China will continue to promote its "Nationwide Physical Fitness Program" to encourage more people to exercise, a sport official said on Monday.

Sun Xuecai, Beijing Municipal Administration of Sport deputy director, said community-based sport activities associated with the government-sponsored program had played a key role in helping Chinese keep fit.

The program, which was launched in 1995, had set targets that, by 2010, more than 40 percent of China's population would participate in regular physical exercise.

Currently 70 percent of about 17 million residents in Beijing, China's capital, were taking part in physical exercise on a regular basis, Sun said at a press conference.

Sport activities they favored varied from the most popular table tennis, jogging and shadow boxing (Taijiquan) to basketball and gym exercise, he said.

China is currently gripped in a sport craze with the ongoing Beijing Olympics as about 640 Chinese athletes compete to make their nation a leader in the sporting world.

But sport officials such as Sun acknowledged the long-term and primary goal for sport development was to improve the physical and health conditions of all 1.3 billion Chinese, almost one-quarter of the global population.

In 2003, Beijing published a five-year plan for sport development, two years after it won the right to host the 2008 Olympics.

One of the goals was to promote public awareness of physical fitness and to improve facilities, which should also be a legacy of the Olympics, Sun said.

By 2007, all urban communities and 90 percent of rural villages in Beijing had installed facilities for physical exercise, which cost 726 million yuan (almost 100 million U.S. dollars). These included more than 12,100 stadiums and gymnasiums.

To give citizens easier access to exercise, a government regulation implemented in 2005 required property developers to build public sport facilities when developing new residential projects.

Sun added there were about 28,000 qualified volunteers in Beijing to offer training classes to those who wanted to learn sport skills.

(Xinhua News Agency August 12, 2008)