Understanding the governmental rationalities in the ‘integration of sports and education’ in Chinese schools

The Chinese elite sports training system has long been primarily supported by sports schools, first established in the 1950s to cultivate elite athletic talent. However, the prolonged reliance on this elite sport system has given rise to two persistent tensions impacting both Chinese sports schools and regular schools: (a) academic education of student-athletes is overlooked in sports schools, and (b) there is insufficient physical education and sports participation in regular schools. In response, the Chinese government released the Integration of Sport and Education policy in 2020. Yet, while the policy claims for the ‘people’s holistic development’, it is simultaneously positioned as a strategic intervention that aims for the sustainable development of the Chinese elite sport. In this article, we draw on Foucault’s notion of governmentality to investigate the rationalities of government embedded in this policy and critically examine how it governs both regular schools and sports schools to ‘balance’ the conflict between athletic training and schooling, while simultaneously prioritising the sustainable development of elite sport for the state. Our analysis reveals that the policy is shaped by Sinicised Marxist rationalities. This distinct form of governmentality consists of two interrelated rationalities: the rationality of national prosperity and the rationality of holistic development of individuals. Central to this governance is the use of the ambiguous term Tiyu – used interchangeably with sports, physical education (PE), and physical activity (PA) – which allows the policy to flexibly legitimise the intensified sports training alongside broader educational objectives and national interests.