Nation's super sports boom works economy into shape

As China works toward the government's goal of becoming "a sporting nation in many aspects" by developing sporting industries and raising public participation, many cities are making their own contributions to reach the target.

The sports sector in Beijing, the only city in the world to have hosted both the summer and winter Olympics, has boomed, with an increase in the number of public sports organizations and people engaged in sports in recent years.

Every morning and evening, people can be seen exercising in the city's parks and gyms.

Li Jing, a 34-year-old white-collar worker, said that she has fallen in love with dancing recently, and that she gets a sense of happiness from the sport.

"I go to the gym every evening after work for dance classes," she said. "Meanwhile, I have found that there are more public parks near my residential community that offer somewhere to jog in the morning and exercise whenever I want."

By the end of the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20) period, around 50.18 percent of Beijing's population were frequent participants in sports, according to a report by China Sports Daily.

Beijing has 35,700 sports stadiums and facilities, amounting to a per capita sports space of 2.45 square meters.

Popularizing sports rather than keeping them professional is an idea shared by sector insiders and the public alike.

Under the theme of "Sports make life better", the China (Chengdu) Life Sports Conference was held in early November in Sichuan's provincial capital.

Chengdu proposed creating a "city of parks" in 2018, and four years later, it is home to the Tianfu New Area — a national-level new area — 3,833 hectares of wetlands and 337 kilometers of greenways. The city's per capita green space now stands at 18.64 square meters.

As an important part of its concept of becoming a city of parks, Chengdu is exploring a path of sports development that involves holding international sports events, and combining green construction with high-level public sports facilities and services.

Wang Fengchao, mayor of Chengdu, told the conference that there are 49 large stadiums in the city capable of holding international sports events. Meanwhile, the city has built some 60,000 sports sites and facilities so that residents are now within 15 minutes' walk of participating in some kind of sport. "Last year, the city's sports sector was worth 92.5 billion yuan ($12.94 billion)," Wang said. "A number of sporting companies are developing well."

As sports facilities become increasingly well-equipped and the concept of sports making life better becomes popular, more and more people are exercising both outdoors and at home, using sports and fitness platforms to record their progress.

"It's important to build a solid foundation of public sport in communities, which can help promote the achievements of our sports sector with the public," Bao Xiaoming, a professor at the Beijing Sport University, told the conference.

"Sports are beneficial to mental health. A major driver of the recent craze for riding, running and other kinds of outdoor sports is to ease pressure and find inner peace," he said.

Peng Weiyong, deputy director general of the Finance Department at the General Administration of Sports, told the conference that "all kinds of people are actively engaged in sports nationwide, and the trend is rising".

Peng said that nationally, the industry rose from a value of 952.6 billion yuan in 2012 to 2.74 trillion yuan in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of 14.1 percent, and the proportion of industrial added value to GDP increased from 0.6 percent in 2012 to 1.06 percent in 2020, becoming a new growth point for the national economy.

Yao Yuxin contributed to this story.