A quantitative study on exercise-for-health policy texts in China

To analyze the historical evolution and policy structure of exercise for health in China and provide theoretical, methodological, and empirical references for optimizing related policies, this study collected policy documents related to exercise-driven health promotion issued between 2012 and 2025 from official government portals and databases, including those of the State Council and the General Administration of Sport of China. Based on a policy instrument perspective, a three-dimensional analytical framework was constructed, and content analysis was employed to systematically examine the setting of policy objectives and the selection of policy tools across different phases, with a total of 30 policy texts included in the analysis. From the dimension of policy tools, capacity-building tools were the most frequently used (31.01%), serving as the core tools for achieving policy goals during the policy evolution process; command and regulation tools (29.98%) and information and exhortation tools (16.52%), as commonly adopted policy tools, also played significant roles in goal realization; in contrast, system change tools (12.09%) and incentive tools (10.40%) were less utilized. In terms of policy objectives, the proportion of facility and service accessibility (38.72%) was relatively high, while the proportions of health intervention efficacy (17.17%), industry and cultural driving forces (16.61%), special group protection (15.87%), and regional synergistic development (11.59%) were relatively low. The findings indicate that China’s exercise for health-related policies are dominated by capacity-building documents in terms of policy tools, with insufficient use of systemic change tools and incentive tools; among policy objectives, facility and service accessibility receives more attention, and there are differences in the preference for policy instrument selection under different policy goals. With the advancement of policy phases, policy tools have become increasingly diverse and enriched, but their internal distribution remains uneven.