In 1924, the All-China Athletic Association was founded as the first national sports organization. One of its tasks was to host the Far Eastern Championship Games and carry out exchanges with international sports organizations, select athletes for participation in the Olympic Games and such international tournaments as the Davis Cup for tennis.
During the '30s, the Kuomintang government promulgated a series of programs concerning school physical education based on Western systems, which, however, produced little effects because of their divorcement from reality and for lack of teaching personnel and financial resources. The '40s witnessed a low ebb in sports and physical education because of the wars.
In the communist-led revolutionary bases, sports activities were carried out in connection with military training during respites, and athletic meets were often held on such holidays as the Chinese People's Liberation Army Day on August 1 and the international Labor Day on May 1. During the War of Resistance Against Japan, the "Fighting" basketball team under the 120th Division became a backbone in promoting sports among the troops. Its commander, General He Long, was later appointed Vice-Premier and concurrently Minister in charge of the State Commission for Physical Culture and Sports soon after the founding of the People' Republic.
With the introduction of modern sports into China, the traditional Chinese sports receded into the background as a physical education system. However, during the long process of development, some of them -- such as wrestling, archery and horse-racing -- have remained independent sports , while physical exercises, barehanded or with weapons, have developed into wushu with attacking and defensive skills as its contents and set-pattern routines and free combat as its forms. There are hundreds of schools and styles of wushu, the most popular being taijiquan practiced regularly by millions upon millions of people for the purpose of keeping fit and curing chronic diseases. Up to now, the traditional sports centered around wushu have remained dominant as far as the number of participants is concerned.
In recent years, many traditional Chinese sports have adopted Western rules and regulations. In wushu, for instance, competitions are conducted with reference to modern gymnastics in evaluation and awarding points. In the Mongolian-style wrestling of "bok," there is team competition as at the World Table Tennis Championships and the seeding system is used in the individual events so that superior competitors will not be eliminated in the first rounds.
The Westernization of physical education laid a solid social foundation for the later development of the Olympic Movement in China..
(COC)
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