At the 8th National Games of the People's Republic of China, the athletics events were held in Shanghai in October 1997.

[3] Her teammate Liu Xiaomei, who had won the event four years before,[4] took the silver medal in a personal best time of 10.89 seconds.

Guangxi twice Olympian veteran Tian Yumei finished third with a time of 11.06 seconds; equaling her personal best she had set in the semi-finals.

Chen Yuxiang from Shandong set a new Asian junior record of 22.83 seconds in the heats and advanced to the semi-finals.

Zhang Hengyun, from Jiangsu, who had finished second in the event four years before; crossed the line in fourth place, recording despite all a new personal best.

[13] Jiang Limei and Peng Yinghua, both from Guangxi had respectively won the gold and the silver medals but were later disqualified after failing a doping test.

Held on October 17–18, after a three years break, Zhejiang Chinese record holder Ma Miaolan won her second consecutive National Games title, winning the event with a total of 6236 points.

Her 16-year-old teammate Shen Shengfei set a new World youth record to finish second, beating Sichuan's Liu Xin by only one point.