Objective  To examine the status and influencing factors of physical exercise among civil servants in China and to provide references for promoting healthy lifestyle in the population.

  Methods  We retrieved research literatures on physical exercise among civil servants in China published in Chinese or English from January 1, 2005 to November 30, 2018 via searching Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database, VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals, Web of Science database, Elsevier/Science Direct, PubMed, Elsevier/Engineering Village, Springer Link, IEL database, and Nature database; manual searching through Baidu Scholar and Google Scholar was also conducted. Systematic literature review was adopted in analysis on physical exercise and its influencing factors among Chinese civil servants.

  Results  The analysis finally included a total of 54 studies which surveyed civil servants working in various government departments at different administrative levels in 16 provinces and 2 municipalities directly under central government in China. For the civil servants surveyed, main motivations of physical exercise is for fitness and entertainment. The most frequently reported ways of exercise are walking and running; the physical exercise frequency reported by the majority of the civil servants was lower than that of national recommendation (3 times/week and above) and the exercise intensity was at low or moderate level. For the most of the civil servants with regular physical exercise, the reported average time for every exercise reached the national recommendation (≥ 30 minutes). Main objective factors hindering civil servants' physical exercise are lack of time, without convenient facilities, lack of guidance, lack of organization and lack of companions; while main subjective factors preventing the civil servants from physical exercise are lack of cognition on significance of exercise, inertia and economic condition.

  Conclusion  Among civil servants in China, the proportion of people meeting national physical fitness measurement standards is low in frequency of physical exercise and main hindering factors for physical exercise are lack of time, limited venues, lack of exercise guidance, lack of partners, poor cognition on physical exercise, inertia, and economic condition.