On behalf of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, I now formally apply to the scientists present today for enrolment. We wish to invite some of you comrades to forums or special study sessions and ask you to act as our teachers.

The second important measure is to build up the ranks of science and technology in a big way, into an effective force and a reserve for our country.

Who are the membres of this effective force and its reserve? Our young people and teenagers. To enable them to really become such contingents, it is necessary to solve our educational problem in real earnest.

To run our education well, two big issues demand serious attention.

One concerns 160 million or so youth who were between eight and 18 in 1966. During the decade ending 1976, they should have been studying hard in either primary or middle schools, but the whole generation actually fell victim to the poisonous stuff spread by Lin Biao and the gang of four, who preached "it is justified to beat people, smash things and grab from others," and made people believe that "it is an honour to hand in a blank examination paper." Now grown up, they are in their twenties or early thirties and most of them have gone to work while a few of them are still studying in colleges. It is our hope that comrades of the Scientific and Technical Association and comrades of the educational departments, the trade unions, the Communist Youth League and the Women's Federation will put their heads together and study this problem attentively. It is our hope that all comrades in factories and mines and rural people's communes too will take this matter into serious consideration and help these young people in a planned and systematic way, to enhance their ideological consciousness, raise their cultural level and increase their technical knowledge.

The other concerns the 210 million teenagers now in primary and middle schools. They belong to the reserves for the realization of the four modernizations. But the educational system and structure and also the quality and quantity of the students being trained are not adequate to meet the needs of the developing situation. Leading comrades at all levels, educationalists, scientists as well as those who are engaged in the popularization of science must show the greatest zeal and concern for our students and the younger generation, and provide this readership with more and better readers, textbooks and various other reading material. We should create and form by all means a social atmosphere in which everyone has a profound love for young people, teenagers and little children, in which everyone shows respect for teachers in schools and colleges who are training one generation of newcomers after another.

The third important measure is for the whole Party to give full support to scientists and scientific workers in their efforts to work out their grand projects.

Our country already has an army of scientists and technicians comprising theoreticians, inventors, innovators, engineering experts, agriculturists and medical specialists. Many of the world's top-notch scientists like Comrades Li Siguang, Zhu Kezheng and others had emerged from these ranks. They are the pride of the Chinese nation.

However, this army is numerically small and its standard is not very high. This is the very reason why the Party has especially placed its hopes on this contingent. Firstly, it hopes that they will take the lead in scaling the scientific heights and secondly, it hopes that they will do their best to train and bring up their successors.

I hope people in scientific and technical circles will establish and carry forward a fine scientific tradition. Scientists should have a real scientific spirit, that is, the spirit of practicality, the spirit of making breakthroughs and the spirit of originality and creativeness, in opposition to empty talk, superficiality and conservatism. Scientists should be able to respect other people's achievements and discuss things with one another, learn from one another, be good at constantly drawing wisdom from the practice of the labouring masses and also adept at absorbing what is good in the advanced science and technology of other countries.

This association is an organization belonging to scientists and scientific and technical workers, a mass organization as important as the trade unions, the Communist Youth League, the Women's Federation and the Federation of Literary and Art Circles. On the march towards the four modernizations, this association occupies an especially important position. To develop science, to develop education, to train large numbers of specialists in various disciplines, to raise the scientific and cultural level of the whole nation - this is a vast undertaking to exploit mankind's intellectual resources. This association will certainly play a tremendous historical role in this respect.

Mirroring and representing the wish and will of the people of all nationalities in the country, our Party has set a great goal to strive for, namely, to realize the four modernizations. This goal has taken firm root in the hearts of 900 million people. A magnificent ideal which takes root in the hearts of the people is bound to emerge successful and no one can stop it.

When Dr. Sun Yat-sen appeared on the stage of history as a great pioneer of the democratic revolution, he wrote down the following words: "The current of the world is like a torrent: he who swims with it prospers and he who swims against it perishes." This farsighted view of his had inspired and encouraged many people with high ideals to dedicate themselves to China's democratic revolution.

Today, the historical current has rolled farther ahead than at the time of Dr. Sun. We have every reason to be more farsighted, we have the conditions to achieve more than people in his time did. Of course, there are new difficulties and new obstacles ahead of us. But no great victory is won without effort, without first overcoming all kinds of serious difficulties!

(No. 15, 1980)