The Disability Insurance Operation Mode Research In China

Sports are exposed to the risk all the time. As a special social group, athletes are alwayschallenging human movement limit under the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”.Long-term and high-intensity training can easily result in a variety of injuries of theathletes’ body. At the same time, athletes have to face considerable disability risk duringthe game because of the unpredictable sudden factor. That means the uncertainty of riskfactors during the training and competition, may cause athletes bodily injury, disability,loss of athletic ability and even death. Movement disability risk can be described as thenumber one threat to athletes’ sports career and their lives. Sang Lan accident eventreminds us not only concern about the competition success, but also to concern about thebig security vulnerabilities behind the great honors. Security issue is the foundation andbedrock of the whole athlete service system. As a risk compensation mechanism on theincidents of athletes’ physical disability, athlete disability insurance plays a crucial role ona continuation of the athletic career of the athletes, as well as follow-up medicalrehabilitation.Affected by the planned economy system, China’s sports undertake long-term nationalpackage management mechanism. This leads to mutual aid and the government’s help isthe fixed support model to deal with the athletes’ disability accidents. This security modelhas some problems, such as low level protection, poor stability. So it can not reduce theathletes’ worries, even will affect China’s sports sustainable development in the long run.Commercial athlete disability insurance in China started late, developed slowly. And themarket demand and supply sides departure from each other seriously, which is veryasymmetrical with China’s athletics career development level or the sports industry market.As an important financial instrument and institutional arrangement for risk diversification,loss compensation and mentality stabilization, commercial athlete disability insurance mustassume important functions in enhancing the protection level of athletes. By analyzing theathlete disability insurance carried-out history in China, discussing the pros and cons ofsafeguard measures under the current protection model, revolving around the importanceand necessity of the development of commercial athlete disability insurance, drawing onother countries’ operational model in disability insurance for athletes, then, I try to seek aathletes disability insurance operational model which suits China’s national conditions.