Category: East Asia

China’s largest ever Olympic contingent of 411 athletes has brought expectations for a sizeable medal haul to Brazil. But with with local issues compounded by some wider – and more worrying – trends, it is no exaggeration to say that the Rio Olympics are facing potentially fatal headwinds.

The Rio Olympics are shaping up to be the most pivotal of recent times.

Not because the sporting action is any more anticipated than at previous Games – far from it – but because the Olympic concept has taken so many knocks in recent years that the very credibility of the Games is under threat.

In fairness, there has been criticism in the build-up to all Olympic Games in recent memory. This happens largely because the hordes of international media are on site days before the Games kick off and have to file daily stories with little or no sporting action to discuss. But, while some may disagree, the build-up to Rio does seem worse than normal.

Locally, health has been a big concern with the Zika virus seeing a number of high-profile withdrawals – mostly notably the top four male golfers in the world – even though the official line from the IOC and its health experts has been that there is nothing to worry about.

Thousands of Chinese soccer fans went home very disappointed last Monday evening, following the cancellation of the much-anticipated Manchester derby, after rain the previous week had left the pitch at the Bird’s Nest stadium in an unplayable state. Coupled with less than stellar pre-season tours in previous years, it’s hard to see many top Premier League teams jumping at the chance to return to China, especially when trips to the US and elsewhere are so much more enjoyable.

The expected resumption of hostilities between Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho, the new coaches of City and United respectively, had shone an unusually bright spotlight on this pre-season friendly, which, unfortunately, only served to highlight the inadequacies of the event’s preparation.

When the dust has settled on the Match That Never Was, it can only be hoped that the post-event internal report – assuming one is actually written – does not place the blame solely on a freak weather occurrence that could never have been foreseen. Yes, Beijing experienced some heavy rainfall in the run-up to the match, but the worst of it came nearly a week beforehand and the city’s drains – not known as among the world’s best – had long since cleared standing water from the streets.

In fact, Manchester City’s deputy head groundsman had been dispatched to Beijing ten days before the game, by which point it would have been abundantly clear that the pitch was in no fit state to host some of the best players on the planet. Moreover, despite the fact that officials waited until early afternoon to call off the game – perhaps waiting for the forecast rain (which never materialized) to use as an additional excuse – witnessed said the players has earlier taken one look at the pitch and immediately turned around, either because they knew that the game would never go ahead, or because they would never agree to play on such a poor surface.

Guardiola: It wasn’t the water, it wasn’t the rain. It was just the state of the pitch.

I spoke to Sky Sports reporter Johnny Phillips last week for a piece he did on the increasing amount of Chinese investment directed at English football clubs in recent weeks. Editors being as they are, only a few selected highlights appeared in the finished article, but we covered a lot of ground, so here is an uncut version (completed shortly before the Wolves deal – the latest of the Chinese takeovers – was announced), touching on why rumours spread so quickly, West Brom’s possible owner and his plans for world domination, Sven spouting nonsense and why Wolves fans are probably sleeping better than Villa ones at the moment.

Where has this rise in Chinese takeovers come from?

There are several underlying trends. Firstly, as China’s double-digit growth over the past 30 years has started to slow, the government has been actively looking for new areas to drive the economy and the sports sector is one that has been actively targeted. For example, Beijing wants to the domestic sports industry to be worth $750 billion by 2025, making it the largest in the world by some margin.

A typical scene at Guangzhou Evergrande, winners of the past five Chinese Super League titles

Within the wider sports industry, the government, led by Chinese President – and football fan – Xi Jinping, has announced a long-term vision to overhaul the football industry from top to bottom, with the aim of making China a true global soccer power by 2050. More generally, Chinese companies are being encouraged to become more global in their outlook and diversify their businesses to become more competitive both domestically and overseas.

The CSL’s summer transfer window saw yet another record fee paid, as more international players arrived in China, but the league’s top scorer, Demba Ba, is looking at months on the sidelines after a bad leg break.

It is a measure of how much the pulling power of the Chinese Super League (CSL) has exploded over the past year that the summer transfer window, which closed last week, contained a handful of blockbuster deals, but was still considered quieter than expected.

Topping the list was Brazilian international Hulk, whose $60 million transfer from Zenit St Petersburg to Shanghai SIPG broke the Chinese transfer record for the fifth time this year – although the other four times occurred at the start of the year when the current football frenzy truly began in earnest.

Hulk appreciating the flowers (and his pay packet)

But if Hulk’s move from Russia to China – or from one second-tier league to another – can be dismissed as a player who is more interested in maximizing his bank account than testing himself against the best in the world, Graziano Pelle’s move from Southampton to Shandong Luneng certainly raised some eyebrows.

China’s long-term soccer plan calls for the country to be a global force in the game by 2050, but if China’s latest football project comes off, it would arguably become a major footballing power long before that.  

The plan has been laid out by the Chinese government, backed, of course, by President Xi Jinping, but the latest moves have come from one of the country’s biggest companies – Wanda, whose boss just happens to be China’s richest man.

Details came out earlier this month regarding a new European football league, proposed by Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin, someone who has already backed his country’s soccer drive to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, doubling down on his Infront purchase (which went somewhat awry when the Philippe Blatter to Sepp Blatter connection failed to materialize) by sponsoring FIFA and exploring club investments.

There will always be a certain amount of skepticism greeting any radical new proposal, but the Financial Times quoted a senior official from one of Europe’s big five leagues – namely those in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France – as saying that the idea was both “very well planned” and “realistic”.

China Sports Insider’s Mark Dreyer (left) discusses China’s football industry – including Wanda’s proposed new European tournament – with senior executives from CCTV-5, LeSports, the Asian Broadcasting Union, Alisports and Shankai Sports at the World Football Forum in Paris.

In a few hours’ time, IOC President Thomas Bach will announce either China’s capital, Beijing, or Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Here are some reasons why China should be confident of success – and some reasons to worry:

Why Beijing will win

PEOPLE. There are not quite 1.3 billion reasons why Beijing will win, but Chinese President Xi Jinping has claimed that 300 million people will take up winter sports should Beijing win the Games. Misleading Chinese stats is a particularly bugbear of these pages, and that number seems extraordinarily high at first glance – plucked, as it is, from thin air – but even applying the Weibo rule and dividing by ten, 30 million participants have the potential to revolutionize the winter sports industry.

EXPERIENCE. Beijing is in the unique position of having held an Olympic Games in the very recent past, so a number of people who were directly involved in the success of 2008 will be directly involved in making sure 2022 is an equal success. The 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing didn’t hurt either. In short, the IOC voters know that China has what it takes to put on a great show.

TELEVISION. Don’t underestimate the power of television networks – led, of course, by NBC’s billions – to influence decisions of this nature. If you think that NBC executives would want Almaty to win out over Beijing, you are either certifiably insane or Kazakh. Visually, Almaty’s stunning panorama would trump China’s brown mountains, but the depth and range of feature stories produced for an American audience would be far, far greater in China.

The World Athletics Championships kick off in Beijing today, with the world’s media focusing more on the doping allegations that have engulfed the sport than on the sporting action. This is completely understandable, given the revelations that have come out in recent weeks – for example, that one third of the athletes who competed at the 2011 World Champs in South Korea had suspicious tests during the previous 12 months.

However, Chinese media – led by national broadcaster CCTV – have been putting more of a positive spin on things, as is their government-directed wont. Wall-to-wall coverage of former meets (including the 2008 Beijing Olympics) has been shown on sports channel CCTV-5 in recent days, educating and encouraging the public in equal measures, in the hope that they embrace these championships.

2004 Olympic champion Liu Xiang

The problem is: Liu Xiang, China’s 110m hurdles 2004 Olympic champion and the sport’s only real domestic star, recently retired.

Here is a list of all the Chinese contenders hoping to step into Liu’s size 11s: