You're reading: China’s young in crisis of declining fitness

BEIJING — Xiao Ru spent her last year of high school studying from morning until late at night. That didn't help her complete one particular assignment in her first year of college: a 1,500-meter run.

With two friends
setting the pace beside her, she finished the university fitness
requirement — barely. Moments later, she doubled over and vomited.

“The
weather got cold, so I haven’t been training much,” she murmured. “Then
suddenly today I had to do this run … and I just … couldn’t do it.”

Clad
in a purple wool sweater to fend off the winter morning chill, the
18-year-old student collapsed in the arms of her friends after the run
at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. They held up each of her
elbows as they escorted her from the track.

Such dramas are
increasingly common on the tracks and fields of China, which, despite
its formidable performance in recent Olympic Games, has seen the fitness
of its young people decline.

“Our economic power has grown while
our people’s physiques have not only failed to improve, but have
deteriorated. That’s unacceptable,” said Sun Yunxiao, deputy director of
China Youth and Children Research Center in Beijing. “This is something
that worries the nation.”

The government has urged schools,
especially K-12, to beef up their physical education following an outcry
touched off by a series of events late last year.

Two Chinese
college students collapsed and died when they were testing for an
annual, mandatory 1,000-meter run in late November. Another two runners
in their early 20s died in 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races during a
sporting event in the southern city of Guangzhou. The sudden deaths were
considered accidental, but the spate of them was enough to trigger a
nationwide retrospection on its physical education.

And several
Chinese universities canceled their men’s 5,000-meter and women’s
3,000-meter events from their fall sports meets, for reasons including
fear of liability, lack of interest and scheduling conflicts.

“This
is a dangerous sign,” Sun said. “Physical education is important in
that it helps youth to develop social skills and to build a healthy
character. But we are at a historic low in our neglect.”

Sun
attributes the decline to an obsession with academic testing scores in
China’s cruelly competitive environment for college admissions, as well
as a proliferation of indoor entertainment options like video games and
surfing the Internet. Though air quality in many Chinese cities has
deteriorated in recent years, physical educators have discounted air
pollution as a major deterrent for outdoor activities.

Sun said an
overwhelming majority of Chinese young students cited their academic
performance as their parents’ top priority, with a chunk of the
population saying it was the only thing that mattered to parents.

The
results are clear from the annual fitness tests that Chinese university
students are required to take. Education Ministry data show that in
2010, male college students ran 1,000 meters 14 to 15 seconds slower on
average than male students who ran a decade earlier. Female students
slowed by about 12 seconds in running 800 meters.

Students also fared worse in other physical tests, jumping shorter distances and completing fewer sit-ups.

Meanwhile,
obesity rates among Chinese college students have gone up. In 2010,
13.3 percent of urban male students were obese, compared to 8.7 percent a
decade earlier. Still, that compares with rates in the United States of
19.6 percent for males aged 12-19, and 33.2 percent for males aged
20-39 for the same period.

The dismal state of fitness in the
younger generation prompted a well-known and hawkish military officer,
Maj. Gen. Luo Yuan, to bemoan the prospects for China’s future in a
recent editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper.

“Femininity
is on the rise, and masculinity is on the decline,” Yuan thundered.
“With such a lack of character and determination and such physical
weakness, how can they shoulder the heavy responsibility?”

Citing
busy schedules, both China’s Education Ministry and its general sports
administration declined AP’s requests for interviews.

Wang
Fangchuan, a sports professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, sees the
disregard of health as the “mark of a society in pursuit of academic
achievements.”

“We are walking on one leg,” Wang said.

The
pressure for academic excellence begins early in Chinese grade schools,
which do not have a tradition of competing in sports against neighboring
schools. The national goal of earning Olympic gold medals further
separates sports from ordinary schools, because promising young athletes
and resources are siphoned off to special sports schools nationwide.

“We
have this strange phenomenon. Outside, we are showing off muscles, but
at home we are panting,” popular blogger Li Chengpeng wrote last summer,
when China’s Olympic athletes in London raked in 38 gold medals —
second only to the United States.

“Outside, the red flags are flying. At home, the red lights are going up,” Li wrote.

In
Wuhan, 24-year-old police officer Yu Meng said he gave up on college
and went to the police academy instead after his passion for soccer cost
him academically in high school.

“On the playing fields are those
with lackluster academic scores. Those with excellent scores are all in
classrooms,” Yu said. “Under the current education system, you cannot
have both, and most prefer studies to exercising.”

Xiao, the
Tsinghua student, constantly did schoolwork while a high school senior
in northern China’s Shanxi province, rising at 7 a.m. and going to bed
after midnight every day, to better prepare herself for college entrance
exams.

“The school no longer required us to run in the senior
year,” she said, adding that her weekly physical activity consisted only
of a bit of badminton with friends.

The long hours of studying
paid off. School officials awarded her family 20,000 yuan ($3,200) and
an LCD television when she scored high enough in the exams to get into
the prestigious university.

Sports educators at Tsinghua say they
feel obligated to make up for missed opportunities in high school by
planting the habit of exercise.

“We have elite education here,”
said Ma Xindong, the university’s head of physical education. “If you
live longer, you can contribute more to the society.”

Tsinghua
goes beyond the standard requirement of a 1,000-meter run and makes its
male students run 3,000 meters for its fitness tests.

Sophomore Xu
Sicheng, who had never run such a long distance before coming to
Tsinghua, said he and his classmates were “shocked” to learn of the
school’s grueling requirement.

“We thought it was a mission impossible!”