In a country long-focused on bringing home as many Olympic gold medals as possible, this year’s haul is not what China expected.
When China’s 416-athlete delegation set off for Rio, state sports officials were banking on 30 to 36 gold medals. As the games end, it had won just 24 for the nation’s worst showing since the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Lagging in third place, China’s total is a far cry from the country’s 51-gold performance in Beijing that topped the gold medal chart. However, the once-feverish obsession with the gold tally has slowly subsided among the Chinese public, which has shown more interest this year in lavishing adoration on athletes with personalities, such as bronze medal-winning swimmer Fu Yuanhui (傅園慧), rather than counting medals.
“Finally, the public desire for golds has returned to normal,” said Lu Yuanzhen (盧元鎮), a professor of sports at South China Normal University who has long argued that a mature nation should have a more relaxed attitude toward wins and losses in athletic competitions.
“The ordinary Chinese people have become more indifferent to the medal counts now they understand Olympic golds bear little impact on their real lives,” Lu said.
For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has rallied national unity and pride in the country’s athletic performances on the world stage, especially in the Olympics.
The entire country was moved to tears when Xu Haifeng (許海峰), a pistol shooter, won the first gold Olympic medal for China in Los Angeles in 1984. It was considered a sign that China finally was able to claim a place among world powers, a huge boost to national pride.
The fever only grew as Beijing sought better Olympic performances and the ultimate goal of hosting the games. The Olympics was a national obsession, and gold medalists were household names and rewarded generously.
However, following the climax in Beijing, public obsession with Olympic golds began to fade, and voices of criticism grew louder against the state-run sports system credited with the country’s stellar Olympic performances.
Critics say the brutal system has sacrificed vast numbers of rank-and-file athletes, encouraged dishonesty — such as doping, age alteration and game rigging — in the name of national honor, and distanced sports from the public.
When this year’s games began in Rio, state media lamented the lack of golds on the opening day, but Chinese sports fans stayed nonchalant. They were more interested in chasing athletes oozing with personality.
The most telling example is Fu Yuanhui, a female swimmer who overnight became a social media sweetheart for claiming she had used “primeval force” in a semifinal.
Shaped by the social media instead of the state parlance, Fu’s vernacular resonated with ordinary Chinese, who were already bored with empty talk.
Ning Zetao, (寧澤濤) another swimmer, came home empty-handed from Rio but still grabbed headlines because of his undiminished popularity back in China.
The swimmers got a welcome from thousands of fans at a Beijing airport. Fu was scared. Ning’s appearance caused congestion, and besieged by fans seeking photographs and autographs, she could barely move.
As recently as 2008, the public booed hurdler Liu Xiang (孫楊) when he could not get off the starting line in Beijing because of injuries.
“The public has gone to another extreme — tolerance of non-champions and even adoration of them,” wrote Li Ruyi, a veteran Chinese sports writer in a commentary on the news Web site ifeng.com.
Even if there is more acceptance that every year will not bring a haul of gold, there is still a sense of alarm, and many do not like that China sits behind the US and Great Britain in the race for golds.
There are also whispers that Japan, the upcoming host of the 2020 Summer Olympics, could pose a threat to China.
That prospect is likely to rekindle the country’s nationalistic sentiments, because of long-time animosity toward the neighboring country that invaded China and shamed the Middle Kingdom in the early 20th century.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS