Competitive tai chi is growing fast around the world — but not everyone in the traditional community is happy about what that means

There’s a version of tai chi that most people think they know. It happens slowly in parks. It’s mostly associated with retirees, stress reduction, gentle movement, and the occasional vague mention of “energy”. In the Western imagination, tai chi often exists somewhere between meditation, physiotherapy and soft exercise.

But another version of tai chi has also been growing in parallel. One involving national teams, international judges, choreographed routines, competition scoring systems, and athletes performing explosive movements in brightly lit arenas. And it’s getting big.

The recent World Taijiquan Championships in Bulgaria drew competitors from more than 40 countries, with hundreds of athletes taking part in solo forms, weapon routines although I didn’t see any evidence of push hands events, or anything approaching sparring. For many outsiders, the sheer scale of the competition may come as a surprise. But for people inside the martial arts world, it highlights something that’s been developing for years: tai chi is splitting into several very different cultures.

Take a look:

One culture sees tai chi primarily as an internal martial art rooted in body mechanics, structure, pressure, balance and cultivated force. Another treats it as a performance discipline, one judged visually, packaged for audiences, and optimised for competition. Another sees it as the aforementioned health version done by older people in parks as a kind of meditatve exercise.

That tension between these different versions of taijiquan has existed for a long time, but events like the World Taijiquan Championships make it impossible to ignore.

When tai chi becomes a spectator sport

Competitive tai chi performance changes things. The moment movements are judged publicly, practitioners begin optimising for what judges and audiences can easily see. Stances become lower. Movements become larger. Expressions become sharper and more theatrical. Routines drift toward athletic spectacle.

That doesn’t automatically make them bad, but you’ll notice that the event also seemed to incorporate dance troupes, cheerleaders and gymnasts.

The fact is, competitive athletes are phenomenally skilled. The flexibility, balance, coordination and body control required at elite level are extraordinary. Some modern taiji competitors move with a degree of precision that most traditional practitioners could only dream of.

But critics argue that something important can get lost in the process.

Traditional tai chi training often focuses on subtle internal qualities that don’t necessarily look impressive from the outside: relaxation under pressure, whole-body connection, efficient force transfer, breath regulation, sensitivity, and structural integrity. Those things are difficult to score visually. A judge can easily reward height, speed and extension. It’s much harder to reward sung — the relaxed but connected quality that many internal stylists consider central to the art.

This is where the divide starts because it leads to the question, “is this still tai chi?” And then to the almost inevitable, “what is tai chi anyway?”

The gymnastics problem

The problem isn’t unique to tai chi. Almost every martial art changes when competition becomes the dominant measuring stick. Brazilian jiu-jitsu drifted toward increasingly sport-specific positions once tournaments became central to the culture. Judo changed dramatically after leg grabs were restricted. Olympic taekwondo evolved into something many traditional practitioners barely recognize.

The tai chi world is fractured, but for some this can be positive. Competitive formats bring structure, international exposure, younger athletes and a clearer pathway for progression. Without competition, tai chi risks becoming culturally invisible outside wellness circles.

But others worry the art slowly transforms into a kind of martial gymnastics — technically difficult, visually impressive, but increasingly detached from the body method and martial function that originally gave the movements meaning.

The tai chi world is made even more complicated by the fact that as well as the wushu performers, and the traditionalists, there’s another group — the martial artists who want to use tai chi as a real martial art.

You might imagine they’d be naturally aligned with the traditionalists, however, in my experience the traditionalists hate any attempt to put on gloves and ‘prove tai chi works’ and refer to it as ‘just kickboxing’. 

The irony is that all three, or even four, sides often genuinely love tai chi. They just value different things.

The global expansion of tai chi

What the World Taijiquan Championships really demonstrate is that tai chi is no longer a niche cultural practice confined to China or small traditional schools.

Competitors are emerging from Europe, South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the United States. Universities teach it. Health systems study it. Sports organizations organize around it. Younger athletes are entering through competition pathways rather than traditional lineage structures.

That changes the art whether people want it to or not.