A SPORTING LIFE: People perform Tai Chi, a traditional Chinese martial art, in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province, on April 24 (CFP)

The lottery, established in 1994, is important for raising funds for sporting and recreation events and for maintaining sports facilities. Thirty percent of the lottery's revenues are used for public projects including sports meetings and mass sports programs, according to the GAS.

With the flourishing of nationwide fitness activities, people's attitudes have also undergone great changes. In many large and medium-sized cities, spending money in the pursuit of good health has become trendy. Some of the newly emerging sports, including horseracing, yoga, pole dancing, women's boxing, kendo, taekwondo and golf are particularly popular among youth.

The Chinese Government has worked hard to promote the country's mass sports activities and its people's fitness.

Aiming to improve the health and physical condition of the general population, the NPFP encouraged everyone to engage in at least one sporting activity every day, learn at least two ways of keeping fit and have a health check every year.

The program ended in 2010, by which time a sports and fitness service system had been set up for the general public. More than 850,000 gymnasiums and stadiums had been built across China, most of which were open to and widely used by the general public.

In order to further improve people's access to sports facilities, the State Council rolled out the National Fitness Regulations in 2009, aiming to get more of China's 1.3 billion people involved in sports.

The regulations emphasized the rights of students to practice sports. It, among other things, has been mandated that schools must ensure one hour each day for students to play sports and set aside at least one "Sports Day" per academic year.

As the previous NPFP expired in 2010, a set of new guidelines for sporting activities known as the National Fitness Program 2011-15 were released in early 2011.

According to the new plan, 32 percent of the population should be getting at least 30 minutes of exercise at least three times a week by 2015. The target is 3.8 percent higher than the number of people who reported exercising in 2007.

In order to provide more opportunities for people to exercise, the number of gymnasiums and stadiums nationwide is set to rise to 1.2 million by 2015.

The government also plans to increase stadium space from today's 1.03 square meters per person to 1.5 square meters in the next five years. "The plan and the goals are based on the current situation and research," Sheng said.

The targets in the five-year program include a call for 50 percent of cities and counties to set up physical training centers and 50 percent of communities to have convenient and functional sports facilities. The document also urges the promotion of competitive sports, including track and field, swimming, and tennis. In addition, the number of professional physical trainers working in communities should reach 1 million.

In order to ensure the program to be implemented effectively, governments at all levels must include their planned investment in the promotion of fitness programs in their budgets, said Sheng.

"We'll conduct a nationwide survey to examine the implementation of the new policy," Sheng said. "To ensure the accuracy of the result, the Central Government will send out staff to do the survey at the local level, instead of collecting data from local sports bureaus."

A featured exercise

On August 9, 2010, Beijing restored the long-suspended broadcast calisthenics and encouraged employees of all companies, public institutions and schools to do the exercises during work breaks.

Since then, the local radio station has broadcast the exercise music every day at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., repeated twice, and lasting about eight minutes. The effort is believed to improve health, especially for those who sit in an office throughout the day.

Surveys have found that the physical conditions of many employees are distressing, with a significant number of young people having high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and so on. In addition, many office workers suffer from lumbar strain, cervical spondylosis and short-sightedness.

People between the ages of 25 and 65 get the least physical exercise due to the pressures of work upon one's personal lifestyle, according to Jiao Shufang, an expert with Beijing Municipal Center of Disease Control and Prevention.

Broadcast calisthenics refers to a set of simple exercises specially designed for the general public to perform along with recorded commands set to a tempo and broadcast by radio or loudspeaker.