‘Zero-COVID’ policy ends China’s sports hosting plans

A few months after holding a Winter Olympics as memorable for its extreme ANTI-COVID -19 measures as the competition, China has all but given up hosting international sporting events while it battles fresh outbreaks around key cities.

On Sunday, China surrendered hosting rights for next year’s Asian Cup, the continent’s top soccer showpiece, a move that came little more than a week after it postponed the multi-sport Asian Games to 2023. Top-tier athletics, figure skating and an X Games event have been moved or cancelled in recent months, leaving China’s once busy international calendar looking threadbare.

Sports events still nominally on the calendar appear on ever more shaky ground as China sticks to its “ZERO-COVID” strategy while much of the rest of the world resumes normal life.

The Zhuhai Open tennis tournament has been cancelled the last two years, but remains scheduled for late September along with three other ATP events.

Peter Johnston, the executive tournament director, said a decision would have to be made soon if it is to go ahead.

China’s withdrawal from hosting events jars with its ambitions to turn sport into a five-trillion-yuan ($959-billion) industry by 2025, a 70 per cent increase over 2019 levels. Last August, Chinese authorities issued a national fitness program with objectives to build or renovate thousands of sports venues and training centres, and “strengthen international exchanges.”

China showed it could play host to big events safely during the pandemic at the “closed loop” Beijing Winter Games, which kept athletes and Games personnel sealed off from the public. Authorities have not indicated a willingness to do the same for lower-profile events.

Johnston said it was “potentially feasible” to hold his tournament in a closed loop, but the enforcement of mandatory quarantine for people who test positive for COVID -19 would be difficult for some players to accept.

“Really, that’s when you get pushback from the (tennis) tours saying that’s a bit too extreme to be asking players to potentially stay on outside the tournament time in a quarantine setting,” he said.

“It does make it hard to get it done in China at the moment.”