The award was established in 1994 to memorize and honour Professor Guan Zhao-Zhi who was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a world-famous mathematician and expert on control theory, and to promote the development of control theory in China. The award is normally limited to no more than two papers. This year, the award is made out of 40 nominations from more than 2400 submissions to CCC 2019. Mr Chen is selected to be the awardee after five rounds of intense evaluations by the Guan Zhao-Zhi Award Committee including a final-round competition of oral presentation of the paper.