Host of Olympic Games seems out of shape

BEIJING — When Wu Yifu wants to play basketball with his friends, he has to travel 30 minutes by subway, pay $2, and then wait for up to two hours to get on the public court. If he tries to slip in without paying, he faces a $15 fine. Sure it's a bit of a hassle, the 15-year-old junior high student said, but it's still better than other Beijing basketball courts that charge twice as much.

Wu is lucky. At least he has someplace to go. As China prepares to host the Olympics, dreaming of national glory and gold medals galore, a huge number of Chinese lack even basic exercise facilities to help release stress in this tightly wound society.

The disconnect reflects a system that has put most of its money and political will into its elite sports system and relatively little into fitness programs for the average Zhou.

China's changing social and economic dynamics also have made younger people less likely to focus on physical conditioning.

"Chinese parents tend to be concerned only with studying, studying," said Ma Xiuhua, a fiftysomething mother and manager of a sports equipment store in downtown Beijing. Although China recently beefed up rural sports budgets, a survey last year found that only one in 10 Chinese met the national physical training standard, a 20% decline since 2000.

In Beijing's Jianguomen neighborhood, most of those exercising along a narrow strip of land beside the exhaust-choked second ring road are senior citizens. Some are on brightly colored steel bars, others play pingpong or badminton without a net.

About 47% of Chinese retirees exercise each week, according to one study, compared with just 14% of working-age Chinese. That compares with 47% of all American women and 50% of American men, according to a 2005 survey by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Younger people don't seem to have time to exercise," said Shi Xueqin, 80, who has diabetes and high blood pressure. "They're too worried about making money."

Not that they necessarily could if they wanted to. About 60% of urban dwellers in a China Youth Daily survey released in June said they had no place to exercise. The United States has 16 times more space per person devoted to fitness than China.

Although China's budget for competition-level sports is a state secret, there's a quiet debate going on in academia over the relative merit of funneling so much money into national glorification. Scholars say they're keeping quiet, at least until after the Olympics, given how much government "face" is tied to winning gold and pulling off a successful show.