A notice from China’s education ministry has suggested young Chinese men had become too “feminine”.
For a while China’s government has signalled concern that the country’s most popular male role models are no longer strong, athletic figures like “army heroes”. Even President Xi Jinping, a well-known football enthusiast, has long been seeking to cultivate better sports stars.
So last week, the education ministry issued a notice with a title that left no doubt about its ultimate goal.
The Proposal to Prevent the Feminisation of Male Adolescents called on schools to fully reform their offerings on physical education and strengthen their recruitment of teachers.
The text advised recruiting retired athletes and people from sporting backgrounds – and “vigorously developing” particular sports like football with a view to “cultivating students’ masculinity”.
There were some earlier signs suggesting such a move was coming. Last May, a delegate of China’s top advisory body, Si Zefu, said that many of China’s young males had become “weak, timid, and self-abasing”.
There was a trend among young Chinese males towards “feminisation”, he siad, which “would inevitably endanger the survival and development of the Chinese nation” unless it was “effectively managed”.
Si Zefu said the home environment was partly to blame, with most Chinese boys being raised by their mothers or grandmothers. He also noted that the growing appeal of certain male celebrities meant that many children “did not want to be ‘army heroes'” anymore.
So, he suggested, schools should play a greater role in ensuring young Chinese get a balanced education.