(School of Physical Education,Jiangxi Finance and Economics University,Nanchang 330013,China) Abstract: The author dissected nationalism and its expressions in the sports area, pointed out that the competitive sports development mode, characterized by the nationwide system, formed for Chinese competitive sports guided by nationalism, has achieved expected performance, having its rationality for building a national image, enhancing co-hesion internally, and unifying social awareness and conceptions. However, sports is not equivalent to politics after all, so simply politicalizing sports or even turning it into a political vassal will bring the risk for competitive sports being dissimilated into elite sports, result in the lame development of mass sports; the political influence of gold medals has shown a marginal decreasing effect. With the awakening of citizen awareness, the public has started questioning the nationwide system mode for competitive sports. Under the background of globalization in the new period, Chinese competitive sports must walk the path of development in which nationalism will be lessened gradu-ally, and return to the nature of competitive sports. Key words: sports sociology;nationalism;competitive sports |