January 15, 2025
BEIJING – The work of educating China’s grassroots on scientific issues and gaining their support is set to receive a boost following a major revision to the country’s Science and Technology Popularisation Law.
Activities such as museum exhibitions and talks by leading Chinese scientists are part of a decades-old national effort known as science popularisation, which has become more important to China of late as it seeks to become a technology powerhouse by 2035.
Professor Zhang Lijie, deputy director of the China Research Institute for Science Popularisation, noted that the new law, among other things, specifies how to provide better incentives for workers in this field, so as to encourage more talented people to devote themselves to the cause.
“It also stipulates September each year to be the National Science Popularisation Month, which provides a more solid guarantee for regular, social science popularisation activities for the public,” he said of the law passed in December 2024.
On the surface, talent attraction appears to be a key reason behind the science popularisation effort, to draw more bright young minds to fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), information technology and biomedicine.
But it is also about gaining public support for scientific and technological initiatives whose benefits may not be apparent to the man in the street, especially as they are not expected to bear fruit immediately.
A basic level of scientific literacy has also become more important as China moves quickly in areas ranging from the use of nuclear energy to genetic modification.
Amid an intensifying tech rivalry with the US, science popularisation also has a role in justifying and explaining the country’s investment in science and technology fields, as well as related policies to safeguard national interest.
During China’s annual Science Popularisation Day in September 2024, Chinese Academy of Sciences academician Chen Jun, an expert in mineral deposits, gave a talk at Hohai University in Nanjing on “strategic critical minerals and national resource security”.
According to a report of the event, he proposed ways to intensify research on critical minerals in China and ways to protect them, as well as how to ramp up development of those minerals in short supply, both domestically and overseas.
Three months later, in December 2024, China restricted the export of critical minerals antimony, gallium and germanium to the US, the latest countermeasure in an escalating tech war. These are raw materials used in semiconductor manufacturing. Washington had earlier issued further crackdowns on China’s semiconductor industry.
But despite decades of official emphasis, a government report in 2022 found that the system of science popularisation in China can be described as “hot at the top, warm in the middle, cold at the bottom”.
This indicates that enthusiasm from the country’s leaders has yet to translate to results on the ground, where there are already signs of pushback in domains deemed critical to propelling China ahead.
In a rare show of protest, a local taxi operator in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province in central China, reportedly sent a petition letter to the municipal transport authority in June 2024. The company accused driverless taxis – which are powered by AI – of “taking jobs from the grassroots”.
Mr Huang Bingnan, 36, a Shandong-based copywriter specialising in science popularisation presentations, articles and short videos, told The Straits Times that while China has made large strides in science and technology, the masses may not have understood the significance of these achievements.
“Some people might feel, ‘Why don’t you give that money to poor people in rural areas instead?’ But if you understand why these endeavours are important, then you won’t make that kind of comparison. So we have to bridge this disconnect between the top and bottom,” said Mr Huang, who has seen increased demand for his work from all over China in the last few years, such as from hospitals and government departments.
From a practitioner’s perspective, China’s science popularisation efforts have seen a certain degree of success.
Science Centre Singapore chief executive Lim Tit Meng noted that China has built more than 500 science centres and museums in the last decade, many of which are of “world-class standard”.
“The Chinese are fast learners and they have improved at a rapid pace in content development and science communication activities,” he told ST.
But a tougher nut to crack might be public scepticism towards government communication, given the relative lack of diverse viewpoints and debate in official media.
A 2015 study on science communication in China by British sociologist Joy Zhang, who interviewed 21 Chinese scientists in Beijing, Wuhan and Hangzhou, found that many had shied away from speaking about science through official Chinese media as they thought this would invite public scepticism, since the public might think this was directed by the government.
Professor Zhang suggested that it is an “over-politicisation” of science that has alienated the public and the scientists, paralysing effective communication in China.
Hence, whether science popularisation could make more headway would depend on greater societal ownership. A key plank of the revised law is to encourage more non-governmental groups – from schools to research institutes – to conduct such activities.
The revised law states that enterprises should regard science popularisation as “an important part of the fulfilment of social responsibility”, and that they can do so by opening up their research and production facilities to the public.
But they would have to move carefully, as all science popularisation efforts must still “adhere to the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China”, it added.
- Lim Min Zhang is China correspondent at The Straits Times. He has an interest in Chinese politics, technology, defence and foreign policies.