ABSTRACT
Women in nineteenth-century China lived within a symbolic feudal system and a declining traditional society. While footbinding restricted women's lives in China, the term ‘feminism’ originated from the French word ‘feminisme’, coined by the utopian socialist Charles Fourier, and was first used in English in the 1890s in association with the movement for equal political and legal rights for women. If the period 1840-1911 witnessed both the birth of the modern women's exercise and emancipation movement, the founding of the Republic of China in 1912 had observed extensive debates and practices in terms of the physical liberation of Chinese women. The discussions about feminism in China were predominate especially during the May Fourth Movement, although the progress reduced as a result of the chaos of civil wars and the Anti-Japanese War. Under the dual background that the government attached importance to sports and the new culture movement to promote women's liberation, women's sports developed rapidly.
