Grass-root running events and mobile apps develop under the 5-trillion yuan goal

BEIJING, Dec. 25 -- Yu Liang, the CEO of China's residential real estate developer Vanke, used to be a busy entrepreneur who seldom did exercise. In order to pursue his dream of conquering Mount Qomolangma, he started running four years ago.

The 49-year-old Yu fulfilled his dream one year ago and has become an enthusiastic promoter of running. He launched a series of road race events called "Run for Fun" in 2013 and this year the "Run for Fun" events have spread to 60 cities in China attracting more than 100,000 participants.

"When I asked my friends to climb Mount Qomolangma with me, no one joined me. But when I asked them to join me in running, nearly everyone said yes," said a smiling Yu.

Yu has lost nearly 15 kilograms of weight since he started to run and running has become part of his life. Even during his business trip he will bring his running shoes with him.

"I want to continue promoting the 'Run for Fun' events, encouraging more people in China to start to run and go for a healthy lifestyle," Yu said. "Some people told me I am doing the work that the government and sports associations should do. I said yes, because national fitness is a cause that everyone need to contribute."

While entrepreneurs like Yu are organizing sports events for the public, the government sports departments are busy developing apps for smart phones.

About 1,200 km north of Shenzhen, where the headquarter of Yu's Vanke sits, the Sports Bureau of Hubei Province developed a smart phone application named "Go Exercise" in 2014 to help the public to promote fitness in an easier way.

With this app, citizens in Wuhan, the capital city of the province, can find the nearest venue for exercise at a reasonable price or even for free. All they need to do is just download the application which is also free of charge.

"It is a common problem in most part of China that the public often find it's difficult to find a suitable place for exercise. And on the other hand, most sports venues and facilities are bothered with low utilization rate," Hu Dechun, head of the provincial Sports Bureau said.

"'Go Exercise' can well resolve the bottleneck of information asymmetry and help people to find the nearest sports facilities available. Meanwhile, the government also encourages the owners of sports venues and facilities to open to the public for free or at a lower price through subsidies."

During the two-month test run of "Go Exercise", about half a million citizens in Wuhan used the application. And Hu plans to introduce the app to the whole province next year.

The prosperity of grassroots running events and the rise of sports oriented apps are both reflecting the ever-growing demands of fitness. Since the launching of the "National Fitness Day" in 2009, the notion of investment in health is taking firmer root among Chinese and physical fitness is gaining more attention.

The country's State Council unveiled a policy document in October, announcing plans to develop the country's sports industry and raising the sector's annual output to five trillion yuan (some 810 billion U.S. dollars) by 2025.

The document also stressed that promoting public fitness will become one of the government's national strategies and laid out goals of per capita area of sport grounds reaching two square meters by 2025 and people that exercise regularly reaching 500 million.

"It is the most important news for China's national fitness work," said Liu Guoyong, head of the Sport for All department of China's State General Administration of Sports (CAS).

A sample survey result released by CAS in August showed that 50.5 percent of Chinese people aging from 20 to 69 did exercise at least once in 2013, a 1.3 percent of increase compared with the data in 2012. In spite of the fact that not all of them did exercise frequently enough, the annual average expense in exercise and sports-related goods reached 645 yuan.

"These numbers made us believe that we can achieve the 5-trillion-yuan target by 2025," Liu said, although he also admitted the distribution of sports facilities are not balanced between regions, especially between urban and rural areas.

"That is one of the main problems that we need to cope with in the foreseeable future," Liu added.