ZhangJiagang achieves cultural upgrade

The city of Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province came up with an index for its planned “Educated city” development, in November 2012, the first city in China to take this approach to both urban and rural areas, in other words, its entire area.

The index uses seven criteria for the first level of reading – reading facilities, resources, organizations, activities, environment, effectiveness, and support sytem; 44 criteria at the second level; and 87 at the third level. This innovative system is being used to turn the vague idea of an “Educated city” into a scientific reality.

The city itself has an important role in establishing “reading promoters”, whose teamwork will serve as an indication of how far it has gone in developing an “Educated City”. The various reading activities can address different groups of people, ages, and habits, based city-wide surveys, and studies by a dozen or more experts and scholars, for an effective combination of the different demands and brands.

The head of the municipal culture, broadcasting, TV, press, and publishing administration, Chen Shihai, had this to say, “This method wll employ individual reading habits and interests as a fundamental way to arouse people’s inner reading power for a deeper, more sustained development.”

The urban-rural coverage is a prominent feature of this “Educated City” system, with its one-stop reading experience for the first group of nine pilot communities. It employs different functions, such as consulting, parent-child learning, digital reading, newspaper reading, book borrowing, and idea sharing. The digital library, with a 4.7-million-yuan investment, will be a key project for 2013. And more modern reading methods, such as “citywide learning network” and “wireless Zhangjiagang”, will be set up to get more interested in taking part in the reading activities through a convenient site.

The head of Zhangjiagang municipal publicity department, Yang Fang, explained, “It’s only through scientific consideration that we can change and achieve a universal reading mode and the soft power of our city can be really enhanced”.

In the end, the “Educated City” needs to be guided not just by advanced thinking but, by systematic activities and institutional backing. And, Zhangjiagang’s experience shows how the work on its “Educated City” has grown, and how the “Educated City” development is on a new path. This has given new impetus mental energy to the urban-rural integration.

Li Guoxin, a Peking University professor, has remarked that the system is a major innovation in developing public culture services and that it shows the public service values of the Zhangjiagang government, in amount of coverage, equality, and urban-rural integration.