China's State Council has issued an education plan to improve people's scientific knowledge in the coming years toward 2020.

"To improve people's scientific knowledge is a basic social project of building an innovation-oriented country," the outline said.

"A related survey shows people's scientific understanding has not increased with China's sustained rapid economic development," said Deng Nan, a leading member of the secretariat of China Association for Science and Technology.

"People's low level of scientific knowledge has restrained China's economic and social development," Deng stressed. "This plan, drawing on the experience of developed countries, offers Chinese citizens the opportunity to enhance it."

The outline covers the major goals, tasks and measures of improving Chinese people's scientific knowledge in the next 15 years. The government will play a leading role in the program and mobilize all social forces to participate in the program so as to lay a solid foundation of human resources for China's modernization drive.

(Xinhua News Agency March 21, 2006)