SCIENCE MAKES A DIFFERENCE: Citizens in Hefei, Anhui Province visit a local science and technology museum. This inspiring experience, however, is unaccessible to many Chinese as there is only one science museum for every 5.4 million people in the country
　　After setting a goal to develop an innovation-based society by 2020, China has now launched the outline of an education plan to improve the nation’s scientific literacy rate. It’s the first time a dynamic initiative of this kind has been devised since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
　　Also called Project 2049, named for the year in which the People’s Republic will celebrate its centenary, the plan aims to have all adult Chinese citizens reasonably science savvy by this date.
　　Project 2049 was first proposed in 1999, when the country celebrated the 50th birthday of the New China. The China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) put forward a suggestion to the Chinese Government for Project 2049. After receiving government approval in April 2002, the project was officially launched in October 2003. The recently released outline is the first document of Project 2049, which includes details of major objectives and measures in the following 15 years.
　　Explaining the plan, CAST said that people’s knowledge of science has not increased with China’s sustained rapid economic development. On the contrary, the lack of knowledge in this field has restrained national economic and social development.
　　“It is obvious that China has learned from Project 2061 in the United States,” Zhu Xiaomin, a Ph.D. at the Institute of Policy and Management of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Beijing Review.
　　Since the 1980s, it has been a worldwide trend to formulate and implement various international and national programs to promote public literacy in science. Project 2061 was initiated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1985, aiming at seeing all American citizens become science literate by 2061.
　　
　　What does the plan mean?
　　
　　COOL-MINDED SCHOLAR: Zhu Xiaomin, a Ph.D. at the Institute of Policy and Management of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes science education, instead of science popularization, should be the focus
　　Two targets are included in the outline of Project 2049: By 2010, science literacy levels of citizens are expected to have reached that of major developed countries in the 1980s; and by 2020, the overall achievements should be at the level of major developed countries in the early 21st century.
　　The outline mainly targets four groups of people: children, farmers, urban laborers and government officials and civil servants.
　　Why choose these four groups of people? In the analysis of some experts, children are the future of the country and the key to improving overall science literacy; most farmers and urban laborers have little knowledge of science, which has seriously hindered the modernization progress of China; and being science savvy is important for government officials and civil servants as they are closely related to the development of the country and they are expected to be the model workers of society. 　　In order to realize these goals, four “basic projects” are stipulated in the outline: science education and training, development and sharing of scientific resources, increasing mass media’s coverage of knowledge of science and upgrading science popularization facilities.
　　Expenditure on popularizing science in China is low, in terms of both per capita and in proportion to GDP. In nearly one third of the country, the per-capita expenditure in this area is less than 0.2 yuan and science facilities are lacking. Statistics show that there is a science museum for every 410,000 people in the United States and for every 380,000 people in Japan. In China that figure is close to 5.4 million people. Moreover, most of the science museums in China are small with outdated facilities.
　　The outline says that in the following five years, there must be at least one large or medium-sized science and technology museum in every municipality or provincial capital; there must be at least one science and technology museum in every large city with a permanent population of more than 1 million; the total number of national-level science and technology education bases and science education bases for the youth is increased from 300 to 500 and that of the ministerial- or provincial-level science and technology education bases and science education bases for youth is increased from 1,000 to 2,000. These bases all require being open to the public free or with low entrance fees.
　　According to a survey carried out in 2003, more than 90 percent of the public in China obtains science and technology information via television. However, most of the mass media cannot satisfy the demand of improving citizens’ scientific knowledge.
　　“For China Central Television, the national broadcaster, science programs account for less than 9 percent of the total programs and the viewer rating of these shows is lower than 1 percent. In many localities, people even cannot receive these programs. In Japan, science programs account for more than 15 percent of the total programs and in America, the number is even as high as 20 percent,” said Wang Yusheng, Curator of the China Science and Technology Museum.
　　To resolve this problem, the outline laid emphasis on establishing science media. There is a need to produce regular columns and special editions in newspapers and magazines and encourage audio-visual and electronic publications as well as books promoting science.
　　
　　Science education is key
　　
　　Project 2049 is launched and coordinated by CAST. As an academic group of scientists and technologists, CAST was established in 1958 and has devoted itself to promoting science on a broad scale. For a long time, however, CAST limited its work to promoting technologies and improving productivity.
　　This was mainly because of the situation of the country. “At that time, people still had no adequate food and clothing. How can you make them interested in knowing how the earth is turning?” said Zhu with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. 　　But later, many government departments began pushing technology, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Forestry.
　　“Against this situation, it is difficult to determine how CAST should function in promoting science literacy and how to position the work,” Zhu added. As one of the drafters, Zhu participated in the research group of the recently released China’s Mid- and Long-term Science and Technology Development and Planning Outline, headed by Premier Wen Jiabao. He is deeply interested in the research of Project 2049 and has published a series of articles that have gained widespread public attention.
　　According to Zhu, when Project 2049 was first launched, CAST believed the key area to be popularizing science. But after much research, Zhu was resolved to challenge the conception, arguing his studies found that for those who have no more than a primary school education, increasing the awareness of science couldn’t improve their ability to grasp even simple scientific concepts. Without science education, he said, making the subject popular did little to improve people’s knowledge.
　　“From the outline, we can clearly see that Project 2049 has changed the old ways of thinking, which deem that popularizing science is the only way of promoting people’s background knowledge. We have made great strides in this project by using various measures and making science education the priority,” Zhu commented.
　　History shows that the level of science literacy in a country is closely related to the length of regular science education and the key to improve the overall effect of this is through school studies, said Zhu.
　　“Project 2049 is targeted at citizens aged between 18 and 69. On this basis, the outline selects four key target groups of people such as children and farmers. In my opinion, selection of the four groups of people makes the focal point unclear and lacking priority. It is hard to put into practice,” Zhu contended. But in his view, this is a compromise to the realities of China.
　　
　　Is it achievable?
　　
　　The United States plans to spend 76 years realizing the goal of “making all citizens science literate,” but China plans to achieve this ambitious goal in only 50 years. Therefore, many people are skeptical of whether China can realize this target as scheduled, given the existing big gap between the two countries.
　　In the early 1990s, only 0.3 percent of Chinese were equipped with basic science literacy, while in the United States, the figure was 6.9 percent; in 2003, the proportion was increased to 1.98 percent in China but in 2000, the figure had reached 17 percent in the United States, with the gap becoming larger.
　　Compared with the average school studies of 12.7 years in the United States in 1999, the average time of schooling in China is 7.85 years among people above 15 years old and 7.42 years among people above 25 years old in 2000, which was at the level in the United States among people aged above 15 a century ago. 　　American history shows us that in the first half of the 20th century, it took nearly 40 years to increase the average length of school education among people above 25 years old from eight to nine years.
　　According to Xu Shanyan, Vice Chairman of the CAST, implementation of Project 2049 is urgent, but not hasty.
　　After Project 2061 was proposed in 1985, the United States mobilized more than 300 experts to spend three years completing the general report in 1989. Then the country spent another four years (1989-93) designing the K-12 curriculum. A decade had passed when the National Science Education Standards were released in 1995. In China, however, although over 200 experts were mobilized, the basic research of Project 2049 only lasted half a year and the theoretical research, policy-making and pilot projects were carried out almost simultaneously.
　　Hence, some experts, including Zhu with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have always worried whether China’s Project 2049 happened too quickly compared with the Project 2061.
　　Furthermore, some measures in the outline are not detailed. For example, in terms of expenditure, the outline says that governments at all levels should increase expenditure in science education and promotion in accordance with their actual financial situations and literacy needs. This becomes too vague and without an instruction, implementation is unlikely to take place.
　　“Project 2049 must be further detailed, especially from a feasibility point of view. If not, based on the present situation, I am not optimistic about the project’s future,” Zhu said.

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