The cauldron of the 14th National Games is lit during the opening ceremony. The event will run through Sept 27. (XUE YUGE / XINHUA)
Chinese President Xi Jinping declared the 14th National Games open in Xi’an, capital city of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, on Sept 15 evening.
A grand opening ceremony featuring music, dance and cultural exhibition was held in the pomegranate-flower shaped Xi’an Olympic Center Stadium.
During the one-and-a-half-hour ceremony, Yang Qian, a double shooting champion at the recent Tokyo Olympic Games, lit the cauldron with the flame which was ignited on July 17 in Yan’an, a former revolutionary base of the Communist Party of China.
Under the theme of “Games for all, together in mind and action”, the 14th National Games features a total of 54 sports including 595 events, of which 35 sports and 410 events are set for elite athletes, while the remainder are mass sports programs.
Billed as China’s “mini Olympics”, the quadrennial National Games, inaugurated in 1959, has featured Olympic-style program plus wushu for elite athletes and opened its door to amateur sports enthusiasts for the first time in the 2017 Tianjin edition.
More than 12,000 athletes representing China’s provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps and specific sporting associations will compete in this year’s Games, which will run through to Sept 27.
This year marks the third time that President Xi has attended the opening ceremony of the country’s premier multi-sport event since 2013.
A keen sports fan himself, Xi has on many occasions expounded on his profound understanding of sports and taken the lead in China’s efforts to turn the country into a sports powerhouse, a goal he described as part of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.
President Xi Jinping declares the 14th National Games open at Xi’an Olympic Center Stadium in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi province, on Sept 15 evening. (LI XUEREN / XINHUA)
“President Xi is a true champion and I want to give him a set of medals because he has a clear vision about the important role of sports in society, and the importance of sports for education for the young people. So in this respect, he is the true Olympic champion for the youth,” International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach told reporters when Xi paid a visit to the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2017.
As a firm promoter of national fitness, Xi has advocated sports as an important means for improving people’s health, meeting people’s aspirations for a better life and facilitating all-around human development.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, Chinese people’s enthusiasm for sporting exercises has been on the rise, along with the elevation of the Fitness-for-All Five-Year Plans into a national strategy.
These measures in promoting mass sports are an excellent manifestation toward Xi’s remarks — “The foundation of building a sporting powerhouse lies in mass sports.”
Also on Sept 15, Xi reiterated China’s commitment to championing the principles of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness in exchanges between civilizations and working with different nations to jointly build the Belt and Road.
Xi made the remark in a congratulatory letter to the 2021 Belt and Road — The Great Wall International Folk Culture and Arts Festival, which opened on Sept 15 in Langfang, Hebei province.
He noted that the building of Belt and Road, with the joint participation and efforts of various parties, has yielded fruitful outcomes since the initiative was proposed by him eight years ago, adding that it has enhanced the well-being of people from participating nations and promoted exchanges and dialogues between civilizations.
China stands ready to work with different sides to seek harmony without uniformity, jointly work toward prosperity and make greater contributions to the progress of human civilization, Xi said.
Xinhua contributed to this report.
