Gu Zhongyi, a dietician from Beijing Tiantan Hospital and a popular blogger on Guokr.com, talks about unhealthy habits during an event hosted by the website in Beijing on January 11 (WEI YAO)

Knowledge is power" was one of Sir Francis Bacon's most powerful sayings, one that is resonating even stronger today thanks to the advent of the Internet, and its ability to empower individuals. According to a report by the China Internet Information Center, there were about 688 million Internet users in China by the end of 2015, which amounts to 50.3 percent of the country's total population.

The potential for a widening variety of services­--including education--for these users has grown in tandem with China's increasing connectivity to the Web.

One such example of the burgeoning market for science and education-oriented content comes from Guokr.com, a social networking platform aimed at popularizing science.

Love of knowledge

Ji Shisan, founder of Guokr.com (WEI YAO)

Ji Shisan, 38 and founder of Guokr.com, started writing about science when he was a doctoral student majoring in neurobiology at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai. His articles were easy to understand and interesting to readers, particularly to laymen fond of science. Ji began his career as a professional writer after graduating in 2007. He established the Songshuhui Association of Science Communicators, a non-profit association of science bloggers, in April 2008. Most of the site's contributors have a PhD degree in fields related to science and strive to make scientific information easy to digest.

As the site's popularity grew, Ji and his fellows began to organize offline activities by the end of 2009, which fostered a growing number of fans with an insatiable appetite for science.

Nonetheless, Ji's team faced mounting pressure to restructure their operation due to a variety of problems in organizing offline communication. "We couldn't launch commercial projects, as Songshuhui is a non-profit organization with unpaid employees who couldn't guarantee a fixed working schedule," Ji recalled in a recent interview.

Fortunately, Ji's plan to start a new company coincided with venture capitalists who had seen the market potential of the Internet Plus Popularization of Science concept. Business models based on the Internet were just starting to boom in China at that time. Therefore, Ji was able to create Guokr.com in 2010 after attaining investment funding, while Songshuhui stayed in operation.

Unlike Songshuhui, Guokr.com is open to the general public and positions itself as a platform for an Internet community as well as new media. Anyone who wants to talk about science can post their voice there and participate in discussions.

As an entrepreneur, Ji had to make his business profitable. Although Guokr.com has a large number of users based on its quality articles, Ji had not gone out of the box or found a good profit model until July 2013 when his team introduced massive open online courses (MOOCs), a program initiated by some top universities in the United States, to China.

"Some 1 million users registered on Mooc.guokr.com within a year after the service was launched," Ji said. His company has also partnered up with Coursera, the largest MOOC platform in the world, and is involved in more than 20 international online education projects, which helped Guokr.com get $20 million in venture capital.

An era of learning

Guokr.com isn't the only representative of its field. Chinese netizens often compare it with another social website, Zhihu.com--founded in 2010 as well--in which science covers the majority of its content. Zhihu.com has stuck to its path as a social platform focused on questions and answers, as opposed to Guokr.com's shift toward online education.

Both Guokr.com and Zhihu.com owe their success to the popularity of science in this day and age. Everyday scientific knowledge such as explanations of food safety and air pollution are what people are interested in. The Internet has made general education more accessible to everyone.

Some Chinese people, for example, have recently shown a keen interest in natural history, which doesn't teach people how to get richer or healthier but does help them learn more about the world.

Zheng Yang, a former magazine editor, runs a travel company named Nature Travel, which features natural history. Besides spreading knowledge online, the Beijing-based company's service includes guides on how to observe animals and plants while on a journey.

Zheng has had 10 years of experience in exploring natural history. He quit his job at a garden-related magazine in 2015 and started his own company.

"Most travelers are adults. They are interested in this new form of sightseeing," Zheng told Beijing Review .

As the market grows larger, Zheng's company faces higher competitive pressure. He found that there were several competitors arising in 2015. He now has to provide new services in order to attract more customers, but claimed that he will adhere to the basic business model of Internet Plus Popularization of Science. "That's what I know best and it's my favorite industry," Zheng said.

Creating platforms

Large companies have also extended their business to this market. Tencent, China's Internet giant, has officially signed a framework agreement with the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to promote the popularization of science on mobile Internet platforms on April 30, 2015.

This project, initiated by CAST in 2014, tops the list on the Chinese Government's plan to boost the Internet Plus Popularization of Science initiative as well as the country's online science education program. Internet Plus is a development strategy advocated by the Chinese Government to promote the application of the Internet technology in various sectors.

Tencent's communication tools QQ and WeChat are critical in the implementation of the project. Tencent will make full use of its social media platforms in order to involve science into an increasing amount of events.

"Intelligent terminals like smartphones are going to be the most important tools for the promotion of science. The channels to gain and spread knowledge have changed a lot. We can gain access to users and give them what they are interested in by means of cloud computing, big data and personalized analysis," Tencent's founder Pony Ma said.

"Internet companies' involvement enhances the promotion of scientific knowledge. The connection between the government, CAST and companies should be further strengthened as each part performs its own functions," said Yang Wenzhi, head of the science promotion department of CAST.

Copyedited by Bryan Michael Galvan

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