On 27 March 2017 China’s official science newspaper, Science and Technology Daily, reported on Dr Joy Zhang’s ESRC workshop in Wuhan. The workshop stems from Dr Zhang’s ESRC funded project, ‘Governing Scientific Accountability in China‘.

Extensive fieldwork from the study has found that although there is good will from both scientific practitioners and civil society groups, as well as heavy investment from the Chinese government, a key hindrance for (re)building trust and accountability of science in China is a lack of public engagement skills amongst scientists. The event addresses this gap by bringing together 50 delegates (i.e. policy advisors, scientists, bioethicists, sociologists, public engagement experts and relevant civil society staff) from both China and the UK, arguably for the first time, to identify a roadmap for public engagement that is pertinent to Chinese particularities.

As an official media outlet, Science and Technology Daily is a key communicative channel of the Chinese government for its scientific strategies. The newspaper cited Dr Zhang’s vision of China’s public engagement of science at length and echoed her view that promoting a state-society collaboration in the building of risk communication and a risk responsive system is crucial for China’s global research competitiveness.

In addition, Professor Xian’en Zhang, China’s former Director General of Basic Research at the Ministry of Science and Technology, highly commended Dr Zhang’s event for it made a convincing case of how social research can contribute to the rational governance of scientific practices in China.

Read the full report (in Chinese) on the Science and Technology Daily website.