A boom in sports participation
Since Beijing 2008, sports participation has increased significantly in China. It has been estimated that 440 million people in China played sport or engaged in physical exercise on a regular basis in 2020, an increase of 50 million on 2015 and a figure that equates to approximately 31 per cent of the Chinese population of 1.412 billion, the world’s largest.
This increase has partly been made possible by a number of initiatives. They include the creation of an annual sports and culture festival held at the Olympic Park on 8 August – China’s National Fitness Day and the anniversary of the start of the 2008 Olympic Games. The festival features 40 events inviting people to try their hand at summer and winter sports, health and wellbeing activities, and traditional Chinese arts. More than 100,000 people took part in the festival in 2018.
With the assistance of BODA, the Chinese capital’s districts organise triathlon, cycling and dance events, further boosting participation, while the city’s schools are delivering the Olympic Education Series, which includes more than 20 activities, such as youth football, ice hockey leagues and Olympic winter camps. More than 1,000 schools and 200,000 students have taken part in these events.
One sport that reflects the widespread growth in grassroots participation is tennis. Following the success of China’s female tennis stars in the mid-2000s, including medal-winning performances at the Olympic Games Beijing 2008 by Yan Zi and Zheng Jie in the women’s doubles, the sport has registered a significant increase in interest, investment and participation. Some US 4 billion in funding has gone into tennis across China, which now has an estimated 14 million players, up from one million in 1988. This increase in the sport’s popularity has occurred, in part, thanks to the creation of programmes such as Dan Fei (Fly Solo), which provided professional players with increased autonomy, and the Potter's Wheel academy in Beijing, which supports the development of the country’s future tennis stars. Other sports in China are also following this model.
Basketball is another sport where participation is up. One of the faces of Beijing 2008, former NBA player Yao Ming helped set up a programme that has reached 350 schools and more than 150,000 children across China and has also led to school facilities and courts being built in rural areas.
With Beijing having transitioned from Olympic Summer Games host to Olympic Winter Games host, so participation levels in winter sports have risen too. Some 8.15 million people took part in 4,401 winter sports events held in Beijing in the 2018/19 season, while the country boasted 742 skiing resorts and 596 ice rinks by the end of 2018. As a result, China’s winter sports industry was worth USD 53.6 billion that year, up from USD 46.2 billion in 2017, thanks in part to this boost in public participation.