Getting up early in the morning, spending a day doing farm work, playing basketball before going home and watching sports channel on TV before going to sleep this could become the daily routine for China's farmers with a campaign encouraging China's 800 million farmers to participate in sports.

The campaign is marked by the "Five-Year Plan for the Sports Industry" unveiled yesterday by Chinese sports officials. The plan outlines the expected developments in China's sports industry from 2006 to 2010.

"We want to encourage more Chinese farmers to do sports by providing more sports facilities," China's sports minister Liu Peng said at a press conference yesterday.

Local governments are expected to be the main source for the money needed to build such facilities, with reasonable subsidy coming from the central government and the public.

According to Liu, director of the State Sports General Administration, China's sports governing body, a specialised programme focusing on farmers has been put on trial in North China's Shanxi Province since last year.

Last year, around 100 million yuan (US$12.5 million) was put into the programme, with 85 million (US$10.64 million) provided by the administration using revenue from sports lottery, 1 million yuan (US$125,232) from the State Development and Reform Commission and a small portion from the local government.

Farmers have already been in the loop of previous plans, which usually focused on competitive sports. The administration introduced a "National Fitness Programme" aiming to promote sports among ordinary people in 1995, but the enormous farmer population has been somewhat neglected because of a lack of money and sports facilities in rural areas.

"Farmers will be the focus of the new plan," said Xu Chuan, vice director of the Sports for All Department of the administration.

Xu said providing sports facilities by undertaking tasks such as building basketball courts in villages could encourage farmers.

"For example, we have supported more than 100 counties around China with a programme entitled 'providing cartons in winter,'" he said.

The programme is one of the means used to support less-wealthy areas by the administration. The programme started in 2001 with over 40 million yuan (US$5 million) spent to build sports facilities in the Three Gorges reservoir area between Chongqing and Yichang of Hubei Province during its first term.

A large number of farmers working in cities will also be taken care of as the plan promises to provide basic sports service to the group.

"We are also planning to hold games for farm workers in the city," Xu said.

(China Daily July 26, 2006)