And at a recent annual sports competition at Caihe Middle School in Hangzhou, records stayed the same – and the 1.5km race was even cancelled because the students found it too hard, Qianjiang Evening News reported last week.

The situation is similar at other schools, while at university level, there is also concern about students’ fitness. At Nankai University in the northeastern port city of Tianjin, students must pass a physical fitness test before they can progress to the next academic year. It has also introduced a fitness scorecard that is taken into account alongside students’ academic results – but the university said only one-third of graduates qualified for fitness certificates at a graduation ceremony in July.

Meanwhile in eastern Jiangsu province, Nanjing Agriculture University is offering an accredited weight-loss course as it tries to tackle obesity on campus. The course is open to students with more than 30 per cent body fat, and 60 per cent of their grade is determined by how much weight they lose.

Although there are various reasons why school records have remained intact – including a growing number of sports schools that enrol the more athletically gifted students – experts, teachers and parents say the physical health of young people is generally going down as they spend less time exercising and more time studying and using mobile phones and computers.

And until physical education is given the same importance as other school subjects such as maths or Chinese, there are concerns that fitness levels – which Xi has tied to his Chinese rejuvenation dream – will continue to slide. Xi’s “healthy China” policy encourages widespread participation in sports and improved fitness according to detailed exercise guidelines released last year.

The policy was launched at a time when changing diets and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle among China’s middle class has seen a rise in childhood obesity. Peking University’s School of Public Health estimates 28 per cent of children in China aged between seven and 18 – or almost 50 million children – will be classified as obese or overweight by 2030.

Wang Zongping, a motor development specialist at Nanjing University of Science and Technology, said the physical fitness of Chinese students – from primary school to university – had consistently declined over the past three decades.

Since 2000, the General Administration of Sport has carried out nationwide research every five years on the fitness levels of Chinese at all ages. In its latest report, from 2015, it said obesity among university students was rising, their fitness levels continued to deteriorate, and a high proportion of them needed glasses for short-sightedness – with more students wearing glasses from a younger age.

Results for those aged seven to 19 were lower for most of the fitness tests in the 2015 report than in 2010. For example, the average seven-year-old boy got 122.3cm for standing long jump in 2015; in 2010 the average was 126.2cm.

The Ministry of Education has also tested students’ physical fitness since 1985, issuing a report every five years. But the report due in 2015 was never released, with no explanation given.

The problem, according to one physical education teacher, is that students do not devote enough time to exercise – even when they have the opportunity.

“My experience is that overall physical fitness levels are going down, especially in terms of results – fewer students have high grades for phys ed,” said Zhu Yifang, who teaches senior high students at Hangzhou Foreign Languages School in Zhejiang.

“They are less tolerant of doing anything that’s difficult or challenging than students in the past. Any time we hold something like an 800m race, or a 1km race, they complain constantly.”

As with students in past decades, there is plenty of exercise time built into the school day in China. At Zhu’s school, the day begins with music blaring from loudspeakers as students take part in a 10-minute group exercise session. Senior high students also have two physical education classes a week, as well as an outdoor activity class. “If they take full advantage of the outdoor activity class, there should be adequate time for exercise,” she said, adding that most of her students tended to use that time for club activities instead of sports.

Wang said the main reason young people tended not to embrace sports was that they did not appreciate it as an important skill. “For example, a teacher will very rarely suggest students learn from a kid who’s good at football – in fact some parents may even want their children to stay away from the kids who are gifted at sports. Those children can be seen as naughty or those who don’t apply themselves to studying,” he said.

Many parents in China are also more focused on their children’s academic results than developing their interest in sport. One mother, Zhuo Er, said she did not know how many physical education classes her 14-year-old daughter attended every week at her school in Shanghai.

“There’s so much homework to do that us parents are usually overwhelmed just trying to get our kids to finish all their after-school tasks,” she said. “We often forget about their need to exercise – and our children certainly do.”

In her limited spare time, Zhuo said her daughter usually listened to music or watched films. She only exercises – in the form of going for a walk after dinner – if Zhuo tells her to.

Wang believes the answer is to add an optional physical education test to the gaokao, China’s all-important – and notoriously difficult – university entrance exams, so that children and their parents have more of an incentive to prioritise exercise.

“Physical education will only be given its due importance when people see it is on an equal footing with other subjects like maths and Chinese,” he said.