This policy review overviews the Chinese path to sports modernization within the theoretical framework of the Chinese path to modernization, which is centered on the principle of Fitness-for-All. Over a century of endeavors, the modernization of sports in China has created a new and comprehensive sports civilization in a developing country with a large population and inadequate sports resources. The essence of the Chinese path to sports modernization can be summarized as a people-centered process of sports modernization led by the Communist Party of China that relies on a top-level design with universal participation and seeks to develop a diverse global sports governance. The development of Chinese sports will not only make a transformative contribution to China’s commitment to its second Century Goal, but it will also provide a renaissance for the ancient Chinese philosophy of health first into a people-centered modernization theory, and contribute a Chinese blueprint for the pursuit of the advancement of cross-cultural, diverse world sports civilizations and sustainable development goals.

Demographic change is a fundamental characteristic of China’s demographic development. The primary problem in China’s population development has shifted in recent years from overall pressure to structural challenges. Using data from China’s seventh demographic census, this study examines the dynamics of sports consumption growth from the perspective of population structure, analyzes the characteristics of the current population structure and the current state of sports consumption development, and establishes a regression to examine the impact of population structure change trends on sports industry development. The study demonstrates that there are varying degrees of correlation between different demographic trends and the sports industry in China’s aging population: the added value per capita of the sports industry is significantly (p < 0.01), positively correlated with the proportion of the elderly population and the number of graduates from general higher education institutions. While the expansion of the sports sector continues to be positive, there are numerous issues that need to be addressed. To encourage the development of a high-quality sports industry, proactive countermeasures are proposed to adjust population policy, increase population quality, and promote the comprehensive upgrading of sports consumption.

Objectives: The development of the digital economy constitutes a key component of China’s endeavors to advance towards “Digital China.” The sports industry functions as a new catalyst for high-quality economic growth. This study systematically evaluated the integration between these two sectors. Methods: First, we conducted two levels of grey relational analysis to assess their integration between 2016 and 2021. Second, we conducted a VAR analysis to determine whether their integration between 2009 and 2021 represents a causal relationship. Results: At the macro level, the grey relational analysis reveals that the sports industry (grade = 0.770) ranked second among China’s eight key economic sectors in terms of digital economy integration. At the meso level, a wide variation (ranging from 0.606 to 0.789) existed in the grade of integration between the digital economy and the sub-sectors of the sports industry. According to the VAR model, the digital economy does not Granger cause (p = 0.344) the growth of the sports industry. Conclusions: This study yielded two added values to the existing literature: First, there exists a sectoral imbalance in the digitization process; second, the explosive growth of the sports industry was not primarily caused by the digital economy. Accordingly, the “sports + digital” complex is still in the first wave of technological integration. We propose three policy recommendations, namely, sectoral synergistic development, overtaking via esports IP, and new economy and new regulation. Collectively, these findings provide updated insights for the digital transformation towards “building a leading sports nation” and “Digital China.”

The development of a high-quality sports industry is crucial to China’s economic growth. This research quantitatively analyzed factors influencing the development of the sports industry for the period 2010–2019. The study selected variables pertaining to the gross national income per capita (X₁), household final consumption expenditure per capita (X₂), sports population (X₃), number of fitness venues and facilities (X₄), number of sporting events (X₅), and number of sports-related business registrations (X₆) and analyzed their relationship with the value added to the sports industry. By developing a ridge regression model, it can be determined that correlations (Pearson’s r) between six factors and the value added to the sports industry were all greater than 0.90, and that each factor had a positive impact on the industry (p < 0.05). After standardizing the ridge regression model with the z-score method, it was determined that the degree of influence of the six factors varied: X₂ (β_ridge = 0.156), X₃ (β_ridge = 0.153) and X₅ (β_ridge = 0.153), X₁ (β_ridge = 0.151), X₄ (β_ridge = 0.136), and X₆ (β_ridge = 0.121). The ridge regression model can give a reference model for predicting and optimizing the sustainable development of the sports industry in China.