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Coy Li

With one-fifth of Chinese aged 6-17 deemed overweight or obese, Beijing is looking to increase physical exercise and improve nutrition to safeguard the health of young people.
On Monday, the Ministry of Education, top public health bodies and the General Administration of Sport rolled out national technical guidelines for the prevention and control of overweight and obesity in primary and middle school pupils.
According to the guidelines, urgent intervention is needed to address the “major public health issue” among these children.
The guidelines also said interventions were needed for other common conditions such as myopia and scoliosis, to which poor diet and not enough outdoor activity were contributing factors.
Experts have raised the alarm about the health issue, most recently in May when Shen Hongbing, director of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, told an obesity science conference in May that more than 10 per cent of children under 6 are overweight or obese.
To address the problem, schools should provide at least one physical education class a day and ensure enough time for students to move around between classes, according to the guidelines.
They also call for greater awareness of healthy eating habits – including lower salt, oil and added sugar in diets – as well as the use of “scientific interventions” and the hiring of qualified nutritionists at schools.

Schools, supermarkets, restaurants and other food outlets should also use nutrition labels on their products or health tips for students.
To monitor the conditions, the guidelines called for regular health screenings and health records for students, with timely feedback for parents.
Yan Weili, an expert in childhood overweight and obesity from Fudan University, said tackling the issue was difficult.
“Reversing the childhood overweight and obesity trend is not easy, but national-level guidelines can raise public awareness of the existing problem,” Yan said.
According to Yan, the prevention and control measures mentioned in the guidelines were scientific, but there might be issues implementing them, including the need for the children themselves to want to make changes.
“Early detection of overweight and obesity has long been realised, but external influences have a limited effect. The unhealthy lifestyle of these students needs to be changed under their internal motivation,” she said.
In addition, China lacked national guidelines on interventions and research regarding children who were already overweight and obese, Yan said.


Researchers at Peking University and the United Nations Children’s Fund have proposed taxes on sugary drinks to help deal with the health and economic implications of obesity among young people.
“The rapid increase in child and adolescent overweight and obesity in China has a significant health and economic impact,” the team said in a paper published by The Lancet Regional Health in December.
They estimate that in addition to reducing life expectancy, the conditions could lead to total economic losses of 218 trillion yuan (US$30 trillion) in China between 2025 and 2092 if there is no intervention.
The research suggested that imposing a 20 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened drinks and restricting marketing of unhealthy foods to children, would produce the best health and economic gains.
In 2020, China set a target to lower the rate of overweight and obesity among juveniles by 70 per cent between 2020 and 2030 from the previous decade.
Research published by The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology in 2021 said measures introduced to reduce the incidence of overweight and obesity at the national level were not effective in curbing the rise in the conditions.
In Hong Kong, the overweight and obesity rate among primary and secondary school students in the 2022-23 school year was nearly 20 per cent, according to officials in January.


Unhealthy body weight among young people is considered an issue around the world.
Globally, more than 390 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 years were overweight and obese in 2022, with the rate rising dramatically from just 8 per cent in 1990 to 20 per cent in 2022, according to the World Health Organization.
“Despite Western countries having recognised and acted on the problem of childhood overweight and obesity earlier than China, the long-term trend of the epidemic is not optimistic and is still on the rise,” Yan said.


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Beijing declares need for nutrition labels, more exercise in school, better habits to help to beat ‘major public health issue’


Beijing declares need for nutrition labels, more exercise in school, better habits to help beat ‘major public health issue’.
