijing's air pollution.

Zheng, 56, began writing in 1977 and set up the King of Fairy Tales magazine in 1984, which has been in circulation for 19 years. At its peak, it had a monthly circulation of over 1 million copies. The characters Zheng created—such as the naughty but kind-hearted boy Pipilu, his little sister Luxixi, Shuke the Mouse and Rock the Wolf—have attracted millions of young readers as well as adults over the years.

Besides his writing career, Zheng is also enthusiastically devoted to charity. During the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 and Yushu Earthquake in 2010, Zheng donated 380,000 yuan ($60,192) and 1 million yuan ($158,400). It was reported that Zheng was planning to set up a literature foundation to honor good literary works, and the standard would be set by the public.