China has made a spectacular ascent in Olympic history, having won its first medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games not long after it was allowed to rejoin the IOC in 1979.
China has dominated the Olympic Games in the new millennium finishing in the top three every time since the 2000 Sydney Games. It has superstars like the swimmer Zhang Yufei (see picture), who won gold in the 200-metre butterfly in the Tokyo Olympics and bronze in the 100-metre and 200-metre butterfly at the Paris Olympics besides helping China finish third in the 4×100-metre freestyle and 4×100-metre medley in Paris.
No other Global South country can match China’s Olympic achievements since the Soviet Union’s heyday of domination.
The Soviet Union dominated nine games since their Olympic debut in 1952, winning six and placing second in the others. Even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, twelve former republics competed as the Unified Team in 1992, winning in Barcelona.
China’s sporting achievements are no accident, as their national system (不国体制 [jŐguó tŐzhì]) was originally based on Soviet tactics.
The athletic schools
The General Administration of Sports oversees 2,196 schools in 2022, all of which are committed to developing the next wave of athletes.
These provincial and municipal establishments offer specialist sports instruction in addition to general education. They provide about 4,000 exceptional players annually to elite sports teams, and they have a significant impact on how sports excellence will develop in the future.
The director of Tsinghua University’s Sports Industry Development Center, Wang Xueli, stated; “As the children grow up, they start participating in competitions of different ages, and if they manage to be among the best, they move on to the next level of competition”
The priorities of Chinese sports policy
The three main objectives of the nation’s sports programmes are increasing sports’ economic impact, integrating sports training into the larger educational system, and strengthening sports’ role in social development.
Wang Xueli draws attention to the State Council’s July 2021 Nationwide Physical Fitness Plan, which outlines some inclusive sports regulations. About 38.5% of the population is expected to regularly exercise as part of this plan, which is a 1.3 percentage point increase over the previous five-year plan. This is a significant milestone.