BEIJING – The Student Union of the Science Department of Renmin University recently launched a serial book-reading contest, which is held every two weeks on Wednesday. This contest primarily aims at fellow science students to raise awareness that reading should not only be a burden in their studies, but can be for fun, too, and may even enhance their creativity and competitiveness in the labor market.

Indeed, the book-reading contest opens a window onto a broader concern within Chinese educational system that students are lagging behind their peers.

According to the latest survey by the Chinese government, the average books read per capita in China is 4.58 in 2015, it is a much low rate compared with 11 in Korea, 20 in France, 40 in Japan and 64 in Israel.

Globally, the trend of reading books is going down, but China is more worrying than any other countries considering its long tradition of respecting knowledge, and now people’s reading habit in China is not as good as that decades ago. Educators say limits in people’s knowledge and creativity will ultimately harm the growth of the world’s second-largest economy.

“Students now spend less time in reading, because they are loaded with much study burden, especially for students major in science who have to spend much time in labs doing experiments,” said Yang Zhiyin, one of the organizers.

“Influenced by the atmosphere of RUC, a university famous for its humanistic subjects, students major in science are trying to read to gain more humanistic knowledge, which will enhance their comprehensive quality and be more competitive in the labor market.”

Before hosting the contest, the organizer publicizes the activity both on the website of RUC and wechat, attracting students from other departments to participate in. The publicity works and the number of audience grows from less than ten to forty just in two weeks.

“The schedule of the students is so tight, thus the activity is held at noon when they don’t have classes,” said Zhou Yineng, the leading organizer. “But students may would rather have a nap rather than take part in the activity.”

Wan Yan, the winner of the contest this week thinks that students don’t participate because they are accustomed to be mediocre, which is a kind of widely-accepted philosophy in China, they are not willing to show that “they love studying” and avoid being eye-catching.

“The social atmosphere in China is a reason why people read little,” says Wan Yan, who can read 1 to 2 books per week. “Influenced by utilitarianism, people hardly read unless reading brings them benefits. But why reasons are needed when reading? We read just for reading itself!”

• Team-reported with Linda Ren Yuxuan.