ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1660488
Governing for Sustainable Health: Institutional Pathways in China's Sport and Health Policy (1949-Present)
Provisionally accepted
- Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
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Since 1949, China’s sports and health policies have evolved from mass-mobilization campaigns focused on “strengthening physical fitness” to a data-driven framework of “weight management” and cross-sectoral collaboration under the Healthy China 2030 strategy, yet the institutional processes driving this transition remain underexplored. Guided by historical institutionalism, we performed a discourse analysis of 15 key national documents issued between 1949 and 2024, applying Python-based text segmentation alongside keyword-frequency and co-occurrence analyses to map shifts in governance instruments and institutional layering. Our results delineate a three-stage trajectory: an initial stage of ideological mobilization (1949–1995) marked by centralized fitness directives; a second stage (1996–2015) defined by chronic-disease prevention initiatives, performance targets, and provincial pilot programmes; and a current stage (2016–present) prioritizing obesity control, digital health platforms, and real-time, multi-level coordination. This path-dependent layering—from campaign rhetoric through target-based planning to sophisticated, data-enabled governance—illustrates how embedding new health objectives within entrenched institutional routines, while incrementally integrating cross-sectoral data systems, can facilitate sustainable policy adaptation. These insights offer a practical model for other middle-income countries seeking scalable, evidence-informed health governance.
Keywords: historical institutionalism, Sport and Health Policy, Health Management Transition, collaborative governance, Precision Weight Management, Healthy China 2030 Historical Institutionalism, Healthy China 2030
Received: 06 Jul 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Luo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Guanqun Luo, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
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