China's national physical fitness test was recently carried out in Shanghai. In the pull-up component, almost 50 percent of Grade-10 male students at a local high school ranked a score of 0, according to the China Youth Daily.
According to the test proctor, if a participant can do seven pull-ups, then they will pass. To the tester's surprise, however, only one-third of the 60 test takers achieved 7 pull-ups.
"The students simply didn't push themselves to do a pull-up. It seemed that many of them didn't really care about the test," the invigilator added.
A 2014 report released by China's General Administration of Sport showed that Chinese 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds and 18-year-olds on average can only do 3.8, 4.2 and 4.5 pull-ups respectively.
The numbers in 1995 were 3.87, 5.55 and 5.68 respectively. The change shows that Chinese teenagers' arm power and back strength have severely degraded.
