Body-Building Contestants Must Wear Them Despite Protests : Chinese Leaders Give Agonized Endorsement of Bikinis

China’s Communist Party gave an agonized and carefully qualified endorsement Tuesday to the bikini bathing suit.

In a front-page commentary in the Guangming Daily, the Communist Party’s daily newspaper for intellectuals, the bikini was justified as an expression of the Chinese people’s “stronger and stronger desire in recent years for a sense of beauty.”

Bikinis turned into a touchy political issue in China this fall after the State Physical Culture and Sports Commission announced that women will be required to wear them for the first time in the national body-building contest. The competition will be held this weekend in Shenzhen, the special economic zone adjoining Hong Kong.

The article in the party newspaper attempted to still recent criticism of the commission’s decision. Bikinis, the article suggested, are an outgrowth of China’s opening to the outside world, and those Chinese opposed to them were taken to task for reflecting “feudal” patterns of thought.

Skirts Once Frowned On

The official tolerance of the bikini represents quite a change for a country in which, less than a decade ago, women didn’t dare wear skirts in public.

During the Cultural Revolution, women in China were expected to cover their legs and ankles with baggy pants. In 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards publicly upbraided Wang Guangmei, the wife of former Chinese President Liu Shao-chi, for putting China “to shame” by wearing a silk dress to a state function.

Tuesday’s newspaper article is in line with other recent steps by Chinese authorities to adopt a more permissive attitude toward questions of sex, nudity and human anatomy.

A newly completed Chinese film called “Xiaoxiao, a Hunan Girl,” is the first movie produced here to show female nudity. Collections of classical nude paintings by artists such as Titian--forbidden during the Cultural Revolution and rarely published since--sold out in three days at China’s first fine arts book fair in Canton last month.

A special exhibition of anatomical specimens and paintings called “Secrets of the Human Body” drew a reported 200,000 visitors in Nanjing this fall. And, last year, China started a sex education program for adolescents in some of its schools.

Sports Interest Grows

Over the last few years, some daring fashions, including miniskirts and hot pants, could occasionally be seen during the summer in China’s leading cities. But the bikini remained taboo. Women on Chinese beaches have continued to wear modest and simple one-piece outfits.

China has been holding national body-building contests for the last four years. Its interest in body building has been heightened by the nation’s more general desire to become a powerhouse in all aspects of international sports. The 1990 Asian Games, which will be held in Peking, will include body building as a sport for the first time.

When China’s sports commission announced this fall that women entrants in this year’s national body-building contest would appear in bikinis instead of one-piece swimsuits, the decision caused an uproar.

Some Contestants Complain

Some young women taking part in local or regional preliminaries for the national contest objected to wearing bikinis. In other instances, it was their parents, friends and neighbors who complained.

A Shanghai newspaper reported last month that, in one county in Guangdong province, “some people even demanded that the local Public Security Bureau take action against this unhealthy tendency.”

Tuesday’s article in the Communist Party newspaper reported that, after a “wide-scale investigation,” three separate reasons had been discovered for permitting Chinese women to wear bikinis.

The first was that, as part of its policy of opening to the outside world, China last year joined the International Bodybuilding Federation--an organization whose rules require that women compete in bikinis.

“If the women competitors wear swimming suits instead of bikinis . . . it would not suit the international regulations,” the article said.

Second, the article explained, the bikinis on the body builders illustrate the Chinese people’s desire for beauty. “The beauty of the human body is a kind of living art sculpted during physical activity by human beings themselves,” the commentary said.

Finally, the party newspaper said, the bikinis should be accepted because they represent a challenge to “feudal” ideas that are in need of reform.

“As a matter of fact, China used to be very open with respect to clothes,” the article argued. “For example, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), women wore clothing exposing their necks and backs . . . .”

The newspaper article acknowledged that the question of whether women should be permitted to wear bikinis is controversial in China and that some people are still opposed to them.