Wang Yuan, a member of China's well-known teenage boy band TFBOYS, attends the 6th UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum at the UN headquarters in New York between Jan 30 to Jan 31, 2017. Photo:VCG

 A newly compiled textbook of politics for junior school students has recorded popular Chinese singer Wang Yuan's speech at the 2017 Youth Forum of the UN with the aim to stimulate students focusing more on their lessons.

The name of Wang, 18, a member of the popular Chinese band TFBOYS and also UNICEF Special Advocate for Education, appeared in a textbook on education in politics for 9th graders.

According to a photo posted by a Sina Weibo user, it is an essay called "Open China needs me," which mentioned the singer. The photo shows Wang speaking in English before the closing plenary of the 2017 Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum in New York in January.

"Using the latest and more popular examples like Wang's address is a good way of making ideology and morality education more acceptable to middle school students," Shi Wenxue, a Beijing-based culture critic, told Global Times on Wednesday, adding that education experts who edit the textbooks take Wang's positive influence into consideration.

In November, 2017, Wang was named one of "the 30 Most Influential Teens" by Time magazine.

On Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social platform in China, Wang amassed more than 68 million followers. In 2016, his single "Because I met you" was watched more than 300 million times and reposted more than 400 million times, reports said.

Parents and teachers that Global Times spoke to on Wednesday agreed with the method. A parent of a middle school student in Beijing said that "Children have their own idols. As long as these idols have a positive impact on them, parents will not disrupt it."

A middle school teacher in Taiyuan, North China's Shanxi Province has the similar view, noting that "taking a positive idol as a role model can help students pay more attention in class and improve teaching quality."