Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans.
They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it.
Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges.
Photo: AFP
Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before the Chinese Communist Party moved to rein in the fanatical hype surrounding them.
Quan has been the focus of intense interest since winning two Olympic diving titles at the Paris Games, adding to the gold she took home from the COVID-19 pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021. Such is the clamor surrounding her, with people mobbing her hometown in rural Guangdong Province, that she avoided going home. This week, as China’s Olympic team made a visit to Macau, Quan was photographed in tears after being overwhelmed by fans at her hotel.
Jian Xu, an expert on Chinese celebrity studies at Deakin University in Australia, said that China’s sports stars have increasingly appeared on television shows and in livestreams, turning them into celebrities.
Jian called it the commercialization and “entertainmentization” of China’s athletes.
However, there is a flip side. While some athletes have been feted as national heroes, others have suffered at the hands of trolls online.
Gymnast Su Weide, 24, was the target of online abuse after he fell twice during his horizontal bar routine at the Paris Olympics.
“He dragged the whole team down on his own,” read one comment on Chinese microblogging site, while others accused him of gaining his place on the team through “connections” rather than talent.
In the all-Chinese women’s table tennis final between Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha, Sun received vocal support in the arena and online, while Chen was booed and abused on social media.
“The whole country was hoping for Sun Yingsha to win the women’s singles gold, where’s your sense of justice?” one online comment aimed at Chen read.
Days later, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security announced the arrest of one abusive online fan.
Since then, at least five people have been detained or punished for targeting China’s athletes or coaches, part of the move to deal with abusive fans and fan groups.
Pan Zhanle, the 20-year-old swimmer who broke the 100m freestyle world record on his way to gold in Paris, disbanded his official fan circle on social media just weeks after his triumph.
Online clubs for fans of celebrities are notorious for their fierce loyalty to their idols, promoting and defending their stars, trying to advance their careers — and smearing their competitors. The groups were usually for pop singers and movie stars, but recently they have been formed around China’s increasingly marketable and commercialized sports stars.
Many young people turned their online attention to sports stars after authorities began strengthening oversight of celebrity fan groups in 2021, Jian said.
Authorities were worried about the influence of the fan clubs on youngsters and some of the behavior that went with them.
Fans thought the sports world was “a relatively safe area due to the importance of sports to the nation and the high status of sports stars as role models,” he said. “They can express their national pride and patriotism through supporting their sports idols who fight for China.”
However, now Chinese authorities appear to think that as a conduit for national pride, it has gone too far.
Last week, the Chinese General Administration of Sport (GAS) condemned “distorted fan culture” for “damaging the reputation of the sports industry.”
Chinese GAS Director Gao Zhidan also told athletes they can play their part as role models that have a “correct outlook on life [and] view fame rationally.”
A 41-year-old woman in Shanghai surnamed Tan, who did not provide her first name, approved of Pan disbanding his fan group.
Successful stars, whether sporting or in other fields, “should care more about their own progress and not care too much about what people around them or their fans think,” she said.
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