Hebei promoting mass fitness program

Hebei province is promoting a mass fitness program and training more sports instructors to meet the increasing public demand for scientific exercises.

The Hebei Provincial Sports Bureau will continue to focus on increasing fitness facilities in rural areas in 2013, according to the mass fitness program action plan.

The government will invest 92 million yuan ($15 million) on fitness facilities to cover a larger area this year, building 5,000 fitness facility groups in the villages, another 40 physical exercise projects in townships and seven fitness centers in counties. For the urban areas, around 1,100 communities will have new facilities.

Construction of the new facilities will be finished by the end of December, increasing the coverage of fitness facilities to 60 percent in urban and rural areas, Zhang Jianxin, spokesman for Hebei Provincial Sports Bureau, said on Tuesday.

To better serve residents, the government is also investing 1.6 million yuan to train 5,000 instructors for mass fitness sports in 2013. The province has already had more than 50,000 instructors.