China vying for a sporting chance
Do the math: there are 1.4 billion people in China, give or take. And the planet is currently home to around 7.6 billion, also give or take.
That means 18.4 percent of the world is Chinese, or nearly one in five. Therefore, if the Japan’s Yomiura Giants baseball team, the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League, Tottenham Hoptspur of the Premier League as well as the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association all had rosters of 20 athletes each, then there should naturally be four Chinese Giants, four Chinese Rangers, four Chinese Spurs, and four Chinese Raptors.
And all things being equal, Norway — with a population of 5.3 million — had no business winning more than a medal or two at the recent Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics.
Except the Scandinavian country took home 39 medals — and led in all three medal “metal” categories. So much for parity. Last month, Norway became the most successful national team in the history of the Winter Games.
Obviously, a country’s performance in professional (NBA, Premier League, MLB, etc) sports, or in “amateur” sports such as the Olympic Games every two years — hot or cold — cannot be predicted by its population.
But it can be roughly anticipated by the amount of time, effort and funds that governments put into training facilities and competitive leagues.
It’s probably a fair assumption that the average sports fan outside of China could name at least two Chinese superstar athletes off the top of their head who have been active over the past decade.
NBA legend Yao Ming, current net worth of $120 million, hung up the hightops in the summer of 2011.
Yao’s compatriot Li Na, a legend of another court, reached a career-high ranking of world No 2 in 2014.
Winner of the 2011 French Open and 2014 Australian Open, Li — worth $50 million — called it a day in late 2014.
Yao and Li are credited with helping inspire millions of young Chinese to take to dribbling and drop-shotting their way to athletic glory.
And despite their phenomenal global success both below and behind the nets, they actually have rather differing opinions on how to elevate more Chinese professional athletes to the global arena.
Yao has recently enjoyed pulpit status, given that the Shanghai native has been a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference since 2013.
“We have to bring down the threshold of sports participation for the general public by making events and competitions much closer and easier to take part in,” Yao recently told China Daily in Beijing.
Li, however, while always expressing gratitude for the support that she has received at home, has a different remedy to the relative dearth of Chinese sports stars on the global stage.
She has often argued that the government would see the incubation of more domestic tennis talent if players had more freedom to choose their own coaching staff, participate in overseas tournaments of their choice, and keep more of their prize money.
There is no perfect winning strategy to anything in sports other than to say, “May the best man or woman win, and let the games begin.”
But without a viable university sports regime, China might not even be given the chance at the old college try.