ABSTRACT
Chinese sports has experienced a remarkable development since the communist regime initiated the market-oriented reform of its planned economy in the late 1970s. Despite their increasing influence in the governance of Chinese sports, of mass sports and school sports in particular, they have very limited influence on Chinese sports policy, which is strictly protected by the General Administration of Sport and other public bodies. Following the pattern at the national level, local sports bureaus, in which there are offices respectively overseeing elite sports and mass sports, are the main bodies responsible for sports at the provincial, municipal and county level. The most defining and significant characteristics of political governance, which is identified as the strategy through which the task of the governance system is completed, of Chinese sports is known as Juguo Tizhi. This Chinese term is normally translated as ‘whole-country support for the elite sport system’, and is used as a byword for the system of Chinese elite sport.
