Up to 70 percent of Beijing residents take part in sport, according to official data, whereas the national figure is only 33 percent. Besides, a majority of the middle-aged and old people exercise because they have been advised by physicians to do so to fight chronic illnesses.

The initial results of the latest national physical fitness monitoring project, released by the General Administration of Sport of China (GASC) in 2006, show that the traditional "water towns" of Shanghai and Jiangsu province have more robust people than the country's tough northeast or the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. The study is carried out every five years to track the development of people's health and physical prowess in different regions.

According to the GASC, the municipal and provincial governments on the east coast sponsor more advanced sports and fitness programs and thus the average resident in that region are fitter. The difference, however, reveals unbalanced distribution of sports resources in east and west, urban and rural areas, as well as major and small cities.

"I want a place to loosen my muscles but there is simply no such place here," says Huang Hongqing, a 54-year-old resident of Anqing, a small city in Anhui. He used to play basketball with his son on the latter's school court. But after his son passed out of school, Huang lost his playmate, so he stopped playing altogether.

"Ever since 2001, when China made a successful bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, people around me have become crazy about sports. But fields and courts are too few to meet the needs of everyone in a small city as ours," Huang Hongqing says. The sports facilities managed by subsidiaries of national or local sports authorities and those run by schools, universities and government and military institutions account for up to 88 percent of the total.

The public has limited or even no access to institutions run by schools, universities, governments and the military. That has restricted them from making more money, says Wang Jing, a researcher in sports with Northwest University of Politics and Law.

To deal with the problem, the country is working on a national fitness plan with funds both from the government and social sectors being used to build public fitness centers in urban and rural areas alike.

According to a specific plan for rural areas, 3 billion yuan from central and local governments' budgets will be used to build fitness centers in 100,000 or one-sixth of China's villages by 2010. About 87,000 villages have already completed their projects.

In economic terms, a sound national fitness program will help boost the sports and fitness industry and contribute to national development. Right now, the output of the sports industry accounts for only 0.56 percent of the country's GDP, whereas the ratio is 1 to 3 percent in some European countries. The figure is 4 percent in the US, which has the most advanced sports industry, according to the GASC.

To ensure a healthy and balanced development of the sports market, Liu Guoyong, deputy director of the GASC, says his administration has submitted a long-term plan blueprinting the national fitness cause to the State Council. The proposal is likely to be adopted soon.

Experts, including Liu, say the sports market is set to expand because the Beijing Olympics has created fitness and sports awareness among a huge number of people.

GASC figures show investment in sports and other recreational equipment leaped 8.5 percent to $1.5 billion in the first seven months of this year, compared with the same period last year.

That should be music to the industry captains' ears, and an impetus to more people to keep themselves fitter.