A Study On Lack Of Sports Integrity In China’s Economic Transition

Integrity, as an integral part of the credit system, plays an important role instrengthening people’s inner beliefs, norming external behaviors, shaping moral ideals,and forming healthy lifestyles. The achievement of sports integrity in engineeringcredit system is fully affirmed, but lacking of sports integrity still widely exists insports activities due to China’s transition from a planned economy to a marketeconomy, and a credit system matching with the modern market economy has not yetbeen built up. The paper tries to find theoretical and practical supports for thesolutions to lacking of sports integrity in China by in-depth study on China’sphenomenon of lacking of sports integrity, its causes, and ways to curb it.First, the paper determines the core concepts and meaning of sports integrityfrom the discipline of sport sociology, an inter-discipline of sociology sports science.Sports integrity might be defined as sports practitioners’ behavioral characteristics ofhonesty and trustworthiness, nonexistence of deceiving in oneself and among peoplein sport activities in certain economic and cultural foundation. It characterizes as theunity of the stability and development, unity of universality and openness, unity ofself-discipline and heteronomy, and the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. Political,economic, cultural, and ethical factors in China’s economic transition all contribute toChina’s sports integrity. The paper also analyzes the basic theory of institutionalintegrity. The theory of “the system is the basis for the integrity of sport” is thecornerstone to study and analyze the lack of sports integrity in the economictransition.Secondly, the paper analyzes the current situation of sports integrity in thetransition in various fields and believes that the lack of sports integrity of our countrymainly lies in the fields of sports competitions, sports economy, sports managementand sports cultural. On this basis, the cause of the lack of credibility of China’s sportssystem is analyzed. We found the institutional roots of the formal system of sportsintegrity lie in the lack of perfect restraint laws and regulations, the lack of supportinglegislation and effective enforcement oversight mechanisms, and lack of spirit ofcontract constraints. It is presented as values distortion, the functional weakening ofmoral education, the declining in ethical standards, and short of moral restraint andpunishment in informal institutional performance. In addition, ideology, the spirit of sports, and the social environment all result in lack of credibility of the informalinstitutional factors.Finally, the author believes that in order to end the situation of lack of sportsintegrity, we must strengthen the construction of a dual system of formal institutions,such as informal ethics and law. In choice of the informal system, we should enhancephysical and moral progress. We have to strengthen the sport ethic value system withChinese characteristics; strengthen moral education for sports practitioners; andimprove sports ethics evaluation system. In the choice of formal system, we have tostrengthen the sports legal system. Efforts need to be put to improve theadministrative departments of sports, especially leading cadres administrationaccording to law awareness and ability to promote and improve the legislative andinstitutional construction of sports; we need to improve sports administrativeenforcement capacity; improve sports rules loophole; establish a diversified sportsdisputes and the right to relief service system; and enhance physical legal educationand supervision.