Xu Weilin

It's crucial for primary and secondary schools to embrace scientific and technological innovation, as young students are key talent for the nation's long-term innovative development, said a deputy to the National People's Congress, the top legislature.

Xu Weilin, an NPC deputy and the rector of Wuhan Textile University in Hubei province, suggested selecting lecturers from higher education institutes to serve as science instructors in primary and secondary schools.

"Educators in higher learning institutes gradually realize that it's not enough to emphasize innovation only in universities," Xu said. "We should nurture students' interests in science and technology starting in primary schools."

Exploring students' interests and knowledge will help cultivate talent with innovative thoughts and strong minds, he said.

"For instance, inventors such as Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison and Alfred Nobel all showed their interests and strong desire for innovation and practical operation early in their lives," he said.

Since making a suggestion to the NPC during last year's two sessions, the largest annual political event in China, Xu has found that more efforts have been made to bring scientific knowledge and practices into schools and cultivate younger students' interests in innovation.

"The national and provincial authorities for science and technology have ramped up efforts to popularize science and technology among young students," Xu said.

A campaign aiming to invite 100 academicians to popularize science and technology in 100 schools nationwide was launched in October during the Donghu Forum held in Wuhan, Hubei's provincial capital.

"As the mechanism has been set up, academicians truly become the science guides of primary and secondary school students, sowing the dream of building a technologically powerful nation in the hearts of more children," Huang Fengchao, the principal of a junior middle school in Wuhan, said during the launch ceremony.

During the campaign's first seminar in Wuhan last month, Sun Heping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, delivered a lecture on the "magic gravitational field" to about 2,000 teacher and student representatives.