China rolls out new fitness program amid Tokyo cheers, Covid rages

While the Chinese athletes were competing for medals in the delayed Tokyo Olympic Games and the Covid-19 variants were raging across the world, the State Council of China issued a circular on Aug 3, to push forward a new five-year extensive mass fitness program, spanning from 2021 to 2025.

Right on the same day, Liu Hao from central Yunnan’s Yuxi City won silver with his teammate Zheng Pengfei on men's canoe double 1,000m in Tokyo, and the Chinese delegation had secured 32 golds and 70 medals in total, ranking first on the Olympic medal tally.

As of the end of August 4, American athletes had won 25 golds and 79 medals in total at the Tokyo Olympics. Although the US won more medals in total, it is the custom of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to rank as per the number of gold medals.

However, the American media outlets seemed to be unwilling to follow the IOC rule, and ranked their country on the top of the medal tally. It’s funny that the official websites of the IOC and Tokyo Olympics listed China first, while the media websites of New York Times, Washington Post and National Broadcasting Company made America “first”.

“The rest of the world favors gold over everything. That’s how the International Olympic Committee tallies it. Same with the medal standing on the Toyko 2020 website. It’s good enough for media companies all over the world, just not in the U.S. apparently,” said an article titled “Why America's way of counting medals is ridiculous” on www.aol.co.uk.

As the Tokyo Games are approaching to an end on August 8, China will probably remain on the top of the tally. In the future, there bound to be more excellent men and women with sportsmanship coming out of the Chinese population, along with the implementation of new mass fitness program.

According to the State Council’s circular, the general public will enjoy more convenient physical fitness conditions by 2025, with full coverage of fitness facilities in counties, towns, and administrative villages, and communities within a 15-minute walk. And the sports industry should see a value of 5 trillion yuan accordingly.

In spite of this, Wang Bing, head of the Beijing-based Yonghuai Institute of Sport Industry Development, said in a Xinhua report that the gap between China and the world sports powers in the supply of public sports services is quite obvious. China has a long way to go to be a sports power.

Noting that the young, elderly and disabled will have more access to public stadiums, the circular said school stadiums should be open to the public with sound regular epidemic prevention and control practices.

As the Delta and other Covid-19 variants are raging across the neighboring countries, China has stepped up the pandemic prevention measures to control the recent outbreaks in Guangzhou, Nanjing, Zhengzhou and other cities.

In west Yunnan’s Ruili city and Longchuan county that border Myanmar, tens of Covid cases with the Delta strain have been identified thanks to fast gene sequencing, and many of the cases were imported. On August 4, the province launched its vaccination drive for minors aged between 12 and 17.

Amid the recent debate over the vaccines’ effectiveness, Zhang Wenhong, director of the Infectious Diseases Department at Huashan Hospital affiliated to Fudan University, said the existing vaccines are still effective enough to fend off the Covid-19 viruses.

The jabs will doubtlessly remain to be the key to Covid-19 prevention, but in the long run the public’s health should rely more on the sustained national fitness programs, via which the mass immune system can be strengthened.

“With the COVID-19 epidemic still spreading all over the world, the five-year fitness programs need to set up higher and clearer goals for national development of the sports industry,” added Wang Bing in the Xinhua report.

Online sources; Trans-editing by Wang Shixue