BEIJING (AP) — 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 draw attention to physical education in China.
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 and lack of interest.
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?”
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.
Lou Linjun, a former physical education teacher in Hangzhou in eastern China, said the grueling schoolwork has driven students out of the exercise yards. “It’s become a norm that schoolyards are empty in the afternoon at many of the city’s key high schools,” said Lou, who is now an assistant principal.
“Students are less likely to be willing to endure hardship and do not like to run anymore.”
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.
