Shopping malls across Chinese cities have replaced commercial advertisements with giant public-service portraits honoring researchers and national figures.
In megacities and regional hubs, digital 3D facades and high-visibility metro advertising slots now feature monumentally scaled portraits of scientists, agronomists, and pioneers.
In Zhengzhou, the busiest and most visible metro advertising slots were specifically set aside for researchers, and the trend subsequently reached Hangzhou.
The Bulletin reports that this initiative forms part of a broader cultural shift highlighting true national titans, including the father of the Chinese space program Qian Xuesen, the agronomist Yuan Longping who counteracted famine with his hybrid rice, and Nobel laureate Tu Youyou who discovered a treatment for malaria.
The push extends directly into digital media platforms developed by major technology enterprises. Technology expert Tristan Harris compares the domestic app Douyin to spinach while characterizing its international counterpart TikTok as opium, noting that both products utilize the exact same underlying algorithm under different moderation frameworks.
While Western platforms operate under market-driven models geared toward screen-time maximization, Douyin enforces a mandatory youth mode for children under 14 years old. This mode restricts daily usage to 40 minutes, blocks access between 22.00 and 06.00, filters out viral trends, and directs users toward advanced physical experiments, history lessons, and lectures in quantum mechanics or rocket technology while requiring active engagement through built-in knowledge tests.
State-led promotion of scientific figures mirrors past efforts, such as the United States response to the 1957 Sputnik crisis when Washington invested astronomical sums in natural sciences through the National Defense Education Act, successfully fostering the generation that later created Silicon Valley.
In contrast, the Bulletin reports that Western institutions and global bureaucracies have capitulated to the logic of Hollywood, relying on actors and sports stars as goodwill ambassadors to shed light on complex geopolitical conflicts or famine rather than leaning on thinkers and experts.
