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The purpose of this paper is to examine the key factors that affect the formulation of regional strategies for developing and advancing the sport industry in China.

Guided by the comparative advantage theory, qualitative and quantitative research procedures were carried out to analyze the variables that were deemed necessary for the development of regional advantages.

The findings of this study indicated the importance and relevance of understanding these comparative advantage factors when developing regional strategies for sport development in China or other countries with a developing economy.

This study was largely exploratory in nature, meaning that future confirmatory studies are necessary in order to solidify the results and to encompass the wide-ranging diversity of the total sport industry.

The study provided practical implications for other countries to address the needs to discern among varying sectors of the sport industry and prioritize factors that are specific to regions, communities, and local environments in the strategic planning process.

The findings of this study highlighted the importance and relevance of four comparative advantage factors and the varying sectors of the sport industry variables in the region.

The concept of national fitness has promoted the construction and development of public sports. And how to effectively implement the layout of urban public sports planning has become a hot topic. Based on this, in the study, the layout and integration of the public sports cities in modern cities for the national fitness were mainly discussed. First of all, the research background of the planning and layout of public sports in modern cities under the concept of national fitness was expounded, and the development of urban public sports theory was briefly outlined. Then, the planning and layout of public fitness in modern cities were analyzed. Finally, through the planning and construction projects of public sports in modern cities, the design of public fitness corridor, community road and Sports Park was carried out. It is proved that the scientific and rational planning of sports cities can promote the development of the city.

Existing studies suggest the importance of research related to values and goals and their impacts on consumer involvement. However, cross-cultural examination of values and goals in the context of sport is scarce. To broaden our understanding of the cultural impact of values and goals on sport involvement, the purpose of this paper is to compare perspectives between Easterners (Chinese) and Westerners (Americans).

This exploratory research utilized both online and written surveys to collect two convenience samples from 281 American and 636 Chinese participants. Analysis included descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression analyses.

Results indicated both populations perceived values and goals differently; Chinese responded less favorably to values and goals than American counterparts. Values and goals predicted cognitive and behavioral sport involvement with variance in each population. Results generally supported a large cultural variation between the cultures. Lastly, similarities and differences in the perceived importance of values and goals and their subsequent impacts on cognitive and behavioral sport involvement suggest a need for a unique managerial approach when American businesses enter new cultural boundaries like China.

This research is significant because studies exploring values and goals and their influences on sport consumption at the cross-cultural level are still limited in sport literature. Furthermore, an empirical examination of the impact of values and goals on sport consumers across cultures will help increase generalizability of the findings to sport literature.

With the rapid economic development, China has been increasingly paying special attention to its sports and health industries. In October 2014, the State Council raised the goal to upscale the sports industry to the net worth of 5 trillion yuan by 2025. To gain further insights into the current development of tennis in China, especially the development of Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tennis competitions, an interview with the director of Wuhan Opening Fabrice Chouquet and Mr Guoqing Yi of Wuahan Sport Investment Inc. was conducted. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To gain further insights into the current development of tennis in China, especially the development of WTA tennis competitions, an interview with the director of Wuhan Opening Fabrice Chouquet and Mr Guoqing Yi of Wuahan Sport Investment Inc. was conducted.

The interview comprised a series of topics including motivators of tennis industries in China, the strategic position of China for WTA development, WTA choice of hosting city, effects of WTA competition events toward the hosting city, and the operation of WTA tennis competitions. Integrating the aforementioned topics with Wuhan Tennis Open, the interviewees also provided suggestions toward the future development of tennis industry in China.

This study has several limitations that are of concern to researchers in the future. First, the interviewees of this research came from Wuhan Tennis Open. Though Mr Fabrice used to be the managing director of WTA in Asia, he only knows about women tennis in China, and his viewpoints have their own limitation. Therefore, the interviewee in the future has to be the person who could hold the opinion on tennis development in China at the macro scale. Second, the questions in the interview have a wide scale, but lack depth and penetration. For instance, the interview only relates to the motive of tennis development but does not go deeply into the relation between the above two aspects. Moreover, it mentions the problems related to the tennis development. It only concentrates on the tennis tournaments but does not discuss the tennis culture and the industry. These questions need to be considered when the authors research on the development of tennis in China in the future.

Through the analysis on WTA and tennis in China, the authors can understand the development of sports in China and the Chinese sports industry in recent years.

Scholars have examined the relationship between sports and urban development and proposed to use sport programs and events as a catalyst to revitalize communities, upgrade urban infrastructure, promote city image, shift economic structure, nurture an active lifestyle, and enhance societal harmony and solidarity. Yet, previous studies were usually focused on mega sport events and were typically conceptual, theoretical and lack of practical applications. This study was designed to attain in-depth understanding on how a specific sport, table tennis, can be systematically organized and utilized to influence urban development through a qualitative research injury.

This investigation was carried by conducting in-depth interviews of the executive director of the Shanghai Table Tennis Association, on-site observations and comprehensive review of literature. Development of interview questions took into consideration the conceptual framework postulated by Preuss (2007) that contains six structures of urban development through sports. Triangulation analyses were conducted to cross validate the three information sources to generate themes and assertions.

While the identified practices were consistent with Preuss' (2007) framework, specific management activities earnestly practiced in Shanghai are centered on utilizing cultural and historical heritage, star power, branding strategies, staging tournaments, hallmark events, technical innovation and government relations to achieve the objectives of table tennis as a sport and the objectives of urban development through table tennis.

The findings of this study help fill the void that a theory usually cannot specify, namely, detailed, unambiguous practices. While table tennis may be a viewed as a small sport in many parts of the world, it has a strong, unprecedented historical heritage in Shanghai. This city has made a prudent choice and investment in this sport, which has proved to be effective. Other cities in the world should look into their own social, cultural and historical heritage and develop sport strategies, operations and programs accordingly.

Growth of China’s sport industry has brought tremendous opportunities to sport and non-sport organizations domestically and globally; nonetheless, the enlargement has also raised many challenges. To a great extent, China has chartered into unprecedented new sport business territories. Because of social, cultural, historical, and governmental differences, many theories and knowledge, professional experiences, best practices, and lessons learned in Western countries may or may not be directly applicable to the diverse setting(s) in China. Until now, only limited empirical evidence is available to address these challenges. Thus, formulating a special issue in the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship to examine contemporary subject matters and concerns would be significantly meaningful to help understand, stimulate, and improve sport business operations in China, provide guidance to transnational organizations for doing sport-related business in China, offer constructive suggestions for Chinese corporations going global, and ultimately build up theories and best practices to address unique perspectives of China’s sport industry. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is conceptual and presents a review of literature.

In addition to this leading paper, there are a total of eight manuscripts selected for this special issue inquiring on contemporary matters and development of China’s sport industry, including four short articles that were formulated based on qualitative research information derived from case studies and interviews and four full-length articles that adopted a quantitative research protocol or a mixed research design involving both qualitative and quantitative information.

While it is impossible to capture all contemporary topics in the development of China’s sport industry within one journal issue, articles selected in this special issue of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship have provided useful highlights into some of the critical issues faced by the industry and research directions by academicians. It is sincerely expected that studies in this special issue would help inspire more scholarly inquires and ultimately improve the continued formulation and advancement of a strong sport industry in China.

While it is impossible to capture all contemporary topics in the development of China’s sport industry within one journal issue, articles selected in this special issue of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship have provided useful highlights into some of the critical issues faced by the industry and research directions by academicians. It is sincerely expected that studies in this special issue would help inspire more scholarly inquires and ultimately improve the continued formulation and advancement of a strong sport industry in China.

While it is impossible to capture all contemporary topics in the development of China’s sport industry within one journal issue, articles selected in this special issue of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship have provided useful highlights into some of the critical issues faced by the industry and research directions by academicians. It is sincerely expected that studies in this special issue would help inspire more scholarly inquires and ultimately improve the continued formulation and advancement of a strong sport industry in China.

While it is impossible to capture all contemporary topics in the development of China’s sport industry within one journal issue, articles selected in this special issue of the International Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship have provided useful highlights into some of the critical issues faced by the industry and research directions by academicians. It is sincerely expected that studies in this special issue would help inspire more scholarly inquires and ultimately improve the continued formulation and advancement of a strong sport industry in China.

The sudden COVID-19 epidemic in 2019 has frustrated China's overall economy, and the implementation and development of the National Fitness Program has encountered huge obstacles. At a new historical starting point, in order to realize the dream of becoming a powerful country in sports, it is necessary to transform the successful experience gained since the reform and opening up into regular understanding and systematic theories, so as to make a theoretical response to the new contradictions and challenges faced in development and give full play to the National Fitness has comprehensive values and multiple functions in improving people's health, promoting people's all-round development, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the country's cultural soft power.

Taking the topic of national fitness as an example, this paper sets out from the three dimensions of knowledge input, knowledge output and knowledge production, using citation analysis, social network analysis, co-word analysis and cluster analysis, to measure the characteristics and knowledge structure of interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.

China's national fitness is still in the primary development stage, and the strong boost of the national top-level policy is the biggest driving force of its development, driven by the policy together with the settlement of many major events, constantly improving and enriching the wings. The main body of knowledge production on the topic of national fitness is mainly colleges and universities, with low participation of government and enterprises, high degree of cooperation among authors, obvious interdisciplinary characteristics and strong application of research themes.

This study provides a strong theoretical basis for the promotion of the Healthy China strategy. Especially under the influence of COVID-19, this paper can contribute to the comprehensive value and multimodal functions of national fitness in improving the health of people, promoting economic and social development and demonstrating the soft power of national culture.

Sociology of sport in China has evolved from being an “exotic” subject to a localized subject over the past 35 years. It is closely associated with social changes, sports policy and athletic achievement of China. As a discipline of humanitarian and social sciences of sport, it is taught in virtually all universities with sports majors. There are about 500 scholars specializing in sport sociology in the country. Textbooks written by Chinese and foreign scholars are published. Academic papers on sport sociology are often published in the 15 accredited core sports journals. The most productive authors are from universities and the developed provinces and municipalities. The established research areas of sport sociology are extensive. These include national identity, athlete mobility, Olympic legacy, sport for all, sports industry issues, feminist studies, community sport, sport for the aged and disabled, etc. However, there are few studies with critical analysis and only a few in the areas of sport and religion, sport and race, and deviance in sport in China. Various kinds of financial support at different levels are available in the country. Empirical research is common with literature review, questionnaire, case study, and interview being the most frequently used methods. However, sport sociology is not considered as a major topic but as a research direction and it is not accepted widely by mainstream sociology. The future of sport sociology is promising, but not without challenges.