Ice and snow specialists in high demand

Political advisers call for training of more winter sports instructors

As China steps up preparations ahead of hosting the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, members of the nation's top political advisory body have urged professional academies and domestic manufacturers to help plug perceived gaps in the country's winter sports expertise.

A national winter sports promotion program that aims to introduce skiing, ice skating and the like to 2,000 schools by 2020 has been hampered by a lack of qualified instructors, according to Yang Jingzhi, former deputy director of Hebei provincial sports bureau and a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.