China's Trans-Science Railway

During the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 70s, China persecuted scientists and sent the Red Guard to the farthest reaches of the country to promote anti-intellectualism. This year, China is again sending delegates to the countryside, but this time they are spreading a very different sort of message: the virtues of scientific progress.

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As China pours money into ambitious initiatives like nanotechnology, supercomputers, and its space program, surveys suggest that as much as 98 percent of the population lacks the education necessary to comprehend the basics of science. But scientific achievement is increasingly part of modern China's nationalism, and so the country's uneducated workers—traditional allies in government-engendered nationalism—must comprehend science. President Hu Jintao called recently on government workers to "on all fronts vigorously publicize scientific development...and to instill it in the hearts of the people."