This Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing and the start of modern and comprehensive science centers in China.
Various events are being held in the museum on the sidelines of the World Conference on Science Literacy, as well as China's National Popular Science Day, this week.
The museum welcomed more than 10,000 visitors looking for scientific inspiration each day by visiting themed exhibits, listening to lectures and interacting with modern technologies.
This kind of museum in China dated back to the 1950s but only began to thrive in the 1980s when the notion of modern and comprehensive science centers was put forward.
An immersive experience is put at the center of modern and comprehensive science and technology museums for the public. /CGTN Photo
China began to learn from developed countries and put immersive experiences, not just mere bulletin boards, at the core of its exhibitions.
Liao Hong, deputy curator of the China Science and Technology Museum, recalled what has been achieved.
"Since 1988, we have opened the first and the second stage projects, and at the current venue. We have received over 50 million visitors," Liao said.
Behind the development is the nation's efforts to promote public science literacy. It isn't necessarily to help people become scientists, but to help them acquire the ability to understand, describe, predict things in a scientific way.
Science and technology museums have opened to the public, featuring the themed exhibits, not just bulletin boards. /CGTN Photo
In the past three decades, China has opened over 190 modern science centers and, in 2002, became the only country to enact a specific law aiming to improve the science literacy of the public.
On top of that, mobile and digital science museums, lectures, television programs and publications featuring scientific knowledge are also publicly available, and developing a sound system designed to make people become more engaged with science-related issues is underway.
But for China, this is not enough.
According to the China Association for Science and Technology, only 8.47 percent Chinese have science literacy, but for an innovative country, that standard has to be at least ten percent.
Despite the thriving of modern science and technology museums, the popularization of science still needs more efforts to spread science sparks to not just big cities but remote villages as well to promote the entire science literacy. /CGTN Photo
"The development of popular science in China is still unbalanced and insufficient. Big cities have relatively rich popular science resources but people in remote villages lack science literacy," Liao Hong said.
"There are 91 million scientific and technical workers in China, but only about 220,000 are popularizers of science. That's a big gap for country with more than 1.38 billion people." She added.
Liao said that although good changes are happening, many parties, including the government and the public themselves, need to do more to contribute to an innovative country where every member can have an equal chance to feel scientifically inspired.