ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Western missionaries and evangelists played a fundamental role in the introduction of modern Western physical education and sport to China. In the missionary educational institutions, most of the lessons were given in English, and so the students were also exposed to US and British cultures through language education. Missionary educational institutions and the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) were required to register and be supervised by the Nationalist government. Missionary educational institutions and the YMCA in China used modern physical education and sport to bring social change and Western civilization into China. In fact, physical education and sport were used as agents of change for the propagation of religion and culture by the missionary educational institutions and the YMCA in their project of Christianizing China. The concepts of cultural imperialism and nationalism have been applied to understand how the two interacted in the process of the development of modern physical education and sports in China.
