Proposal Highlights: Ding Shizhong Advocates Sports-Driven Approach to Adolescent Mental Health

During the ongoing National Two Sessions, Ding Shizhong, a Standing Committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Vice Chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, and Chairman of the Board of ANTA SPORTS, has put forward three proposals this year. One of them focuses on the mental health of adolescents.

In February, the Ministry of Education held a work deployment meeting emphasizing "health first" and proposed further implementation of the student physical fitness enhancement plan to improve students' physical health levels. Highlighting the role of sports in fostering adolescent mental health and strengthening the foundation for building a Healthy China, Ding emphasized that sports play a significant role in alleviating psychological anxiety among young people, cultivating team awareness, and enhancing psychological resilience. However, challenges remain in the integration of sports and education, including the reduction of physical education classes, the formalization of sports activities, and uneven distribution of resources between urban and rural areas.

To address these issues, Ding proposed several measures: continuously deepening the integrated development of "sports + psychology" and improving the mechanism for guaranteeing physical education class hours; further enriching high-quality sports practices to alleviate urban-rural resource imbalances; and deepening the collaborative support system among schools, families, and communities to comprehensively safeguard adolescent mental health, making sports a "guardian" of young people's physical and mental well-being.

Additionally, in line with the Central Economic Work Conference’s emphasis on "prioritizing domestic demand and building a strong domestic market," Ding put forward suggestions aimed at unleashing the potential of sports consumption and promoting the high-quality development of the "sports plus" model to help expand domestic demand and advance the construction of a leading sports nation. He noted that the sports industry, as a green and sunrise industry, holds great potential to drive the development of related industrial chains and become a key growth pole for expanding domestic demand. However, practical problems such as insufficient effective supply of sports consumption and limited consumption scenarios still exist.

In response, Ding recommended improving and innovating policies to support sports consumption to stimulate public participation; deepening cross-industry integration of "sports plus" to promote in-depth collaboration across the industrial chain; and further diversifying consumption supply by developing multi-group, multi-scenario sports services and advancing the integration of sports and health to systematically activate the endogenous momentum of sports consumption.

Furthermore, regarding strengthening the innovative role of private enterprises and building a national innovation system, Ding emphasized that private enterprises, being on the front lines of the market and directly facing user demands, possess agile responsiveness, rich application scenarios, and advantages in engineering practice. They are not only important forces in technology research and development investment but also key carriers for promoting the transformation and industrialization of results, playing a vital role in advancing the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements and developing new quality productive forces.

At present, private enterprises face challenges such as limited channels for participating in major national scientific and technological tasks, an incomplete incentive system for innovation contributions, and prominent shortcomings in pilot-scale testing platforms. To tackle these issues, Ding suggested further establishing regular mechanisms for private enterprises to participate in major national scientific and technological tasks and improving the national-level recognition and incentive system for innovation contributions; issuing practical guidelines for the construction of innovation consortia and addressing gaps in concept verification and pilot testing platforms; and taking multiple measures to remove development barriers, enabling private enterprises to become key participants in the national innovation system and main forces in the transformation of achievements.