"Popular science plays a crucial role in disseminating scientific knowledge, enhancing the scientific literacy of the general public, and driving technological innovation," said Zhou Yuan, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the founder of Zhihu. "High-level popular science is indeed an indispensable key link in the development of new quality productivity."
Zhou Yuan believes that in the internet era, China has made significant achievements in the informatization of science popularization. More and more professionals are utilizing internet platforms to share their knowledge, experiences, and insights with the public through various forms such as text, videos, and live streaming. This contributes a substantial amount of science popularization content that embodies both scientific spirit and universal value, fostering a societal atmosphere conducive to scientific development and enhancing the overall scientific literacy of the population. This continuous effort propels the advancement of science popularization in China, facilitating the steady improvement of public scientific literacy.
According to the results of the 12th China National Survey of Scientific Literacy, in 2022, the proportion of Chinese citizens with scientific literacy reached 12.93%, an increase of 6.73 percentage points compared to 2015, laying a solid foundation for China's advancement as an innovative country.
"Despite the rapid improvement in the scientific literacy of Chinese citizens, there still exists a certain gap compared to Western technological powers," Zhou Yuan adds. "Furthermore, there are challenges in our understanding of the importance of science popularization, institutional arrangements, and implementation. It is imperative to comprehensively promote scientific dissemination with a higher stance, greater intensity, and more practical measures, constructing a modernized 'big science popularization' pattern. This will leverage high-level science popularization to boost the overall scientific literacy and provide solid support for the construction of a technologically strong nation."
To achieve this, Zhou Yuan suggests fostering a comprehensive science popularization concept and strengthening the construction of the national science popularization capability system. Firstly, the government should enhance its leadership and overall planning capabilities in science popularization, integrating it into the macro framework of social development and closely linking it with technological innovation. This involves building a coordinated and consistent organizational model for science popularization. Secondly, industry regulatory authorities should play a guiding role by effectively organizing and deploying science popularization resources within and outside the industry, providing strong policy support and guiding services to promote continuous innovation in both content and forms of science popularization. Thirdly, scientific associations at all levels should make full use of their organizational resources and talent advantages, actively undertaking the important mission of enhancing the overall scientific literacy of the population, and comprehensively improving the quality and level of science popularization public services.
"In addition, it is necessary to deepen the reform of the supply-side of science popularization resources and comprehensively improve the quality of science popularization product services while strengthening organizational leadership to provide strong support for science popularization work," Zhou Yuan suggests.
High-level science popularization requires mobilizing high-quality creative forces from various fields, utilizing new technologies and methods to enrich the expression forms of science popularization works, and constructing a full-media communication matrix. This involves ensuring financial investment in science popularization while encouraging and guiding social capital to invest in the development of science popularization. It also entails promoting the standardization of science popularization, improving incentive mechanisms, encouraging the deep integration and development of traditional media and new media, leveraging the advantages of internet platforms in science popularization content production, technological innovation, and communication systems, and encouraging internet platform enterprises to actively explore new technologies, new models, new formats, and new scenarios for science popularization.
