Understanding China's science popularization

Studying science popularization in China offers a unique perspective on one of the most significant transformations in modern history: the resurgence of the Chinese civilization and its evolving path toward modernity on its own terms. Beyond economic growth, technological achievements and geopolitical influence, the ways in which scientific knowledge is disseminated, understood and embraced by society reveal important dimensions of China's development model and its vision for the future.

As the British sinologist Joseph Needham (1900-95) demonstrated in his monumental Science and Civilisation in China, an encyclopedic work that remains unfinished to this day, China was for centuries one of the world's leading centers of scientific and technological innovation.