BEIJING, Dec. 10 -- China's web users on Tuesday started voting for 60 grassroots individuals or groups vying to be named as one of the country's top ten local heroes.

Forty of the candidates were selected as quarterly winners, with the remaining being recommended by the panel of judges.

Initiated and sponsored by Xinhua News Agency, netizens selected the heroes via the agency's official website, microblogs and mobile applications.

The heroes selected in the fourth quarter include father and son, Shen Kequan and Shen Changjian, who tried on more than 1,000 occasions to cultivate high-quality rapeseed varieties.

Other winners include Liu Daming, who has osteogenesis imperfectness and is regarded as the "Chinese Hawking."

Although he has had 11 major operations, Liu has won 12 national level literature prizes and is the youngest writer under contract with the People's Publishing House, a national publisher.

Xinhuanet.com, the official website of Xinhua, will profile the candidates from Tuesday.

Stories will also run on Chinese social websites Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo.

The local heroes of 2013 will be selected based on voting by netizens and judging from experts and the media.

The voting will last until Dec. 20 and the heroes will be unveiled in January.

The vote, held since 2010, is conducted quarterly to promote ordinary people's good deeds and improve moral awareness.