Table tennis players Chuang Chih-yuan (莊智淵) and Chen Chien-an (陳建安) became the latest embodiments of “Taiwan glory” with their historic win last week over Chinese rivals in the men’s doubles category at the World Table Tennis Championships. While sharing the excitement of the victory, they called for more government support for sports.
The plea sounded all too familiar, as we hear it over and over again whenever Taiwanese athletes win medals and shine on the international stage. For example, when Taiwanese tennis player Lu Yen-hsun (盧彥勳) defeated then-world No. 7 Andy Roddick at Wimbledon in 2010 and surged to international stardom, his brother told reporters that Lu had to seek sponsorship on his own, and he urged the government to do more to cultivate the nation’s athletes.
Thirty-two-year-old Chuang, who lost a chance at the bronze medal in last year’s London Olympics, has been lucky to have Taiwan Cooperative Bank as his long-term sponsor. However, he is still worried about money, and seeking more sponsorships.
Chuang wants to finance a table tennis center he and his family built in 2008, to serve as both a personal training center for Chuang and a venue to cultivate young players.
The Chuang family has already invested more than NT$100 million (US$3.35 million) in the three-story center in Greater Kaohsiung, and is still paying off a NT$20 million loan.
When Hon Hai Precision Industry Co said last week that it would like to sponsor Chuang, Chuang and his mother, Lee Kuei-mei (李貴美), a former professional table tennis player, said they would use the financial support to train younger players at the center, preparing them to participate in local and international table tennis competitions.
While Hon Hai has yet to reveal its sponsorship plan, a Taiwanese businessman surnamed Wang (王) last week gave Chuang and Chen a NT$3 million check after learning that the Sports Affairs Council awarded them only NT$900,000 each in prize money.
The council said the amount was reduced from NT$3 million after the table tennis doubles-category was removed from the Olympic Games in 2008, and it had no plans to revert back to the higher sum.
Chuang’s example is a painful reminder of the government’s failure to build a sound sports environment. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has described himself as an avid sports lover and touted his efforts at promoting sports, should be ashamed of his administration’s neglect of sports development, leaving the nation’s talented athletes to struggle on their own.
Chuang, Lu and many other talented Taiwanese only became top-tier athletes thanks to years of largely self-financed training under the guidance of foreign coaches or their own families. The government played little role in creating their success, and should stop trying to gain credit for their fame.
Cultivating athletes and creating more “Taiwan glory” is a responsibility of the government. The council should improve the nation’s sports environment, focus on finding talented athletes when they are young and invest more in training.
Rewards for medal winners should be used as an incentive to encourage athletes to pursue excellence and compete for the nation’s glory.
Improving sports facilities and promoting our sports culture from the grassroots level are also crucial in building a better environment to nourish athletes.
More importantly, the education system should celebrate the athletic achievements of students in the same way it values their academic performance. More parents would then encourage their children’s athletic pursuits, and hopefully, the nation will be able to celebrate even more “Taiwan glory” in the future.
Two sets of economic data released last week by the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) have drawn mixed reactions from the public: One on the nation’s economic performance in the first quarter of the year and the other on Taiwan’s household wealth distribution in 2021. GDP growth for the first quarter was faster than expected, at 6.51 percent year-on-year, an acceleration from the previous quarter’s 4.93 percent and higher than the agency’s February estimate of 5.92 percent. It was also the highest growth since the second quarter of 2021, when the economy expanded 8.07 percent, DGBAS data showed. The growth
In the intricate ballet of geopolitics, names signify more than mere identification: They embody history, culture and sovereignty. The recent decision by China to refer to Arunachal Pradesh as “Tsang Nan” or South Tibet, and to rename Tibet as “Xizang,” is a strategic move that extends beyond cartography into the realm of diplomatic signaling. This op-ed explores the implications of these actions and India’s potential response. Names are potent symbols in international relations, encapsulating the essence of a nation’s stance on territorial disputes. China’s choice to rename regions within Indian territory is not merely a linguistic exercise, but a symbolic assertion
More than seven months into the armed conflict in Gaza, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to take “immediate and effective measures” to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the risk of genocide following a case brought by South Africa regarding Israel’s breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The international community, including Amnesty International, called for an immediate ceasefire by all parties to prevent further loss of civilian lives and to ensure access to life-saving aid. Several protests have been organized around the world, including at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and many other universities in the US.
In the 2022 book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, academics Hal Brands and Michael Beckley warned, against conventional wisdom, that it was not a rising China that the US and its allies had to fear, but a declining China. This is because “peaking powers” — nations at the peak of their relative power and staring over the precipice of decline — are particularly dangerous, as they might believe they only have a narrow window of opportunity to grab what they can before decline sets in, they said. The tailwinds that propelled China’s spectacular economic rise over the past