The history of sports and physical education in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT The nature of physical education at universities in China has changed frequently in the last century owing to different educational and sports policies. Though pre-1939 sports and physical education in Europe had the same military purpose as China, China never became a colony of any of the European powers that implanted their modern sports elsewhere. The sports cultures of universities started to take different forms depending on the staff and students. This research investigates the policy of sports and education in seven different stages of China’s recent history: the late years of the Qing Dynasty (1895–September 1911), the period of the Republic of China (October 1911–September 1949), the starting phase of the People’s Republic of China (1949–October 1956), the phase of transition (1957–1965), the phase of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the phase of recovery and transformation (1977–September 1992) and the phase of reform and opening up to new development (October 1992–present). The results show that the government policy promoted the development of university sports a lot.