On November 3, the 2026 National Outstanding Popular Science Books Recommendation and Announcement Event was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. The event was jointly hosted by Science and Technology Daily, the Publicity Department of the CPC Shanxi Provincial Committee, the Shanxi Provincial Department of Science and Technology, and the Shanxi Association for Science and Technology, and organized by Shanxi Publishing and Media Group and Popular Science Times. At the opening ceremony, Science and Technology Daily announced the 2026 National List of Outstanding Popular Science Books. The list included Illustration of the Energy Revolution, a popular science monograph co-authored by Yi-Ming Wei, Meng Shen, and Jiu-Jun Cheng. Professor Yi-Ming Wei, director of the Beijing Laboratory for Systems Engineering of Carbon Neutrality at Beijing Institute of Technology and a member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering, attended the event by invitation and delivered a keynote address.

On the same day, during the “Popular Science in Schools” program, one of the key components of the event, Professor Wei was invited to visit Taiyuan Experimental Middle School, where he gave a popular science lecture titled “Energy: Past and Future” and presented the selected book to the school. During the lecture, Professor Wei posed questions to encourage students to think about how energy might develop in the future. Students actively shared their thoughts, and the atmosphere was lively. The lecture attracted attention and received coverage from major media outlets, including CCTV.com and Popular Science Times.

Launched in 2011, the National Outstanding Popular Science Books Recommendation Program is a longstanding and authoritative national initiative in China for promoting popular science books. For many years, the Ministry of Science and Technology organized and ran the program, which aims to select popular science books that combine scientific accuracy, accessibility, and readability and to recommend them to the general public. Beginning in 2026, Science and Technology Daily took the lead in organizing the review process under the overall coordination and guidance of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The selection process included preliminary reviews and recommendations of the strongest entries by the science and technology authorities of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government, followed by a national review organized by Science and Technology Daily. In all, 99 books or sets were selected.