In a milestone for China's artificial intelligence efforts, a team of scientists from Huazhong University of Science and Technology was named co-champion of this year's prestigious Graph Challenge, a global computing competition that involves machine learning, high performance computing and visual analytics.

It was the first time that Chinese scientists were awarded the top prize since the competition's launch in 2017.

The event was hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amazon, all of which are in the United States. The other co-champion was a US-based team.

The Chinese team's solution to solving an extremely esoteric reasoning task during the competition will accelerate the efficiency and application of artificial intelligence, according to a statement released on Aug 16 by the university, which is in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.

In a speech addressing China's top scientists and engineers in May, President Xi Jinping urged the Chinese scientific community to break new ground in four strategic frontiers, one of which is "deep blue".

Deep blue refers to fields related to computer science and information technology, such as cyberspace security, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.