Nationalism and the indigenization and modernization of physical education and sport in China (1928–1937)

After the establishment of the Nanking Nationalist government in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek ¹ was elected as the President by the Nationalist Party’s central executive committee in 1928. The Nationalist Party began to place increased emphasis on creating a coherent discourse of unified Chinese nationalism in all matters related to asserting state sovereignty. In this context, physical education and sport provided a valid and opportune means of strengthening state authority because of the way in which sport can be utilized to ‘consolidate national identity and promote nationalism’ ² as a popular form of ‘national expression and of maintaining the ideals of national identity’. ³ This chapter examines how Chinese nationalism led to the further indigenization and modernization of Western physical education and sport during the period 1928–1937. It also shows how the initially-Christian venture of physical education was adapted to nationalist purposes, and how this very process problematized the notion of one-way cultural imperialism where the foreign influences are practically becoming localized almost beyond recognition.