Abstract: The main body of China’s competitive sports is made up of professional athletes due to the special national conditions and the limitations of the development of the times. The restructuring of public institution sectors has enabled most professional to step out of the restrictions of planned economy and to gradually become marketized. As a result, athletes’ salary has transformed from the former post salary system to the one of performance system. However, this process is doomed to be a long and difficult one. Through literature method, logic reasoning method, the paper analyzes the current status of professional athletes’ payment system so as to find out problems and suggest the corresponding countermeasures.

Key words: professional athletes, remuneration, system restructuring path, competitive sports