From Military Physical Education To New Physical Education – The Change of Discourse on Physical Education and the Making of the Nation in the Late Qing and Republic of China –

This paper deals with the process of gradual nationalization of an individual's body in China in the early 20th century. Among them, the main focus is to look at how physical education was used to create a “national state” and “people” by focusing on the debate and discussion on “sports” by intellectuals that took place for about 15 years from 1910 to the 1920s. Biggest questions is ‘What changes did the individual's body make in the process of forming the national state? To examine this, many studies about the formation of a national state and individual bodies in China were referenced. In particular, the approach of body culture history is a research methodology that can combine the subject of physical education well with the huge discourse or problem consciousness presented in history, and here, the aforementioned methodology is therefore have been used most. In addition, discussions on the people, nationality etc., which are dealt with as a core topic, refer to various studies on the formation of people in China conducted in modern Chinese history studies. This paper deals with the process of gradually shifting from the direction of creating a “military people” to creating body of “citizens” in China from the end of Qing to the period of the Republic of China. In it, we will look at one aspect of intellectuals who have considered how to connect the problems of Chinese society to the individual's body and the physical education created by intellectuals’ influence. The change in intellectuals' perception of modern China's sports discussions and the aggression revealed therein shows that the national idealism and the body of the people are inextricably related to the formation of the national state. This is further linked to the question of how to control and utilize the people's bodies. In the discussion on physical education during this period, comments on the militancy or aggression of intellectuals suggest one way to examine how the people's body was mobilized for national tasks in modern China and what ideological basis and background it was constructed on. And how these changes were reflected and revealed in the actual curriculum can be examined.