A special diet is provided at a summer camp for overweight children in Qingdao. [Photo by He Yi/For China Daily]

Chronic diseases soar

A rising rate of obesity is closely related to the surge in the incidence of many non-infectious diseases, which are now the primary health threat for China.

According to a report released by the World Health Organization last month, the number of Chinese people with diabetes is estimated to be 110 million, about 10 percent of the adult population, but in 1980, the figure was less than 5 percent.

Being overweight and a low level of exercise were the main causes of the disease in patients with Type-2 diabetes, which accounts for 90 percent of those with the condition, the report said.

Moreover, the rapidly rising obesity rate among children increases the chances of them contracting chronic diseases such as diabetes, said Yang Wenying, director of the Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases Center at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing.

"Clinicians have seen a fast rise in the number of children with diabetes. Most of these young patients are obese or overweight."

Those conditions have been major contributors to a rise in cardiovascular disease. About 290 million Chinese people have heart disease and the illness is now the primary cause of death in the country, according to a report released last year by the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases.

The incidence of hypertension among Chinese men age 60 and older and with a waistline of 90 cm or larger was 78 percent, the report said.

Between 1980 and 2013, the number of cardiovascular patients being treated in China's hospitals rose by an average rate of 9.51 percent a year, higher than the number of patients with other chronic illnesses, according to the report.