China Claims World’s Most Ski Areas

China continues to push ahead with a fast-growing winter sports industry, three years after the Beijing Winter Olympics.

A new report puts the number of ski areas in the country at around 740, the most in the world by some measures, although after rapid growth in the 2010s, the number has not changed much since it passed 700 before the pandemic.

Whether that number is the greatest number of ski areas in the world is a matter of perspective to some extent. Many Chines ski areas are small centres with just a carpet lift and a snowmaking machine so can be difficult to directly compare with full ski resorts in longer established ski nations. Most of the 740 only have one or two surface lifts.

When countries in Europe and North America were at a similar stage of ski area development from the 1950s to 1970s, a number of countries including Austria, Germany and the US each had more than 1,000 ski areas, including many small family-run ski hills. Japan is also believed to have peaked at over 1,000 areas in the 1980s.

The bigger Chinese ski areas are definitely becoming more established though and expanding their offer and the number of Chinese people heading to the slopes appears to be on the up with the Chinese government continuing to strongly support the sector.

According to the report, the number of people engaging in ice-and-snow leisure tourism in China during the 2024-25 winter season is projected to exceed 500 million. If that happens it will be an almost 25% increase from the 385 million reported last winter. It will also exceed the number of skiers in the rest of the world combined, although Chinese stats tend to bundle 'ice and snow sports participants' together meaning the number may include ice skaters.

China’s State Council has recently released a new plan to continue to boost its winter sports industry.and grow its ice-and-snow economy to 1.5 trillion yuan ($206 billion US) by 2030.

According to Chinese media, the new plan also prioritizes the integration of key winter sports into the physical education curriculum in the country’s schools, encouraging young people to embrace snow sports. To help foster this a nationwide system of youth competitions will be rolled out across various age groups, providing opportunities for young skiers to improve their skills.