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Touchline • Issue 14 • 21
There are many reasons why team sports are not compatable
with Chinese sporting supremacy.
One theory, darkly hinted at, is that China is merely playing the
numbers games. China has the numbers and the willingness
to pump thousands of young people through camps for any
number of sports. As the IOC constantly widens its definition of
what constitutes a sport, so China has the opportunity through
its considerable weight into training athletes for what could be
considered niche sports. China won London’s first gold in the
10 metre air rifle.
Compare this with winning gold in the
hockey or basketball competition, with
their multiple rounds and weeks of game
play.
So, China asserts its dominance at the
Olympics by focusing on sports that are
comparatively easy to win. But surely,
to be a player on the world stage, you
need to be playing, and winning, the big
sports.
In some ways, China’s lack of success
here can be seen as a cultural inheritance. They are late
comers to sports like football, tennis and basketball. In the
intensely inwards looking years of the last emperors, these
sports were virtually non-existent in China, and the fact that
they were organised and endorsed almost exclusively by
foreigners probably did more to harm their development on a
governmental level than to help.
Only after The Opium Wars of the late 19th century do we
see these sports making inroads. Sports, until this point, were
mainly cultural celebrations, as outlined in our article on
Chinese sports from the past.
In some ways, China’s
lack of success here
can be seen as a
cultural inheritance.
Today, the NBA is the most widely supported and
followed team sport. This is slowly leading to greater
numbers of participants in basketball. Basketball courts
require small courts, and are therefore more accessible
in China’s increasingly crowded cities. The success of
Yao Ming has lit something of a torch in China for
basketball.
In fact, in 2008, the Bleacher Report claimed that he
was the most influential basketballer on earth, by virtue
of the fact that he had inspired many of the reported
300 million Chinese players to take up the sport. An
avalanche of Chinese basketballers was anticipated. It
has not materialised.
The Chinese Men’s team lost all five of their matches
at London.
Football is a special case. The failure at their home games
in 2008 is only one of a laundry list of humiliations for the
Chinese national team. Ironically, football is hugely popular in
China. Mao Zedong set the tone by playing in goal in his youth,
and official interest has continued unabated.
Widespread, endemic corruption has lead to undermine
everything about the sport. It would appear that the sport is
rotten from top to bottom, and the fact that everyone in Chinese
knows this has had a detrimental effect
on families looking to get their kids into
sports. It is reported that participation
has dropped from around 600,000 in
the 1990s to around 100,000 today.
While there have been several scandals
that helped to clean the image of the
sport to some extent, the new fashion of
property magnates buying clubs further
diminishes the sport in the eyes of
the people. These investors are deeply
unpopular and have begun bringing in
foreign stars such as Didier Drogba and Nicholas Anelka from
Chelsea. Squabbles over their ridiculously inflated wages
have lead to trouble with the stars and further derision by the
Chinese fans.
There may be many reasons for China’s failure in team sports.
Whilst there is no shortage of individual Chinese world
champions, their continuing failure to make an impact in a
World Cup or other major team tournament renders them
a nation of sporting individuals rather than a team sports
powerhouse. There is no sign that this is likely to change any
time soon.
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