China's sci-tech museums attract over 1b offline visits

BEIJING - China's modern science and technology museum system has attracted over 1 billion offline visits since 2012, playing a unique role in promoting fair and inclusive science popularization and improving scientific literacy in the country, according to the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).

The CAST started to build a modern sci-tech museum system in 2012. After more than a decade, the project has helped establish 446 sci-tech museums compliant with national standards, 657 mobile sci-tech museums, 1,764 popular science caravans, 1,124 rural middle school sci-tech museums and the China Digital Science and Technology Museum.

The standards-compliant sci-tech museums have achieved full coverage at the provincial level. The coverage level at the prefecture-level is 65.9 percent, and there are more than 220 county-level sci-tech museums across the country, as well as 377 free-entry museums supported by subsidies from the central government.

Breakthroughs have been made in the joint construction and sharing of mobile science popularization resources. The mobile sci-tech museum has made 5,909 tours, covering 1,888 county-level administrative districts in 29 provinces, with an average of three visits per county.

The mobile sci-tech museum also helped more than 20 counties and cities to set up sci-tech museums. The popular science caravans have traveled about 54.653 million km, equivalent to 1,366 laps around Earth.

The sci-tech museums at middle schools in rural areas cover 29 provinces and Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, training 7,384 sci-tech teachers and serving 13.44 million person-time.

Meanwhile, the total website resources of China Digital Science and Technology Museum reached 18.25 TB, which helped popular science to achieve digital transformation.

The CAST said that China's modern sci-tech museum system will continue to provide scientific education and popularization to the public, especially to key groups such as teenagers. It will also continue to enhance the accessibility of sci-tech museum resources and improve science literacy.