WHAT IF the biggest face staring down at you from a city billboard was not a pop star, politician or luxury brand ambassador – but a scientist?
That is increasingly the scene in parts of China.
Across cities including Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Hefei, Heze and other urban centres, some of the most valuable commercial advertising real estate has recently been given over to giant portraits of scientists whose work helped transform modern China.
Qian Xuesen, the rocket scientist central to China’s missile and space programmes. Deng Jiaxian, a key figure in China’s nuclear weapons programme. Tu Youyou, whose research contributed to the discovery of artemisinin and earned her the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. And Yuan Longping, the agricultural scientist celebrated for developing hybrid rice.
They are appearing where consumers would normally expect to see celebrities selling cars, cosmetics, smartphones or fashion.
The phenomenon began in Shandong in August and has spread to Anhui, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Jiangxi and elsewhere. In Chongqing, enormous portraits have appeared on prime advertising screens in the city centre. In Zhengzhou, scientists have taken over prominent metro advertising positions. Some displays carry messages effectively telling the public: these are the stars worth following.
It raises a much bigger question than whether China is good at propaganda. It asks:
who does a society choose to make visible?
China has a long and complicated history of using public imagery to shape social and political behaviour. During Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, propaganda posters became an almost unavoidable part of everyday life. They appeared in streets, workplaces, schools and public spaces, communicating political messages and promoting model figures, workers and revolutionary ideals. (Exhibits)
The imagery was not subtle. Mao’s face could dominate the composition, while posters transformed political ideology into heroic visual narratives. That history matters because China understands the psychological power of putting particular people in front of millions of eyes.
But today’s scientist campaign is different, and that difference is worth noticing.
The current displays are understood in many cases to involve commercial venues voluntarily giving advertising space to public-service campaigns rather than being evidence of a nationwide order instructing businesses to remove celebrity advertising. Chinese media have described companies and shopping centres effectively giving the city’s advertising “C-position” to scientists. (The Paper)
The message, however, is unmistakable. Yuan Longping is perhaps the most powerful example.
Known as the “Father of Hybrid Rice”, Yuan devoted his career to increasing rice yields and improving food security. He became enormously popular with ordinary Chinese people, not because he was an entertainer but because his work had an immediate connection to everyday life.
His celebrity was earned through contribution. That distinction matters.
Modern societies have become extraordinarily efficient at manufacturing fame. Social media algorithms reward visibility. Influencers turn attention into commercial value. Celebrity endorsements dominate advertising. A person’s ability to attract millions of followers can become more economically valuable than their contribution to science, engineering or public welfare.
China is presenting another proposition. Perhaps the people who solve problems should be famous.
Perhaps the person who helps feed hundreds of millions should occupy the same visual space as the person selling a luxury car.
Perhaps a child walking through a city should encounter the face of a scientist often enough for curiosity to become aspiration.
That idea has already begun travelling beyond China: India
In India, former Chief Economic Adviser Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian publicly urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “take inspiration from China”, arguing that India should reconsider its habit of repeatedly naming public spaces after a relatively small group of political leaders.
Instead, he suggested celebrating people such as mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, physicists C. V. Raman and Satyendra Nath Bose, aerospace scientist Vikram Sarabhai, agricultural scientist M. S. Swaminathan and former Indian President and scientist A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. (Business Today)
Subramanian’s argument goes beyond billboards. It is about national memory.
Who gets remembered? Whose name appears on a road? Whose portrait is displayed in a public building? Whose achievements are taught to children?
Bangladesh is asking a similar question.
Writing in The Daily Star, Mehdi Islam Mahi posed an arresting thought: what if the face staring back from a giant billboard was a scientist whose work had changed millions of lives? He imagined walking through Dhaka and seeing a Bangladeshi researcher accompanied by an explanation of what they discovered. (The Daily Star)
The idea is deceptively simple. Public space is never neutral. The faces we repeatedly see tell us something about what society values. There is another fascinating layer to this story: the technology replacing the old billboard is itself changing the culture.
Across Asia, giant hand-painted cinema posters were once an art form. Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Hong Kong all developed their own traditions of enormous painted images advertising films and their stars.
Hand painted by Mehmood Alam on Nalin Sarkar Street. (Express Photo Shashi Ghosh)
In Taiwan, artists such as Yen Chen-fa have helped preserve the disappearing craft of hand-painted cinema billboards. In Hong Kong, veteran painters produced huge movie posters by hand before digital printing transformed the industry. Until the mid-1990s, hand painted billboards were common in Hong Kong- once again depicting the cinema’s blockbusters. Jimmy Keung’s life story, as a Hong Kong billboard painter from 1973, reminisces a time before people were replaced by machines: Digital Printers of Vinyl prints and large LED screens resist weather damage and can be produced in hours. A lack of apprentices due to the grueling physical labor, long hours, and years of practice, attracting very few young learners. And aging masters whereby the original guild painters have retired or passed away.
The old billboard required an artist. The new billboard requires a screen. Yet both serve the same fundamental human purpose: deciding who deserves to be seen. Perhaps that is why China’s scientist campaign is attracting such international attention. It is not simply about propaganda. Nor is it proof that Chinese society has somehow abandoned celebrity culture.
It is a statement about aspiration.
At a time when many young people across the world are being encouraged to pursue visibility, followers and personal branding, China is experimenting with putting discovery, engineering, food security and scientific achievement back into the visual centre of everyday life.
There is an irony here. A system historically associated with some of the world’s most powerful political propaganda is now producing imagery that many outside China find unexpectedly inspiring.
The question for Australia, India, Bangladesh and the rest of Asia is not whether they should copy China – but rather:
What faces would we put on the biggest screens in our cities, and what would that choice tell the next generation about what we value?
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