Cross-country Comeback Chills China's Schoolchildren As Winter Looms

For years it was the bane of every British schoolchild's life. Now cross-country has made a comeback in China - and is proving equally unpopular.

The ministry of education has launched a winter running campaign that it hopes will boost both patriotism and health. Schools have been ordered to take their pupils for a jog every day until the end of April.

Primary schoolchildren must run a kilometer (0.621 miles), junior high school students 1.5km and senior high and college students 2km. But the People's Daily newspaper - the Communist Party's official mouthpiece - acknowledged today that the scheme has proved controversial, with parents and teachers as well as schoolchildren complaining about the order.

Critics argue that it will distract students from their studies and warn that urban schools often struggle to find space for sports, questioning whether they can map out a safe route for pupils. Others have loftier philosophical objections.

"It is the right of every school or even every student to choose. Asking the students of the whole country to run is a bad sign for education, whose nature is freedom," wrote one blogger.

But according to the state news agency Xinhua, the ministry has said that physical education plays an important role in carrying out ideological and moral education and stressed the need for such work in the run-up to the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic next year.

Commentator Ya Wei of the Da He newspaper said the only fault with the campaign was that it didn't go far enough. "Records show the physical condition of youth in China is dropping fast," he said. "I think for a student running 60km in a winter is not too much, but too little."