This paper systematically reviewed the historical environments and publishing background of astronomical science popularization books in China from 1840 to 1949, and discussed their significance for the dissemination of modern astronomical knowledge. The authors divided this period into two stages with the the Revolution of 1911 as a node. The 1840—1949 period in the late Qing Dynasty was the beginning period of the astronomical science book publishing. The missionaries and Chinese enlightened intellectuals undertook the earliest compilation and publication of astronomical science books. For the first time the nationals came into contact with modern astronomical knowledge. During the Republic of China, returning international students who wished to save the country regarded science education as an important part of national construction and modernization. Although these works did not have the effect they deserved due to the society turmoil. However, it still provided valuable experiences for the later astronomical science popularization writing.

2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Over the past 70 years. With the strong support of the CPC and the central government, China has issued a series of policies on science popularization, which has initially formed a policy system covering the state, departments and local levels, effectively promoting the vigorous development of science popularization. This paper systematically sorts out the historical background, main types, main contents and implementation effects of China's science popularization policies over the past 70 years, and objectively describes the historical process of the change of China's science popularization policy system. This paper puts forward the prospect of China's science popularization policy system construction in the future from the aspects of further improving the science popularization policy system, enhancing the policy effect, strengthening the mechanism construction, innovating the legal system construction, and so on. Furthermore, it provides policy basis and decision-making reference for the further leap-forward development of science popularization in the new era.

Upon the historical new era, this paper reviews the developmental history of China's 30-year Civic Scientific Literacy, which can be summarized as the change from concept to index, from theory to practice, and from academics to policies. This paper also summarizes the practice of supervision and evaluation of China's 30-year Civic Scientific Literacy Survey, which experienced the changes from merely introducing the contents' translation version of other countries to truly understanding the contents, from studying related subjects to making policy as support, from following other countries to leading other countries through innovation. This paper strives to further clarify the historical mission and developmental direction of our Civic Scientific Literacy assessment so as to make its indicators to play an important role in building a strong country of science and technology. The China Civic Scientific Literacy indicators is expected to promote the scientific literacy of citizens and build a community of shared future for the whole world.

On the basis of investigation of important texts such as national policies, laws and regulations, practical materials of popular science and academic research literature, this paper reviews the development of science popularization in urban communities in China since 1949. It tries to reveal the development and changes of the concept, organization, content, methods and means of science popularization in urban communities, and summarizes the features of these changes in the past 70 years. It could provide references for the development of science popularization in urban communities in the new era.

Infrastructure of Science and Technology Popularization (ISTP) is the fundamental resource for science popularization. It provides strong support and protection for the activities of popularizing scientific knowledge. Since the founding of the new China, the development of its ISTP has roughly gone by four stages, adjustment and start, recovering and developing, speedy construction, and comprehensive upgrading. ISTP will play a more important and crucial role for building China as an innovative country and powerful country with strong science and technology. The modern science and technology museum system, the grassroots system, the interconnection system, the international cooperation system and the long-term mechanism system of science and technology popularization should all be built up and developed collaboratively and operated high-efficiently. All of these systems works for building a modern public science popularization service system, which is omni-directional, fully reconciled, fast responded and more convenient. It is expected to create favorable conditions for the popularization of science and technology in the future.

This paper made brief review on some recent important studies about the concepts related to “KEPU” (such as popularization of science, public understanding of science, and science communication), corresponding models and arguments. Some problems in such studies are also discussed.

This paper studied the adjustments of the policy of science popularization based on the background of technological revolution from 1958 to 1961. The author argued that the following elements affected the adjustment of science popularization policy during that period: the general requirement of socialist construction, the technological revolution, the statement of “fully integrate the efforts of improving the standard of technology and popularizing the knowledge”, and the speech of Nie Rongzhen about carrying out the mass line in scientific practice. Hence “walking on two legs” became the important principles guiding popularizing science work over a period of time. With the adjustment of the general government policy, the policy of popularizing science returned to the track of paying attention to both academics and popularization. Review the history of this period has dramatic significance on how to understand the relationship between science popularization and scientific research, and how to formulate science popularization policy to serve the central policy while taking the characteristics of specific discipline into consideration.

This paper introduces seven milestones in the history of science popularization of the People's Republic of China: The Common Program raised the idea of popularizing science; China Association for Science and Technology was established and became the main force for popularizing science; National Science Congress proposed to make more efforts on science popularization; The CPC Central Committee issued Several Opinions on Strengthening the Popularization of Science and Technology that became a programmatic document for the popularization of science; The National People's Congress promulgated and implemented the Law of Science Popularization that helps to legalize and institutionalize the work; Outline of the National Scheme for Scientific Literacy was introduced and implemented by the State Council with a clear aim to improve Chinese Civic scientific literacy; President Xi emphasized that the science popularization is as important as science and technology innovation on “Three Congress” (namely, the combined congresses of National Science and Technology Congress, Conference of Academicians and 9th National Congress of CAST). These events have greatly influenced the direction of science popularization and promoted its development.

This paper selected samples from the Sciencenet Blog, and integratedly analyzed the profile of scientists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The research found that the scientists in the Sciencenet Blog are scientific truth seekers, reflective thinkers of science education, and science culture communicators, or as a common social individual in daily life. Their profile in the Sciencenet Blog is comprehensive, informational rich and full. The construction of the profile of scientists in the Sciencenet Blog is concordant with the blog's characteristics and communication characteristics. This paper also made reflects on the construction of the profile of scientists in the Sciencenet Blog.

Informal science education institutes such as science and technology museums and science related museums play important roles in improving people's scientific literacy. Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is the important part of scientific literacy and is also one of the main goals of science education. For educators in science education institutes, to deeply understanding of the nature of science has significant meanings on achieving the goals of science education. This article explored the status of 181 educators' views about nature of science based on survey at science education institutes. The results showed that the understanding of NOS of educators in science education institutes is on medium level, and it needs to be improved generally; most of science education institutes' educators' understanding of NOS is superficial and traditional. This article also gave some suggestions on improving the science education institutes educators' understanding of NOS.