China will stage its first National Sports Games (NSG) next year with an view of promoting the development of the non-Olympic events.

The NSG, to run from May 28 to June 6 at Ningbo, east of China, will feature a total of 14 non-Olympic disciplines such as acrobatics, Chinese-style wrestling, golf, bowling, chess, sports dance, body-buidling and golf.

Of the 1,093 world titles Chinese athletes won from 1979 to 1997, the non-Olympic events claimed 818 world champions, accounting for almost 74.8% of the total.

The honors, however, are not in proportion to the attention they received in China which begun to focus resources on the Olympic events six years ago.

"Our non-Olympics have dominated the world arena for long, but their growth have been stemmed after being ruled out of the National Games in 1993," said Duan Shijie, vice president of China 's State Sports General Administration.

Since the seventh version, the National Games has turned into a competition only for Olympics events with an exception to Wushu, a non-Olympic but Chinese traditional sport.

"We need a balanced development between the Olympic and non- Olympic events," added Duan.