AT 7ft 6in and with a pay packet of several million dollars, Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets basketball team, forges a new mould for China’s “model workers”.

The Communist Party’s highest commendation had been, since the 1949 revolution, the preserve of outstanding members of the proletariat whose toil and adherence to strict Marxist principle helped to build Asia’s waking industrial giant.

But this weekend Yao will be admitted to the pantheon of great model workers. He will be joined for the first time by capitalists and migrant workers at a grand ceremony to be held in the Great Hall of the People.

The giant athlete, who works in America but is revered at home, will receive a commendation as a “model and advanced worker” at the gala event before Beijing’s May Day festivities. “He shows the modern image of the Chinese while being patriotic in the international sports arena,” a government official said.

Yao, who is as popular in China as David Beckham was here in his prime, led the Chinese national basketball team to the quarter finals at the Athens Olympic Games.

When he started playing in the US, he promised to give half his salary — he has signed a four-year contract worth £9.4 million and could earn up to £40 million through endorsements — to the Chinese sports authorities.

The tallest recipient of the award is not only one of the best paid, but also almost certainly the first to have an agent. “I take it as one more honour and encouragement from my country,” the 24-year-old said through his agent.

His story is a far cry from that of previous recipients, the miners, builders and factory workers who fuelled Mao Zedong’s drive to turn China into an industrial giant. Take Iron Man Wang, for example, an oil worker and builder who dug for oil with his bare hands and used his own body to mix cement, while fighting class enemies, revisionists and conflicting ideology. Or Lei Fang, a soldier who died in 1962 when he was run over by a lorry while trying to help a comrade, a hero who spawned government calls to “Learn from Comrade Lei Fang”.

Then there was Chen Yonggui, who was illiterate until he was 43, and then used Mao’s writings to learn revolutionary theory. He led the co-operative movement in the 50s and was the driving force behind developments that turned Dazhai in Shanxi province into a national model. “In agriculture, learn from Dazhai,” Mao declared.

Yao’s nomination, while clearly intended to project a more modern image, has provoked heated debate on the streets of Beijing. “It’s unfair. It’s just because he’s a big star — a model worker should be a worker in a factory,” said Wang Xiaoguang, who works as a cashier in a telephone company. But his colleague, Mr Liu, said: “Sport is a kind of labour. Just because he makes a lot of money doesn’t mean he’s not a worker.”

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