Low levels of physical activity (PA) and high amounts of sedentary behaviour (SB) contribute to the onset and maintenance of various chronic diseases (Must and Tybor, 2005). To develop effective interventions aimed at increasing the overall level of activity, it is important to examine a full range of activity intensities, including SB (Biddle et al., 2009; Salmon et al., 2008). Previous studies in western countries have indicated that children tend to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, with boys being more physically active and high users of television and computer or video games, when compared to girls (Gorely et al., 2007). Research conducted in China (Tudor-Locke et al., 2003) reported that Chinese children's PA was as low as that observed in western countries, out-of-school MVPA was almost nonexistent, and the time spent in SB was mostly study-related.
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