Private new martial arts forms banned
China’s sports authorities are trying to put a stop to the country’s martial arts practitioners creating derivative martial arts forms personally, holding private fights, and swindling people, after several cases were reported and attracted public attention and aroused concerns.
People who practice martial arts or work in the industry need to adhere to certain values and cannot be allowed to create derivative martial arts forms, attack, defame or discriminate against others, or hold fights in private, the General Administration of Sport stated in a notice released on Wednesday.
Practitioners are also banned from claiming themselves to be “masters” or “heirs” of a martial arts form with the idea of misleading the public or engaging in illegal activities such as gambling and swindling, said the notice. The aim is to regulate martial arts competitions and stop disorder in the industry.
A boom in the number of branches of various forms of martial arts has also triggered some nasty competition, the Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary in May.
Some people have practiced fraudulent behavior by proclaiming themselves to be martial arts masters to swindle the public, which has “shamed the martial arts sector,” the commentary added.
The Wednesday notice also states that regulators need to tighten their supervision of the activities of foreign martial arts organizations in China, and these groups need to hold their activities here in accordance with China’s laws and should not be engaged in, or finance, activities for profit.
Any international martial arts organizations that are not approved or are fake will be suspended and banned from any competition in China.
This notice also comes on the heels of several high-profile verbal and physical fights among famous figures from China’s martial arts sector.
In early May, some traditional Chinese martial arts masters challenged a former mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, Xu Xiaodong, after he took down a tai chi master, Wei Lei, in less than 10 seconds, and claimed that traditional martial arts were “worthless.”