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This success makes China the third country after the former Soviet Union and the United States to surpass 100 medals in Olympic history. Since the end of the Cold War, no country has won so many medals as a host country.
There is no doubt that China’s success can be largely attributed to its advantage as the host country. Chinese athletes were competing in a familiar environment, with abundant time to train and rest. Passionate Chinese fans contributed much to motivate the athletes, who were competing for national glory and pride.
There might be other favorable conditions as well, but what benefitted China most in reaching the top of the gold medal list was its collective culture.
In his influential work “Culture’s Consequences,” American scholar Geert Hofstede probed deeply into the differences between individualist cultures and collectivist cultures. An individualist culture encourages individual preferences and dynamics in a society, setting the individual ego up against others, while a collectivist culture stresses the collective interest and downplays personal preferences and interests. In collective philosophy, the ego is inseparable from its social context.
Issues of collectivism versus individualism carry strong moral overtones. According to Chinese culture, the relationship between the individual and the collective in human society is not only a matter of living or competing together – it is intimately linked with social norms. Norms are tied to value systems shared by the majority.
Therefore collectivism has played an essential role in defining the Chinese national character. This cultural feature has exerted tremendous influence over the country’s political and economic systems, and the national sports system is no exception.
China has mostly considered sports as a strategy for promoting state interests. Athletes are recruited at an early age and trained to become professional, unlike the situation in Western and other countries, where athletes often have a separate profession to earn a living while they pursue their sport on their own motivation. Compared to Chinese athletes, they have little commitment to winning medals, and are under much less pressure to do so.
Chinese athletes seem to be naturally “designed” for winning medals in certain sporting events. Their desire for individual glory must be mechanically integrated with the desire of the state – otherwise even the most promising player will be regarded as unsuitable or unqualified to participate in major events. As a result, regardless of their previous achievements or merits, athletes who don’t align themselves with the national interest will not be given the opportunity to compete for championships.
Take for example former diver Tian Liang, who was carefully nurtured to become one of the country's most successful divers from the age of seven. During a 20-year career he won three world titles, 15 World Cups, two Olympic gold medals and one bronze.
However, Tian was kicked off the national team in 2005 for endorsing everything from electric bicycles to seafood snacks. His coaches, who demoted him to a provincial team despite his continued superiority, said that he had been “violating team regulations concerning commercial activities ... and producing a negative influence on the preparations for the 2008 Olympics.” The 28-year-old diver was considered unqualified to take part in the Beijing Olympic Games.
Tian’s counterpart, Guo Jingjing – who won gold medals in the three-meter women’s springboard and three-meter women's synchronized springboard at the Athens Olympics – had quite a different fate. She listened to her coaches’ request to stop her promotional activities. As a result she was allowed to participate in the Beijing Olympics, where she again won gold in the three-meter women’s springboard and in synchronized diving along with her teammate, Wu Mingxia. As a reward for her cooperative attitude, she has won fame and publicity as China’s diver queen.
In this regard, it is not too difficult to understand the pressure both the athletes and their coaches face; the pressure comes both from within their institutions and the national audience. If they win medals they will be praised as heroes; otherwise the athletes as well as their coaches will surely face accusation from their fans, particularly from the netizens who express their opinions freely online. The attention paid to world champion 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang is a case in point.
As a national hero, Liu Xiang was expected to win a gold medal in Beijing and the hopes of the nation and the people were upon him. His pullout of the competition due to injury was met with tremendous astonishment, throwing his fans and spectators around the nation into great dismay. If Liu Xiang had been considered merely an individual athlete, if the country had not spent so much on his training, his failure would not have caught everyone by surprise.
Such examples are not rare in China. This kind of expectation rests upon many career athletes, especially basketball, table-tennis and football players. Due to a series of failures Chinese football players suffered at the Beijing Olympics, the players and the president of the Chinese Football Association have come under severe attack. The president, a senior official from Shaaxi province, will very likely resign because of his impotence and lack of a winning strategy.
Under such a national sports system, the athletic institution is responsible for meeting national expectations, thereby becoming a professional mechanism for winning glory and pride. Those who fail will be attacked, sacked or disgraced, and their personal reputations will be greatly damaged.
Winning gold medals may bring pride and glory to a state and its people, but this achievement alone will not produce a healthy state or healthy citizens. Although China has surpassed the United States in gold medals, this does not mean the Chinese are physically stronger than the Americans. As some rational Chinese netizens commented in their online posts, being a strong country is not based on winning the most gold medals.
It is not easy to conclude which culture is superior, collectivism or individualism. The best result might be obtained by an integration of the two cultures. If China could add a bit more individualism to its traditional collective culture, its gold medals might prove weightier.
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(Dr. Zhang Quanyi is associate professor of political science at Zhejiang Wanli University. He has a doctorate degree in law from Shanghai International Studies University, and a master's degree from the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham in Britain. Dr. Zhang has published numerous articles on international relations and political psychology. His research interest revolves around generation of a world state. He can be contacted at qyzhangupi@gmail.com. ©Copyright Zhang Quanyi)
