Abstract
Since the 1950s China’s popular science publishing has been the business of the government, and subject to its will. China adopted a system of planned economies, as the Soviet Union did, until the 1980s when a policy of reform and opening-up was adopted. During the period of the planned economies, popular science publishing was not a commercial but a governmental enterprise. More than 100 million copies of the most representative publication of this period, One Hundred Thousand Whys, have been distributed. The Unmoved Mover Series of the 1990s was a milestone in the new era. What is significant about this series is that it broke through the prevailing mode of science-popularization as ‘serving for industrial and agricultural production, serving for ideology’. China’s popular science publishing has its defects, genetically and culturally. In an age of marketization, popular science books are frequently applauded by the experts, but not enjoyed by general readers.
1. Popular science publishing in a uniquely Chinese context
China started to undergo a long process of transformation from traditional society to modern society in 1840 when it was defeated by western powers. The monarchy of the Qing Dynasty came to an end and the Republic of China was founded in 1911. The Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949 and founded the People’s Republic of China as a result of three years of civil war. After this, China entered the era of Mao Zedong’s (1893–1976). In 1978, Deng Xiaoping’s (1904–1997) policy of reform and opening-up heralded a new era for China. This article will give a brief account of China’s popular science publishing since 1949.
As a part of the enterprise of science communication, popular science publishing is subject to whatever is the dominant idea of science communication at any one time, and this is subject to change. Popular science publishing in China has features which differ from those of the West, and also from those of the Soviet Union, even though both societies belong to the socialist camp. Throughout the process of China’s modernization, intellectual elites and leaders from across the political spectrum in China have been fully aware of the importance of science, and popular science publishing has played an important role. In the first half of the 20th century, especially the period of the Republic of China, popular science publishing was operated with considerable success by cultural elites and publishers alone. The China Science Society, the first society of science in the modern history of China, was founded at Cornell University, USA, in 1915. Like the Royal Society in London, it played the leading role in China’s scientific enterprise for the first half of the 20th century, although as a private academic association. Science (1915–1950) and Science Pictorial (1933–1953) founded by the China Science Society were the most influential journals in spreading science during that period.
Like the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the regime in China has been highly totalitarian, in control of political, economic and cultural aspects of society since 1949. Science was discontinued in 1950 and the enterprises of science and science popularization were put under the government’s direct control. The Science Popularization Bureau was established under the Chinese Ministry of Culture in 1949, dismissed soon after in 1951. A semi-governmental institute called the China National Science and Technology Popularization Association, founded in 1950, was responsible for science popularization. It was incorporated into the China Association for Science and Technology in 1958, and from then on, science popularization has been one of the two major tasks of the China Association for Science and Technology (Shen, 2002).
In Mao’s time, science popularization was guided by two ideas that the West lacks. First, in order to serve the workers, peasants and soldiers, and the need for industrial and agricultural production and economic construction, accessibility, applicability and practicability were the most recommended virtues of popular science texts. Second, to serve the need of the communist ideology, texts of this sort in favor of the materialist worldview were prevalent. Figures such as Copernicus and Darwin are well known even among ordinary Chinese people, simply because they belonged to the group of scientists acclaimed by the classical Marxist writers. It is evident that the theory of evolution is more popular among ordinary people in China than in the West (Pusey, 1983).
As being geared to the needs of workers, peasants and soldiers is part of the meaning of ‘science popularization’, extensions of ‘science popularization’ are quite broad in the Chinese context. They range from the dissemination of primary scientific knowledge such as Boyle’s law and Newton’s law, to practical knowledge of science and technology in daily life such as knowledge about the use and maintenance of household appliances, gardening, and health promotion and education, and to knowledge applicable to industry and agriculture, such as technology applicable to the rural environment, agricultural technology, and factory operation training, etc. Emphasizing the dissemination and popularization of science-and-technology-related practical skills is characteristic of science popularization.
For example, in the 1950s, Professor Zhao Xuetian (1900–2000) of Huazhong Institute of Technology in Wuhan (now Huazhong University of Science and Technology), in response to the government’s call that ‘scientific work ought to serve for the production of goods’, invented a method of reading industrial diagrams quickly. It was well received because it could help new workers to understand a general machine parts diagram and a simple mechanical assembly diagram and make products based on the diagrams after only 20 hours’ training. This had been unlikely before the method was invented. When the first edition of the Mechanical Worker’s Quick Diagram Reading (Zhao, 1955) was published 480,000 copies were distributed. The total circulation of this book exceeded 16,000,000 copies by 1980.
Since 1949 publishing in China has been completely controlled by the government. Each publishing house is limited to publishing books of specific types. A cluster of newly founded science-and-technology publishing houses were put in charge of publishing popular science works. They include the Science and Technology Press, established in 1950 (this came under the Ministry of Heavy Industry previously and then under the first Ministry of Machine Industry), the Fuel Industry Press and the People's Railway Publishing House, founded in 1951, the People’s Transportation Press, which was founded in 1952, the People’s Hygiene Press, the Chemical Industry Press, the People’s Post and Telecommunications Press, the Metallurgical Industry Press, the China Textile Press and the China Forestry Press, which were founded in 1953, the Science Popularization Press and Water Conservancy Press, founded in 1956, and the China Agriculture Press, founded in 1958. There were some consolidations among these publishing houses, and sometimes the publishing houses were divided up, all managed by the central government, such that the number of them fluctuated. Nevertheless, they published a large number of professional books in science and technology and popular science books in order to meet the needs of the various parties at that time.
While during the period of the Great Cultural Revolution (1966–76) various cultural enterprises were virtually on hold or on semi-hold (MacFarquhar and Fairbank, 1991), along with a series of reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the publishing enterprise experienced a large expansion. The number of publishing houses in science and technology increased rapidly. In addition to the publishing houses that were managed directly by central government, science-and-technology publishing houses were founded in the provinces and run locally. Since the 1990s, publishing has been gradually taken out of the planned system and found itself a place in the market economy system. The publishing houses have become more and more autonomous both in their profession and finance.
During the era of the planned system, to publish popular science writings was to accomplish tasks assigned by the upper echelons of government. There was no need for the publishing houses to worry about marketing and profit. Whether a book sold well or not had nothing to do with the financial interest of the publishing houses. This mode of publishing still has an impact today.
2. One Hundred Thousand Whys: A marvel of publishing at a time of deprivation
One Hundred Thousand Whys was a widely acclaimed brand of science popularization at the time of the planned system. When senior practitioners bemoan the poverty of today’s science popularization, they all cite the glory of One Hundred Thousand Whys.
In January 1961, One Hundred Thousand Whys was published by Shanghai Children’s Publishing House (see Figure 1). The series had five volumes, including physics, chemistry, astronomy and meteorology, agriculture and physical health. In December 1962, mathematics, geology and geography and zoology were added. There are eight volumes in total. The name One Hundred Thousand Whys came from a popular science book of the Soviet Union that teaches basic scientific knowledge in a question-and-answer format (Ilyin, 1958). The first edition actually included 1484 ‘Whys’ and 1,050,000 words. The circulation of this edition was 5,800,000 copies by 1964. The second edition, which was published in 1964–65 expanded to 14 volumes and the third edition, which was published during 1970–76 expanded further to a total of 21 volumes, including: mathematics, physics (two volumes), chemistry (two volumes), astronomy, meteorology, geology andgeography, zoology (two volumes), botany (two volumes), athletics (two volumes), military science (two volumes), history of human beings, history of celestial bodies and history of the Earth. The third edition is also called ‘the workers, peasants and soldiers edition’ with a circulation of nearly 10 million sets, that is, more than 100 million copies. Looking into the content of the third edition, the first 18 volumes are books that cover primary scientific knowledge of basic subjects. The last three volumes have a taste of the propaganda of dialectical materialism view of nature, because the so called four origins – the origin of celestial bodies, the origin of the Earth, the origin of life and the origin of human beings – have close ties with the dialectical materialism view of nature.
The cover of Vol. 4 of the first edition of One Hundred Thousand Whys.
It is a marvel of publishing that more than 100 million copies of the third edition of One Hundred Thousand Whys have been distributed. There are three reasons for its success. First, the Chinese elementary education and basic science education systems were quite primitive until the 1960s. There were many illiterates in the wide urban and rural areas who lacked basic understanding of modern scientific knowledge. Given this background, this series, which aimed to popularize elementary knowledge of science, was widely appreciated.
Second, during the period of the Great Cultural Revolution, publishing was almost at a standstill. Apart from printing Mao Zedong Quotations, selected works by Mao Zedong and political documents, few arts and science books were published. As a result, readers had few books to read. There were political risks in publishing and reading arts and humanities books because they were treated as reactionary and harmful, while popular science books were relatively safe. In a context where publications were tightly controlled, and few books were available, One Hundred Thousand Whys found success. Consequently, it filled the empty shelves of most families and libraries. At that time, the classrooms and schools were closed, and students told to join the revolution. Those who loved reading and science could not even find formal science textbooks. This set of books served as science textbooks at that unique time. Many examinees even used One Hundred Thousand Whys as their reference material for science when National College Entrance Examination resumed in 1977.
Third, this set of books meets the needs of readers both in content and format. It introduces elementary knowledge of science and describes scientific truths about natural phenomena that people can experience personally in their daily life, using the popular format of question-and-answer as the narrative device. This is why it was loved by old and young readers alike. The more than one thousand little stories about science fascinated young men. The book projected and imposed an image of science on two generations, and it spurred them to join in the scientific enterprise.
One Hundred Thousand Whys was written by authors who were picked and coordinated by the publishing house. Ye Yonglie (1940–) was the most important author among them. In 1959, Ye Yonglie, who was still a student of the chemistry department at Peking University, was drafted to participate in writing the series, contributing the most content. There are 947 whys in five volumes of the first edition and Ye Yonglie wrote 326 of them. The series made Ye Yonglie one of the most well known science writers in China. He also authored a very influential book of science fiction titled Little Smart Roaming to the Future (1978). A total of 1,500,000 copies of the first edition of the book were distributed. But since the 1980s, China has been transformed from the planned system to the market system, and the enterprises of ‘science popularization’ and ‘popular science publishing’, which were originally designed and adopted in the planned system, showed their congenital defects, and the circulation of popular science books has experienced straight decline. Ye Yonglie has reinvented himself as a famous writer of biographical literature. His change of identity and role have mirrored the path of China’s popular science literature in its ups to downs.
The enterprise of China’s science popularization had reached its peak around the early 1980s and has declined since. There are three reasons for the decline. First, after the new policy of reform and opening-up was implemented in the late 1970s, China’s publishing industry experienced rapid development. The book market prospered. Many books in various categories were brought to market. The unique situation of popular science books flourishing because of the general scarcity of all kinds of books did not exist anymore. Traditional popular science books became less attractive.
Second, basic science education became regular and gradually conformed to standards. Nine years of mandatory education was adopted especially in the wide rural areas, making books that popularized elementary knowledge of science unnecessary. Furthermore, the ‘test-oriented education’ system in Chinese elementary education has prevailed and gained momentum since the 1980s. Young students were drowned in class assignments and exercises, and consequently had no time for reading popular science books. This caused popular science publications to lose readers.
Third, popular science publishing lost the superior environment of the planned system, in which all of society was mobilized by the government to support Science Popularization. For example, the reason why popular science books frequently have a circulation of millions of copies, is that most of them were bought by all levels of the working units and organizations in response to a call from the government, and then were given away to individuals for free. With the introduction of the market economy system, cultural undertakings in China gradually moved away from the management style and operation mode of the planned system. This change threw popular science publishing into chaos. From the perspective of the authors, famous scientists used to write popular science books personally in response to a call from the government. Answering such calls were meteorologist Zhu Kezhen (Kochen Chu,1890–1974) who wrote about meteorology, physicist Qian sanqiang (1913–1992) who wrote about atomic energy, mathematician Hua Luogeng (Loo-Keng Hua,1910–1985) who wrote about optimization and missileer Qian Xuesen (HS Tsien,1911–2009) who wrote about rocket science. However, scientists in the new period have begun to resume their long-abandoned research work. They have no time to pay attention to science popularization. On the readers’ side, as we said above, they used to have few or no permitted books to read. But now there are many books to choose from, and it seems that popular science books are the least attractive ones. As a result, the fifth edition of One Hundred Thousand Whys, rolled out by Shanghai Children’s Publishing House in 1999, only sold 300,000 copies in total, with each book only selling 20,000 volumes on average. This small circulation is indicative of the recession of the whole enterprise of the popular science publishing.
3. Unmoved Mover Series: Embrace the new world picture
Unmoved Mover Series, published by Hunan Science and Technology Publishing House in the 1990s, is another landmark in the history of China’s popular science publishing enterprise. This set of books mainly comprises translations of contemporary popular science books in the western world, including Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Lewis Thomas’s The Lives of a Cell, Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind, Murray Gell-Mann’s Quark and the Jaguar, Francis Crick’s The Astonishing Hypothesis, and Erwin Schrodinger’s What is Life.
From the first series published in 1993 to the fourth series in 2004, the Unmoved Mover Series published about 40 titles in total. Led by Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, it became a hot spot for popular science publications in China, and it helped to lift China’s science popularization out of its trough in late 1990s.
The significance of this series is that it broke through the mode of the old popular science publishing in China, which explicitly or implicitly stated that popular science publishing was to ‘serve for the industrial and agricultural production, serve for the communist ideology’. These western books in the series do not have any practicability; and their ideologies tend not to conform to the requirements of orthodox communist ideology. Hawking’s model of a ‘toy universe’ was regarded as idealism in the middle of the 1980s in China, and was criticized by the ideology department and orthodox Marxism philosophers. However, there were some editors in publishing circles who dared to challenge the tradition and broke through the baseline of the ideology by the mid 1980s. Hunan Science and Technology Publishing House exemplifies this spirit, as does Li Yongping (1957–), executive editor of the Unmoved Mover Series. In 1987, Chinese astrophysicist Fang Lizhi (1936–2012) was suppressed by the government because for dissidence (Wu,1987–88). However, Li Yongping published Fang Lizhi’s book Philosophy as a Tool of Physics in 1988.
The Unmoved Mover Series had in fact been the brainchild of Fang Lizhi and Fang was initially designated as the chief editor. It was the convention in publishing circles at that time that a published series usually had an editorial committee made up of famous authors or public VIPs. But after the 4 June movement in 1989, the political situation in China deteriorated and Fang was a wanted man by the government, making it impossible for him to be the chief editor. As a result, the Unmoved Mover Series had no chief editor or editorial committee.
The rolling out of the Unmoved Mover Series was linked to the change in status of science in China, and the weakening of the traditional ideology. In the 1990s, science was treated not only as a necessary basis and support for economic development, which was the so called first productivity, but also treated as a new ideology. Carrying forward the spirit of science had become a new fulcrum in the construction of spiritual civilization. Hawking’s theory was criticized in the 1980s, but in the 1990s, it became the driving force that helped to make the Unmoved Mover Series sell like hot cakes. Hawking’s book was the ‘Unmoved Mover’ of the Unmoved Mover Series. Promoting ‘the spirit of science’ was the purpose of the Unmoved Mover Series, according to the publishing house. This has been the new commonsense of China’s science popularization circles since the 1990s. The old aim of ‘popularizing scientific knowledge’ is just too narrow; it is out of time.
The Unmoved Mover Series systematically showed Chinese readers popular science books from developed countries for the first time, and it played an exemplary role in the publication of a new kind of popular science books. Humanities scholars played a very important role in the success of the Unmoved Mover Series in the early 1990s. After the interruption of the revolution in the 1980s, intellectuals needed a shelter in which console their heart. ‘The spirit of science’ became their consolation because it was against dogma and yet was relatively safe to pursue in the Chinese context. In fact, Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is not easy to understand. Most people buy it simply to follow the new ‘cultural fashion’. It worth pointing out that it was Chinese humanist intellectuals, not natural scientists, who created this new cultural fashion.
After the Unmoved Mover Series, introducing a large number of popular science books from developed countries in the form of a series became popular. Series of translations of western books include the Science Masters Series (1995–99, published by Shanghai Science and Technology Press), the Fulcrum Series (1998–2001), published by Jilin People’s Publishing House), the San Si (Think Twice) Series (1999), published by Jiangxi Education Press), and so on. The largest one so far is the Philosopher’s Stone Series, which is published by Shanghai Scientific and Technological Education Publishing House. It has rolled out three series, 94 books since 1998 and has the greatest number of books planned.
4. The difficult position of popular science publishing in contemporary China
China is not the motherland of modern science. Chinese culture is not fertile soil for the production of scientific thoughts. Accordingly, popular science books in China lack readers a priori. After the modern China was forced to join the process of modernization and industrialization, for practical considerations, the Chinese government and ordinary people all realized that it was important to gain a comprehensive understanding of western science and technology. However, people usually paid attention to the practical side, and had little interest in scientific thinking and the scientific spirit. This is the congenital disadvantage of China’s popular science publishing. At the time of the planned system, it was somewhat effective when the government imposed its will on popularizing the elementary knowledge of modern science over the country. When the planned system was gone, science popularization work was in trouble.
Children and juveniles should be the main audience of popular science books. But ‘Test-oriented education’ in Chinese elementary education, which has become more extreme since the 1990s (exercise-heavy teaching methods and learning by rote is encouraged; in order to pass all kinds of tests and get into the top school, students have to spend almost all of their time doing exercises), as mentioned above, leaves no time and energy for children to read popular science books. Even those who are very interested in science cannot use up too much energy in reading, because they are occupied in solving puzzles and coping with exams. As a result, although China has a population most inclined to read, the circulation of outstanding popular science books is relatively small. For example, Hawking’s A Brief History of Time has sold more than 10 million copies in the western world, but it has sold less than 1 million copies in China. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring sold 500,000 copies in the first three months after it was published in the USA, but in China, it sold only 20,000 copies in five years. This is the difficult position for popular science publishing in contemporary China: popular science books are frequently applauded by the experts, but not enjoyed by the general readers.
In addition to the problem on the readers’ side, the lack of good science writers and science editors is another reason for the decline. The education mode of dividing arts and sciences has been practiced in China’s higher education for more than half a century. As a result, the arts students do not learn much science, and the science students do not learn much about the arts. It is difficult to cultivate good science writers and science editors who understand both arts and sciences. This rigid mode of education is changing now, but the traditional inertia prevails.
In the past 10 years, the publishing industry has been hit because of the popularization of computer network technology in China, popular science publishing included. However, a new generation of science writers who use the internet as their platform has emerged. For example, ‘the Scientific Squirrels’ are made up of young Internet users who happen to have a science background. Some of them are still at university, some are new graduates, all of them love writing, and enjoy presenting scientific knowledge in an interesting style. But their influence is primarily on the Internet. Their 2009 book When the Colorful Voice Tastes Sweet sold only tens of thousands of copies.
Given these circumstances, unless a major incident pushes up sales of popular science books (for example, when an earthquake caused Fukushima’s nuclear accident, science books about earthquakes or nuclear power plants became popular), or the Chinese government uses tax payer’s money to popularize certain scientific knowledge on a large scale and popular science books with a large circulation are published, popular science publishing in China will find it difficult to avoid the unfortunate fate of ‘applauded by the experts, but not enjoyed by the general readers’ for a long time to come.