I've seen "get fit" promotions based on rationale like reducing the impact on health care costs, concerns that we are moving toward a time when people in their thirties will experience cardiacs, or addressing the fact that we have the first generation that is likely to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.

However, a rationale out of China is certainly a first. On Friday the Beijing Sports University President Yang Hua spoke before the China Parliament and said:

"It is time for the Chinese nation to improve the physical fitness of our next generation. If we miss the next three to five years a whole generation will be next to useless. If there was another war against Japan, would the younger Chinese be able to fight the Japanese one-on-one?"

Interesting thought.... "Let's get fit in case we need to punch out the people next door."

ryck

Getting and staying fit is a good thing.

But I prefer settling disputes at a distance, to preserve sanctity of the body.
Wear 2 pairs of latex gloves to ward off GSR, and don't forget to renew your NRA membership.

No doubt about that - fitness seems to be the key to keeping lots of health issues at bay. I just thought it was strange that a nation would rationalize that it might also be the key to keeping another nation at bay.

ryck

Not at all strange. History is replete with nations thinking and acting so — eg, Germany under the Nazis, Soviet Union, North Korea, ....
Of course, most of them have also been bellicose.
And we mustn't forget the good ol' US of A.

You're right, of course, it's just strange to see it stated. And my second post should have been clearer that, in this case, it's not the nation itself making the argument - it's a prominent person addressing the nation's parliament.

ryck

...in order to get more financing for his university. China against Japan these days - I guess the Party octagenarians laughed at their hearts' content. Age-old scare tactics.
Speaking about the previous post I wonder where Grelber found that North Korea has a big fitness program. And the whole allusion to "oppressive regimes" as pillars of mass fitness is ludicrous. If Nazi Germany and North Korea always implied that the country may be at war with somebody any moment, Soviet Union did not have that overwhelming kind of propaganda, at least not after Stalin. And if you look at the last Olympics, the same thing can be said about Canada and US because of the medal count... I don't quite get this logic.

Huh?

I'm not sure where the phrase "oppressive regimes" derives from, but certainly it could be inferred from examples given.
Generally speaking, a country doesn't create and maintain standing armies of cruller cadets, although some sergeants and generals may put on the avoirdupois. Boot camp ensures fitness for the most part.
Orders, implied or direct, from the ruling elite do not necessarily constitute propaganda.
North Korea starves its population to maintain a (fit) standing army and create weapons of mass destruction.
And logic doesn't enter the presentation of observable facts, of stating the obvious.
Res ipsa loquitur.

Perhaps even more important than but certainly intimately intertwined with physical fitness is mental ~ intellectual ~ educational fitness: Mens sana in corpore sano. Check out the editorial National School Standards, at Last in today's New York Times, to which I say: Amen ... but don't set the bar too low.

I didn't make a link in Grelber's words to "oppressive" regimes as much as I thought "aggressive" regimes. In that case, Nazi Germany certainly fit the description as did pre-war Japan whose propaganda wasn't much different than Germany's. i.e. "We are the superior race." And both countries had extensive physical development programs starting with their youth.



I'm not sure what you mean. It seems to me that competition within the structure of organized sport is something very different. Some countries may take it more seriously than they should (witness Russia firing it's coaches after the recent games) but I believe the athletes have a very different rationale for participating.

The Olympics are very different from aggressive countries developing their youth so they will be better able to wage war.

ryck

You know, the Olympic Games... “brought to you by” McDonalds!

The examples given for countries with mass fitness programs included only what is usually construed in the Western world as oppressive and belligerent regimes. Canada and US got most of the medals in the last Games and have a lot of fitness programs in schools. So, should we also think of them in the same context as Nazi Germany?

Basically, I was arguing against your examples, that's all.

How about China? Where do you put it? It also has mass sports program (not necessarily connected with military, similar to the former USSR).
http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Brief/193374.htm

Huh?

If there are any signs of a national exhortation to fitness here in the States, they are obscured behind a wall of advertising for Big Gulp sodas, Bacon Double Cheeseburgers, and two-hundred-fifty channels delivered digitally to your widescreen TV while you recline on your couch. (Not you personally!)

If the Olympic achievement of a top athlete is representative of anything broader than his or her own commitment to achievement, it's his or her country's commitment to winning Olympic medals, nothing more.

This isn't a mass sports program. It's a National Fitness Program which appears to be the same as the Participaction program that's existed in Canada since the early seventies and which is about getting fit - however you can best do it - such as increased walking, running, swimming, et cetera. It's aimed at everyone, from the very young to the very old, and its goals include such things as reducing the impacts on the rising cost of health care that comes from an unfit population.

I think these are laudable goals that any country should have and, getting back to my original post, it just seemed curious to me that an official would instead use a rationale like war as a reason to push for fitness.

ryck

Rather than sabre rattling, referring to external threats (real or perceived) may be an attempt to appeal to patriottic tendencies, in order to motivate a segment of the population that may not be so easily be swayed by other arguments. After all, working on fitness is good for everyone, including the military...

I was referring to school programs, not to advertisements. The doctors use the same principle and recommend exercise to everyone, and video store shelves bulge from fitness videos. Nationally, there is not too much, here I am with you.

Whatever happened to chess... that's a sport, isn't it?

Seriously though, the Fischer / Spassky matches (note to youngsters: use your google) were as much about political/national bragging rights as some push to make Americans think deeper. [though i think there was a rise in high-school chess clubs as a direct *result* perhaps (but not any prior efforts).]

[a bit off topic perhaps... but i had nothing else to say, and some free time to say it.]

Right, much like Tonya Harding-Nnacy Kerrigan brawl/racket (bad allusion but comes to memory immediately). I read somewhere that since 1994 Olympics a lot of US girls went to figure skating and we saw a surge of champions from US unheard of since Peggy Fleming.

You've nailed what may be the most important impact of events like the Olympics or other high-profile World Championships. The athletes are great role models. I've never been much of sports participant myself but I am in awe of the athletes and their accomplishments. If their efforts can both move our young to get active and to understand the value of perseverance, it's a good thing.

And, of course, there are the Paralympics whose athletes are not only amazing but add a significant dimension to the role model by also demonstrating how to meet adversity head-on and conquer it.

ryck

I take it you did not see the report on a chess-boxing match earlier this week. That's right! They boxed, sat down in the ring at a chess board, boxed some more, played more chess... You win by one of the following: knock-out, TKO, checkmate.