China’s Olympic medal factory needs an overhaul
China is a sports superpower — especially when it comes to table tennis, badminton and gymnastics. The proof is in the gold medal count. At the past three Olympics, China finished no lower than third. It has won 115 Olympic golds since 2008, second only to the US’s 128.
Behind this accumulation is a government system to spot young athletes no matter where they might be in the country, have them compete against one another, then invite the best to Olympic training programmes.
But a recent controversy has revealed a twisted reality and rampant government interference.
On June 23, at the China Open table tennis tournament in Chengdu, three players did not turn up for their second-round games. The apparent boycott by Ma Long, Fan Zhendong and Xu Xin was believed to be a form of protest against the sudden removal of national team coach Liu Guoliang.
On June 20, the Chinese Table Tennis Association said Liu would step down as head coach and into the role of vice-president of the association. At a glance, it might have looked like a promotion.
As the news about the no-shows spread, Chinese fans posted mixed reactions online. A majority were supportive of the players, citing the lack of transparency regarding the coach’s sudden departure and the awkward timing — just before a prestigious international tournament.
But others disapproved of the players’ behaviour. “Who do you think has supported your careers as players?” one asked rhetorically. “You should play for the fame of the country,” another posted. “You embarrassed us at an international competition that was held in our country.”
Table tennis is a national pastime in China, but even considering this, the negative online comments roamed deep into bitter territory.
A look at China’s Olympic athlete factory helps to explain fans’ passionate reactions.
Young people who show great potential in one sport or another are allowed to enter public sports schools in their regions. Only the handful who stand out among the best at these training centres are then invited to join national team programmes and perhaps perform on a global stage.
There are believed to be some 2,000 sports schools for children across China.
One, Beijing Shichahai Sports School, has produced 38 athletes who have won numerous international competitions and seven Olympic gold medals since it opened in 1958, according to the school’s official website. Currently, 800 students ranging in age from 6 to 30 are in long-term training programmes at the academy. They live in school dormitories and devote most of their time to training. The school has a reputation for prowess in table tennis, badminton and taekwondo.
The entire elite sports system is under state control — from discovering young athletes to operating facilities to paying coaches’ salaries.
Beijing took the idea of allocating a significant amount of the national budget to train a small number of elite athletes from the old Soviet Union. The system has paid some tremendous dividends.
China led all participating countries in taking 51 gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. At the London Games four years later, it hauled in 38, the second-highest total. And at last summer’s Rio Olympics, it had the third-highest total, 26.
While the government’s athlete-training system has made China an Olympic superpower, the programme’s enormous budget has been criticised as a waste of tax revenue. China’s 32 gold medals, the second-highest total, at the 2004 Athens Games came at a training cost of 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion then). Some people pointed out that a single medal cost 625 million yuan.
For 2015, the Chinese government spent 35.6 billion yuan on athletics. Only onetenth, 3.6 billion, went toward promoting sports among the general public.
Many Chinese accept what amounts to a massive Olympic budget as long as the beneficiaries manage to win international glory. Others appear to feel Beijing should instead use the cash to give ordinary people more opportunities to participate in sports.
So the anger was already rising before the pingpong kerfuffle.
In fact, there was an earlier disturbance in Chinese table tennis. In April, at the Asian Championship, the unthinkable happened. Four of China’s “unbeatables” — Ma Long, the world’s No.1 men’s player at the time; Xu Xin, then No.3; Ding Ning, the reigning Olympic women’s champion; and Zhu Yuling, then the world No.2 women’s player — were booted out of the tournament by Japanese and South Korean opponents. And all the upsets took place on — gasp! — Chinese soil. The tournament was held in the prefecture-level city of Wuxi.
So Chinese anger toward their table tennis heroes was already on the rise by the time the boycott took place. Now the anger is giving way to doubt over the elite-athlete training programme.
To be accurate, though, that doubt had already been percolating, aroused by the globe’s most widely viewed sports spectacle, soccer’s World Cup finals, which China has never reached.
Although lavishing large amounts of money on gifted athletes does seem to help create Olympians in sports that are not globally popular, the process seems to break down when it comes to major sports such as football.
Perhaps the huge number of world-class athletes in football is too much for China’s focus-on-the-few training programme to keep up with. So maybe Beijing should listen to those doubts. Spend wads of money so the masses can partake in football. Widen the base of potential players. Otherwise, Beijing’s World Cup dream may never come true.
Some have also raised concerns about the selection process of China’s elite athletes. Critics say Beijing focuses too much on height. This even holds true in badminton and even table tennis (Japan’s Miu Hirano, the conqueror of two of China’s “unbeatables” by the way, stands only 158cm). It holds sway when choosing young athletes, before any growth spurts might occur. And it takes away from factors like nimbleness, talent — even passion, which is so important in sports.
What is more, the recent no-show incident hints that China’s elite-athlete training programme may suffer from excessive government interference when it comes to each sport’s personnel assignments and policymaking.
The truth about what really happened to the table tennis coach remains uncertain, though we know one thing for sure: Because of strong government control, players have no freedom to choose the coach who best suits the individual. This could hamper player development (and the removal of a head coach immediately before an important tournament could hamper a player’s match performance).
Globally, individual elite athletes choose their own coaches. Clinging to an outdated practice could pull China behind its rivals.
When your country has a population of 1.4 billion, it might be best to replace the old top-down communist trope with bottom-up filtration. This could also breed nationwide enthusiasm for sports.
And Beijing seems to have got the idea. According to a recent news report, the country’s athletic association will give any runner who finishes well in a domestic race the chance to compete on China’s Olympic marathon team.
The elites’ demise could spell boom times for a new kind of Chinese athlete factory.
Although lavishing large amounts of money on gifted athletes does seem to help create Olympians in sports that are not globally popular, the process seems to break down when it comes to major sports such as football