Index number: 000014349/2014-00123 Authority issued: The State Council Title: The State Councils Opinion on How to Accelerate the Development of Sports Industry to Promote Sports Consumption Reference number: issued by state (2014) No. 46 Subject Category: Health, Sports Written date: October 02, 2014 Release date: October 20, 2014

 

The State Councils Opinion on How to Accelerate the Development of Sports Industry to Promote Sports Consumption

 

To the people’s governments of all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, and all ministries, commissions and departments directly under the State Council:

The development of sports undertakings and industry is an inevitable requirement to improve the Chinese nation’s physical quality and health level. It will help to meet the diversified sports needs of the people and protect and improve the people’s livelihood. It will help to expand domestic demand, increase employment and foster new economic growth points. It will help to promote the national spirit, enhance national cohesion and cultural competitiveness. In recent years, China’s sports industry develops rapidly, but the overall size is still small, vitality is not strong and there are still some institutional problems. The following opinions will be proposed to further accelerate the development of the sports industry and promote sports consumption.

 

1. General requirements

• Guiding ideology

Use the Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thinking of the “Three Represents” and the scientific outlook on development as guidance in order to accomplish the fundamental objective of strengthening the physical condition of the people and improving their level of health. Emancipate the mind, deepen reform, develop innovation and stimulate vitality. Give full play to the market in the decisive role of allocating resources and better act as a government. Accelerate the formation of effective competition in the market structure. Actively expand the supply of sports products and services. Promote the sports industry to become an important force in the economic restructuring and upgrading. Promote the comprehensive development of mass sports and competitive sports. Accelerate the construction of a powerful sports nation. Continuously meet the people’s growing sports demands.

• Guiding principles

Persist in reform and innovation. Accelerate the transformation of government functions. Further streamline administration and institute decentralisation. Reduce the management of micro-affairs. Strengthen planning, policy and standardised leadership. Initiate new service patterns. Strengthen market supervision. Create a market environment that is competitive, in order and with equal participation.

Bring into play the market effect. Follow the law of industrial development. Improve the market mechanism. Actively cultivate multiple market players. Attract the participation of social capital. Fully mobilise the enthusiasm and creative power of the whole society. Provide a wide range of products and services to meet the demands of the masses.

Promote healthy living. Establish a civilized and healthy lifestyle. Move forward on the healthy juncture. Extend the healthy life span. Improve the quality of life. Stimulate the enthusiasm of the masses to participate in sports activities. Promote the formation of investment in the concept of health consumption and in the dynamic sports consumer market.

Create the conditions for development. Create an atmosphere in society that attaches importance to sports, supports sports and participates in sports. The national fitness will become a national strategy. The sports industry is regarded as a green industry and a sunrise industry that cultivates support. Get rid of industrial barriers and policy obstacles. Form a policy system that is conducive to the rapid development of the sports industry.

Focus on the overall coordination. Make an overall plan based on the overall situation and taking all factors into consideration.  Give full play to the sports industry and to the positive interaction function of sports. Promote the sports industry in all categories and formats for a comprehensive development. Promote that the sports industry and other industries integrate into each other. Achieve a coordinated development of the sports industry with the economy and society.

• Development goals

By 2025, establish fundamentally a sports industry system that has a rational layout, improved capabilities and everything that one expects to find. There are plenty of sports products and services. The market mechanism has been continuously improved. Consumer demand has become more vigorous. The role of other industries has improved significantly. The total size of the sports industry surpassed 5 trillion yuan and it has become an important force to promote sustainable development of the economy and society.

– Improve the industrial system. Fitness and recreation, competitions, sports venue services, intermediary training, sporting goods manufacturing and sales and various types of the sports industry should be coordinated developed. Form more industrial organisation patterns. The industrial structure should be more reasonable. The proportion of the sports service industry in the sports industry increased significantly. Adequate supply the diversified sports products and services.

– Optimise the industrial circumstances. The institutional mechanisms are full of vitality. The policy and regulatory system is more robust. The standard system is scientific and improved. The supervision mechanism is standardised and efficient. The main body of the market is honest and self-disciplined.

– The industrial base should be more solid. The area of sports venues reached 2 square meters per capita. The awareness of mass sports fitness and consumption increased significantly. The per capita consumer spending of sports increased significantly. The number of people that frequently take part in physical exercise reached 500 million. The public service in sports basically covers the entire population.

 

2. Main tasks

• Innovative institutional mechanisms

Further transform the government functions. A comprehensive clean-up is not conducive to the relevant provisions for the development of the sports industry. Cancel the unreasonable administrative examination and approval items. All laws and regulations do not explicitly prohibit the entry in the field. All should be open to society. Cancel the examination and approval activities of sports competitions that are commercial and have a mass character. Accelerate the reform of the national and individual sports competition management systems. Publish competition lists.  Actively introduce social capital to host competitions through the market mechanism. The relevant government departments should actively provide services for all kind of competitions held. Put into effect the separation of politics and society, politics and business and of supervision and management. Accelerate the decoupling of sports associations with administrative organs. It will fit that social sport organisations provide public services and solve matters. Deliver through the obligations of social sports organisations.

Promote the reform of professional sports. Broaden the channels for the development of professional sports. Encourage qualified sport events to take the road of professionalization. Support the professional development of sports coaches and athletes. Improve the institutional policy system of professional sports. Expand social participation in professional sports. Encourage the development of professional alliances. Gradually improve the maturity and standardisation level of professional sports. Improve the corporate governance structure of professional sports clubs. Accelerate the construction of modern enterprise systems. Improve the decision-making mechanisms of the professional leagues. Give full play to the club’s main role in the market.

The operational mechanism of sports facilities should be innovated. Actively promote the reform of the venue management system and the innovation of the operational mechanism. Introduce and use a modern enterprise system. Stimulate the vitality of sporting venues. Put into effect an integration model of the design, construction and operational management of sporting venues. The functional needs of the competitions will comprehensively make use of the organic combination. Encourage that the substance of operational venue management is forming and realising the sizing and specialisation of business through the export of brands, management and capital. Strengthen large-scale stadium complexes to manage capabilities. Expand service areas. Extend to form a complete set of services. Achieve the best operational efficiency.

• Cultivate a pluralistic body

Encourage the participation of social forces. Further optimise the market environment. Improve the policy measures. Accelerate the flow of talent, capital and other essential factors. Optimise the resource allocation of sporting venues and others. Enhance the attractiveness of the sports industry to social capital. Foster the development of multi-shaped and multi-level sports associations and intermediary organisations. Accelerate the construction of industrial sports associations. Give full play to the role of industrial associations. Guide the industrial development of sporting goods, sports services, the construction of sporting venues and others. Create a platform for sports trade exhibitions. Create an international fair for sporting goods, sports culture, sports tourism and others.

Guide the sports enterprises to become more powerful and vital. Implement a strategy for brands. Create a number of well-known enterprises that possess international competitiveness and the brands should pursue independent from each other international influence. Support the dominant enterprises, brands and projects “to go out” (to go global). Improve the level and scope of services and trade. Support the business development of sports training, planning, consulting, management, marketing and others. Encourage large-scale cross-regional chain operations of fitness clubs. Encourage large-scale sports competitions to fully carry out market development. Encourage large-scale sports products manufacturing enterprises to increase research and development investments in order to fully tap the brand value. Support a number of small and medium enterprises that have market potential.

• Improve the industrial layout and structure

Optimise the industrial layout. Use methods in line with local circumstances to develop the sports industry. Create a number of rules in line with the market, so that the base of the sports industry possesses market competitiveness. Establish a development mechanism that is based on inter-regional cooperation. Form a development structure of eastern, central and western sports industries that have positive interactions. Strengthen the industrial clusters of sport in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei Province, the Western Taiwan Straits and others. Support the central and western regions to take full advantage of rivers and lakes, mountains, deserts, grasslands, ice and snow and other unique natural resources. Develop the sports industry with regional characteristics. Support in areas with ethnic minorities to develop sports industries that are characteristic for them.

Improve the industrial structure. Further optimise the structure of the sports service industry, sporting goods industry and other related industries. Put efforts into the increase of the proportion of the sports service industry. Vigorously promote fitness and leisure, competitions, venue services, intermediary training and other sports services. Implement projects so that the sports service industry produces premium products. Support that various regions create a large number of excellent sports clubs and set an example for the competition of sporting venues and brands. Actively support the innovative development of the sporting goods manufacturing industry. Use new data and technologies. Enhance the quality of traditional sporting goods. Improve the content of science and technology products.

Grasp the potential of the industry. Use football, basketball and volleyball as the breakthrough point. Accelerate the development of a collective project of spreading popularisation, high degree of attention and large space for the market. Promote the industry to develop in depth. Formulate a medium and long-term development plan and a construction plan for sports pitches and facilities in order to develop the lagging behind football project. Vigorously promote the campus football and social football. Use winter sports and other special events as a breakthrough. Promote the fitness and leisure programmes to enhance the popularity. Formulate a winter sports plan. Guide social forces to actively participate in the construction of a number of winter sports venues. Promote the prosperous development of winter sports. Form new sports consumption hot spots.

• Promote the development of integration

Actively expand the format. The sports industry contains plenty of content. Promote an integration of sports with retirement services, cultural creativity and design services, education and training and other fields. Promote the development of sports tourism, sports media, sports conferences and exhibitions, sports advertisement, sports movies and television and other related formats. Use sports facilities as a vehicle. Create sports service complexes in cities. Promote the comprehensive development of sports with residential living, leisure and business.

Promote the combination of health and sports. Strengthen the guidance of sports. Promote “Exercise on Prescription”. Express actively the positive function of physical exercise in disease prevention and cure as well as for the improvement of health and other aspects. Vigorously develop sports medicine and rehabilitation sciences. Actively develop sports rehabilitation technologies. Encourage social capital to set up organisations that deal with health and sports, physical fitness, sports rehabilitation and other aspects. Express the special function and quality of traditional Chinese medicine in sports rehabilitation and other aspects. Promote to carry out fitness consulting and recuperation services.

Encourage interactive circulation. Support finance, real estate, construction, transportation, manufacturing, information, food and drug companies to develop sports products and services. Encourage the research and development, manufacturing and marketing of sportswear equipment, sports and fitness related technologies and equipment, sports and energy drinks and nutritional food and drugs for health care. Formulate special plans for regions with special circumstances. Guide the development of outdoor camping, hiking and cycling service stations, automobile camping sites, aviation flight camps, boat docks and other facilities.

• Rich market supply

Improve sports facilities. All levels of government should combine the development of urbanisation with the overall planning of sports facilities construction. Distribute rationally the layout. Focus for the convenience and benefit of the people on the construction of a number of small and medium-sized gymnasiums, public fitness and activity centers, multi-functional outdoor stadiums, walking paths for fitness and other venues and facilities. Revitalise the reserves and resources. Transform old factory buildings, warehouses and old-fashioned commercial facilities for the use of sports and fitness. Encourage social forces to build small and diversified sporting venues and fitness facilities. The government uses purchase services other patterns to give support. Build a 15-minute fitness ring in the city communities. The coverage of sports facilities in the new communities reached 100%. Promote the implementation of sports and fitness projects for peasants. Achieve to cover 100% of public sports and fitness facilities in township and village administrations.

Develop fitness and leisure projects. Vigorously support the development of jogging, walking, cycling, water sports, climbing, shooting archery, equestrian sports, aviation, extreme sports and other sports events that are well received by the masses and have room for development. Encourage regions to develop characteristic sports industries according to the local natural and human resources. Vigorously promote martial arts, dragon boat, dragon and lion dance and other traditional sports. Support the development of traditional sports of ethnic minorities. Encourage the development of recreational sports that are suitable for the elderly.

Carry out plenty of sports competition activities. Focus on professional competitions. Focus on competitions. Vigorously develop a variety of multi-level and diversified sports events. Promote the development of professional competitions. Create a number of attractive international and regional competitions. Create plenty of amateur sports competitions. In all regions, institutions and organisations, enterprises, schools and other units hold a wide range of sports competitions. Guide and support sport, society, organisations and other social forces to organise mass sports activities. Strengthen exchanges and cooperation with international sports organisations and other professional institutions. Actively introduce international premium product competitions.

• Create a fitness atmosphere

Encourage daily fitness activities. Government institutions, enterprises, social groups, schools and others should do physical exercise during the breaks. Propose one hour of physical exercise every day. Encourage the units to create the conditions for the staff to do physical exercise. Organise the implementation of “The National Physical Exercise Standards”. Improve the national fitness monitoring system. Provide physical testing services for the masses. Regularly publish the national fitness monitoring report. Protect effectively the physical education classes in primary and secondary schools. Encourage the implementation of extracurricular sports activities for students. Promote that young people cultivate sports hobbies. Master the skills in more than one sport. Ensure that students spend not less than one hour per day for sports activities at schools.

Promote the opening and utilisation of venues and facilities. Actively promote that all types of public sports facilities at all levels are open to public use for low-cost rent or free of charge. Accelerate that enterprises, institutions and others open sports facilities for the society. Sports venues of schools should be open to students outside school hours. Take effective measures to strengthen safety and security. Accelerate the promotion to open sports venues of schools to public use. It will be open to the public on a regular basis. Improve the utilisation rate of sports fitness facilities and projects for peasants.

Strengthen the propaganda of sports culture. Media of all kind and at all levels open up special topics and columns. Popularise fitness knowledge. Promote the quality of fitness. Actively guide the broad masses of people to cultivate the concept of sports consumption and to develop sports consumption habits. Actively support the production of diversified sports literature and arts. Promote the sports culture. Carry forward the Olympic and the Chinese sports spirit. Practise the socialist core values.

 

3. Policy measures

• Vigorously attract social investment

Encourage social capital to enter the sphere of the sports industry. Build sports facilities. Develop sports products. Provide sports services. Further broaden the investment and financing channels in the sports industry. Support qualified sports products and services and other enterprises to hit the market. Support qualified enterprises to issue cooperate bonds, short-term financing bonds, medium-term securities, small and medium enterprises to gather securities, private placement debt and other non-financial enterprise debt financing instruments. Encourage all kind of financial institutions to actively develop new products on this basis of risk control and sustainable business. Open up new businesses. Increase credit varieties that suit for small-, medium- and micro-sized sports enterprises. Support the opening to the outside world and encourage foreign capital investment into the sports industry. Popularise and use the cooperation of governmental and social capital and other multiple patterns. Attract social capital to participate in the development of the sports industry. Establish a sports industry investment fund through social capital financing that is under the guidance of the government. Qualified regions can establish special funds for sports development. Give project subsidies, loan interest subsidies and incentives to qualified enterprises and social organisations. Encourage insurance companies to center on fitness and leisure, competition performances, venue services, outdoor sports and other demands to introduce diversified insurance products.

• Improve the fitness consumption policy

Governments at all levels should integrate the fitness expenditure of the entire population into their financial budget. Governments at all levels should integrate the fitness expenditure of the entire population into their financial budget and keep pace with the national economic growth. Increase investment. Arrange investment to support the construction of sports facilities. Arrange a certain proportion of sports lottery tickets for public welfare funds and other financial funding through governmental purchase services and other multiple patterns. Actively support the mass fitness consumption. Encourage sports facilities to be open to public use for low-cost rent or free of charge. Guide the operation body to provide public goods for mass sports and fitness services. Encourage and guide enterprises and institutions, schools and individuals to buy sports injury insurances. Further study the preferential policies to encourage the masses for fitness consumption.

• Improve the tax and price policies

Fully consider the characteristics of the sports industry. Integrate the sports services, product manufacturing and other content as well as supportive technologies into the sphere of new high-technologies that are supported and laid stress on by the state. For sports enterprises that are identified as high-tech enterprises, the enterprise income tax should be imposed at a reduced rate of 15%. The social organisations that provide sports services should enjoy the relevant preferential policies according to the law if they are qualified they should obtain the preferential tax exemption of the cooperate income tax for non-profit organisations. Sports enterprises that are in line with the conditions of advertising spending and the provisions of the tax law can get deductions before tax. The sports enterprises that implement in line with the conditions can add and calculate the creative and design costs before taxes to their deduction policies. Enterprises engaged in the cultural and sports industry reduce their business tax by 3%. Encourage enterprises to donate sportswear and equipment. Support the development of sports activities in poor and rural areas. Donations to sports undertakings that meet the conditions prescribed in the tax laws and regulations should be deducted in calculating the taxable income in accordance with the relevant provisions. The real estate and land for the use of sports venues can enjoy and make use of the related real estate tax and the preferential urban land use tax. The water, electricity, gas and heating prices of sports venues and other fitness locations should be not higher than the general industrial standards.

• Improve the programme layout and land policy

Various regions will integrate the land use of sports facilities into the urban and rural planning, the overall land use planning and the annual land use planning. Arrange reasonably the requirements for land use. Newly built residential areas and communities should according to the relevant standards and regulations form a coherent set of mass fitness and other related facilities. Implement that the indoor per capita construction area is not lower than 0.1 square meters or not lower than 0.3 square meters of the outdoor per capita land use. And, synchronise the planning, construction and use of the main construction projects of residential areas. All old city districts and newly established residential areas without mass fitness facilities or existing facilities that did not meet the planning and construction targets will transform and impose other means to improve. Make full use of parks in the countryside, urban parks, public green space and urban vacant places for the construction of mass sports facilities. Encourage grassroots communities to build and share cultural and sports facilities. Support enterprises and work units in old city districts and already established residential areas to make use of former allocated real estate reserves and construction sites in order to set up sports facilities. Non-profit sports facilities and projects that are in line with the land use allocation contents can continue to use the allocation pattern for land use. Sports facilities and projects based on business that are not in line with the land use allocation contents can adopt and agree on a transfer pattern if they continuously operate it for more than one year.

• Improve the talent cultivation and employment policy

Encourage qualified high educational institutions to set up a major in sports industry. Focus on the cultivation of sports business management, creative design, research, intermediaries and other professional experts. Encourage multiple investments. Develop various types of vocational education and training. Strengthen the cooperation between schools and enterprises. Create a multi-channel and combined cultivation of sports industry talent. Support retired athletes to receive re-employment training. Strengthen the international exchanges and cooperation of sports industry talent cultivation. Strengthen the theoretical research of the sports industry. Establish sports industry research think tanks. Improve that the government, the employing unit and the society to complement each other’s multi-level talent reward system. Carry out rewards and funding for creative design, independent research and development, business management and other talent. Strengthen the initiation of innovation. Conduct research on supportive policies to initiate innovative talent. Encourage retired athletes to work in the sports industry. Encourage residential districts and communities to employ sports experts to be engaged in mass fitness guidance.

• Improve the development and protection of intangible assets and innovation-driven policies

Adopt titles, cooperation, sponsorship, advertising, franchising and other forms. Strengthen the development of sports organisations, sports venues, sports competitions and names, logos and other intangible assets. Enhance the level of creation, utilisation, protection and management of intangible assets. Strengthen the creation of sports brands. Promote sports enterprises to implement trademark strategies. Develop sports products with high scientific and technological content and independent intellectual property rights. Improve product added value. Enhance market competitiveness. Promote the development of sports to give rise to product creativity and design. Promote the development of related industries. Make full use of existing scientific and technological resources. Strengthen the scientific research platform and system of the sports industry. Strengthen companies to build research and development centers and engineering and technology research centers. Support enterprises to join colleges and universities and scientific research institutions to establish collaborative innovation mechanisms. Establish innovative strategic alliances of industrial technology. Support qualified sports enterprises to take the lead in various science and technology projects and other research projects. Improve the results and transformation mechanisms of sports technology. Strengthen the use and protection of intellectual property rights. Promote the industrialisation of scientific and technological achievements.

• Optimise the market environment

Research and establish a sports industry resource and business transaction platform. Create an innovative market operation mechanism. Carry forward an open and fair circulation of resources such as the right to host competitions, the right to broadcast competitions, the right to transfer athletes, the development of intangible assets and other qualified business transactions.  According to the principle of the market, establish a profit distribution mechanism for sports competition broadcasting. Promote a multi-participated body for a collaborative development. Relax restrictions on the competition for rights. Various domestic and foreign sports competitions except the Olympic Games, Asian Games, and the Football World Cup can be purchased or transferred directly by all television stations. Strengthen the management of security services. Improve the standards of sports competitions and security service activities. Actively promote the socialisation of security services. Further promote fair competition. Reduce the costs of competitions and activities.

 

4. Organise implementation

• Improve the working mechanism

All parts of the country should develop the sports industry and promote the integration of sports consumption into the national economic and social development plan. Integrate this topic into the government’s important discussion agenda. Establish with the cooperation of the development and reform department, sports department and other departments a sports industry development and coordination mechanism. All relevant departments should strengthen communication and coordination. Cooperate closely with each other. Form working cooperation. Analyse the circumstances of sports industry development and its problems. Study all policy measures to promote the development of the sports industry. Conscientiously implement the requested related tasks to develop the sports industry. Select the projects and regions that have the characteristics and representativeness. Establish a connection point mechanism. Follow the industrial development. Summarise and promote successful experiences and practices.

• Strengthen the management of the industry

Improve the laws and regulations that are related to the sports industry. Accelerate and push forward the revision of the “Sports Law of the People’s Republic of China”. Clean up and abolish legislation and institutions that do not meet the requirements for reform. Improve the classification standards and statistics system sports and related industries. Establish evaluation and monitoring mechanisms. Release sports industry research reports. Vigorously promote the standardisation of operations in the sports industry. Improve the standardisation level of the national sports industry. Strengthen the international cooperation and exchange of the sports industry. Enrich the work force of the sports industry. Strengthen the building of integrity in the sports organisations, sports enterprises and of the employees. Strengthen the construction of the style and discipline of the competition.

• Strengthen supervision and implementation

All regions and relevant departments should act in accordance with these opinions and requirements. Combine the actual circumstances. Pay close attention to the formulation of specific implementation opinions and supporting documents. The National Development and Reform Commission and the General Administration of Sports will handle jointly with the relevant departments the supervision, inspection and follow-up analysis for the implementation of these opinions. Important maters should immediately be reported to the State Council.

 

The State Council
October 2, 2014

 

Original title: 《国务院关于加快发展体育产业促进体育消费的若干意见》