"Observation of a charged particle comprising at least four quarks at Beijing Spectrometer III" was selected as one of "China's Top Ten Scientific Advances" of 2013. The selection was hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology Basic Research Management Center, and co-organized by "China Basic Science", "Science and Technology Review", "Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences", "Science Foundation in China" and "Chinese Science Bulletin".

The Beijing Spectrometer III (BESIII) experiment is running at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is the only electron-positron collider experiment in China. Its main physicsobjective is to study the tau-Charm Energy Region, so the experiment is also known as a tau-charm factory. In June 2013, the BESIII experiment announced the discovery of a new class of charmonium charged structure Z_c (3900). The mass of Z_c (3900) is in the charmonium energy region, with the difference from ‘normal’ charmonium being the obvious electric charge. The most likely quark structure for the Z_c(3900) is four quarks. If this finding is confirmed, it means that exotic states of matter exist in the universe. The discovery of Z_c(3900) by the BESIII experiment has attracted widespread attention in the international community, and has been highly evaluated in  international high-energy physics circles. It headed the list of eleven major physics advances of 2013 listed by the American Physical Society journal "Physics" .

It's worth pointing out that the BESIII experiment is taking the opportunity given by finding the Z_c(3900) to continue to collect data above a positron-electron center-of-mass frame energy of 4 GeV, and obtaining a series of high-level research results. In the field of charmonium research, the BESIII experiment is taking the lead internationally.