Abstract

The inheritance of national traditional sports is an important way to promote the great development of human culture. This study utilized CiteSpace software to visually analyse 916 Chinese and English literature in Web of Science (hereinafter WOS) and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (hereinafter CNKI) databases from 2000 to 2023, and compared the hot research topics of traditional sports culture inheritance between China and other countries. The results show that: firstly, although the starting time of Chinese and foreign research is not synchronized, the period of steady growth is roughly the same period of time. Afterwards, the number of foreign publications showed a trend of tortuous development to high-speed explosion, while China shifted from a fluctuating and sustaining growth to a gradual development. The distribution of disciplines and journals of foreign research achievements is diversified, while most of the achievements in China are distributed in sports disciplines, and the distribution of journals is single. Secondly, core author groups and teams have formed in foreign countries, and research institutions are mainly comprehensive universities. Although China has not formed core authors and teams, a few research institutions had made outstanding contributions abroad. Finally, Wushu (martial arts) is on the cutting edge as well as a hot topic of common concern both in China and other countries, and the content and path of inheritance are the topics of common discussion. However, other countries focus on inheritance methods, while China emphasizes more on inheritance attitude. Future research should be approached from micro and diverse perspectives, and adopt various narrative methods and multidisciplinary thinking methods to make breakthroughs.

Keywords: National Traditional Sports, Cultural Inheritance, Hot Research Topics, Comparison