GOLD MEDAL HAUL SPARKS MEDIA DEBATE ABOUT STATE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 003546

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/11/2033
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM PROP KOLY CH
SUBJECT: GOLD MEDAL HAUL SPARKS MEDIA DEBATE ABOUT STATE
SPORTS SYSTEM

REF: OSC CPP20080823968052

Classified By: Political Minister Counselor Aubrey Carlson
for reasons 1.4 (B/D).

Summary
--------------


1. (C) The lukewarm reaction of many Chinese to the
home team's take of 51 gold medals at the Beijing
Summer Olympics, according to several contacts, stems
from ambivalence over the non-mainstream sports in
which the Chinese Olympians excelled and
dissatisfaction with China's continuing poor
performance in higher-profile sports such as
basketball, soccer, track and field and swimming. As
the Olympics were drawing to a close, China's media
started a lively debate over the costs of China's
state-dominated training system, with several
publications noting that the obsession with medals has
hampered the development of mass participation in
athletics. One magazine argued that the network of
sports academies, where the overwhelming number of
students will never make the cut for the Olympics, is
producing scores of under-educated ex-athletes with
few job skills. On September 6, the People's Daily
ran an interview with State Sports Administration
Director Liu Peng, who said China will "uphold and
perfect" the state sports system. One journalist told
us this signaled that the Government is trying to shut
down the debate over China's medal machine. Several
contacts cited the Chinese public's positive reception
of U.S. women's volleyball coach Lang Ping, who once
played for China, as demonstrating that a more
"mature," less nationalistic view of sports is taking
hold among Chinese fans. End summary.

Going for Gold (in obscure sports at great expense)
-------------- --------------


2. (C) For many Chinese, the pride of pulling off a
successful Olympics with no major security incidents
exceeds satisfaction over winning the gold medal
count, according to numerous contacts. China won 51
gold medals (versus 32 in Athens and 28 in Sydney),
the most won by any country at the Beijing Games.
Pro-democracy scholar Liu Junning (protect) of the
Cathay Institute for Public Affairs said average
Chinese have not greeted the gold medal count with
great enthusiasm. As evidence, Liu noted that the
Chinese Government arranged for China's gold medalists
to visit Hong Kong ahead of the September 7
legislative elections there, yet no such tour has been
organized in the Chinese mainland. Liu and other
contacts we spoke with said this muted reaction
reflects public ambivalence toward the mostly non-
mainstream sports where Chinese Olympians excelled.
"We won all these golds in shooting," Liu told PolOff,
"but nobody in China owns a gun. However, everyone
owns a bicycle yet we can't win a medal in cycling."
(Note: Out of 54 medals available in cycling events,
China took one bronze in women's track cycling.) Wu
Yin (protect),Vice President of the public opinion
polling firm Horizon, argued that, in addition to
feeling little connection to sports such as archery,
Chinese are quickly adopting a view, already prevalent
in the developed world, that Olympic medals are more a
reflection of individual athletic achievement than a
symbol of national pride. The importance average
Chinese place on Olympic medals, Wu asserted, is much
lower than it was in the 1980s and 90s, and the
propaganda value to the Party of Olympic success is
thus falling.


3. (C) In the days following the Olympics Closing
Ceremony August 24, a wide-variety of contacts
expressed satisfaction with China's medal winnings but
simultaneously downplayed the achievement. When
PolOff asked Wang Dequan (protect),a historian at the
Beijing Press and Publication Bureau, for his reaction
to China's 51 gold medals, Wang shrugged, saying it
was only natural for China to do well during the Games
since it had the home field advantage. Xinjiang
University engineering student Guan Renfeng (protect)
was likewise unimpressed by the medal count,
commenting to PolOff that while China won the most
gold medals, it failed to achieve much success in
"major" sports like track and field and basketball.
Cheng Mingxia (protect),an editor at the Economic
Observer, said she found distasteful the official

BEIJING 00003546 002 OF 003


media's excessive focus on the medal count during the
Games.

Rethinking the State Sports Machine
--------------


4. (U) Just as China's state sports system was
achieving its greatest success, China's media launched
a pointed debate over the costs and benefits of
government-dominated athletics. Much of the media
criticism has focused on the elitist nature of sport
in China and the lack of grass-roots programs for
ordinary people. In an August 23 commentary, the
China Daily, China's official English-language
newspaper, said "the rich harvest (of medals) should
not blind us to the gap between our Olympics
prominence and less impressive mass involvement in
sporting activities." An August 25 editorial in the
Economic Observer praised the U.S. system, in which
"government funds for sports are mainly spent on
schools and communities," and urged the Chinese
Government to "change its policy of monopolizing
competitive sports." The cover story of the August 27
edition of Nanfeng Chuang ("Southern Window," a
publication of the Guangzhou Daily Group) magazine
predicted that the 2008 Olympics will mark the
beginning of the end of China's state-dominated sports
system. The article comments that between 1979 and
2003 China spent RMB 190 billion (USD 28 billion) on
sports facilities (not including venues for the 2008
Olympics) that mostly sit empty. At least 90 percent
of the athletes who enter the state sports system are
eventually cut, the article added, resulting in
legions of under-educated ex-athletes being left
without adequate job skills. "The state sports
system, built upon the waste of money and talent, is
already like an arrow at the end of its flight," the
magazine pronounced, "and its continued development is
already unsustainable." (Note: By some estimates,
400,000 youth are training at state athletics
academies.)


5. (C) Journalism contacts said that propaganda
authorities have tolerated this debate because leaders
generally do not view sports as a particularly
sensitive topic. Chen Hao (protect),the Editor-in-
Chief of the International Herald Leader, a Xinhua
News Agency international affairs newspaper, said the
debate is largely driven by concerns among journalists
and intellectuals about the huge expense of China's
vast network of sports schools and training
facilities. Wang Wen (protect),an editor at the
People's Daily-owned Global Times (Huanqiu Shibao),
said many Chinese resent the special privileges
granted to top athletes, especially reserved slots at
top universities. (Note: In 2005, 2004 Olympic gold
medalist hurdler Liu Xiang was accepted as a doctoral
candidate in sports management by East China Normal
University. According to the China Daily, the
university arranged for instructors to give Liu one-
on-one tutoring at his training center. Some Internet
posters at the time criticized the fact that Liu,
unlike ordinary students, could enter graduate school
without sitting for any exams.) Wang said his own
brother was sent to a county-level state sports
academy as a potential shot-putter when he was 10
years old. Wang said his parents soon pulled his
brother out of the program because it was "too
brutal."

Liu Peng: State System Will Continue
--------------


6. (C) The People's Daily September 6 ran an interview
with State Sports Administration Director Liu Peng,
who said China would "uphold and perfect" (jianchi he
wanshan) the state sports system. Liu said government
leadership of sports is the best way for "a developing
country like China" to concentrate the resources
necessary to be internationally competitive. Liu
refuted arguments made in China's media that every
gold medal cost Chinese taxpayers hundreds of millions
of RMB. The State Sports Administration's RMB 880
million (USD 130 million) annual budget for 2004 (Liu
did not offer figures for more recent years) was not
only spent on competitive sports, but also represented
funding for mass sport programs plus salaries and
benefits for 5,000 employees at work in the athletics
system. Lu Yuegang (protect),a journalist at the
China Youth Daily, told PolOff September 8 that Liu's

BEIJING 00003546 003 OF 003


interview was a signal to China's media that the
debate over the government's role in sports is now
over. Wang Dequan of the Beijing Press and Publishing
Bureau predicted that China will eventually reform its
Olympics machine and allow more private-sector
participation in sports development, but such changes
will be done gradually. Wang said the experience of
men's soccer, where the development of a commercial
professional league in China failed to improve the
performance of the national squad in international
competition, has made many average sports fans
skeptical that more private sector involvement will
necessarily translate into success in Olympic
competition.

In Praise of Lang Ping
--------------


7. (C) When asked to comment on the political and
social significance of the Games themselves, multiple
interlocutors pointed to the positive reception given
to U.S. women's volleyball coach Lang Ping. A search
of Internet chatrooms revealed that some posters
considered Lang a "traitor" (and there is evidence
that net portals censored some of the more vitriolic
comments),while just as many netizens defended Lang,
with some pointing out that China also relies on
foreign coaches. Tsinghua University international
relations scholar Sun Zhe (protect) told PolOff August
29 that most Chinese fans felt pride that the U.S.
women won silver under Lang Ping, a former player and
coach for China. (Note: Lang Ping coached the United
States to a narrow victory over China in the
preliminaries.) Sun said this favorable view of Lang
Ping would have been "unimaginable" even a few years
earlier when Chinese who went to play or coach for
foreign teams were universally denounced as traitors.
Sun said this reflected a new confidence and maturity
in Chinese society, one that bodes well for China's
continued integration into the international
community.
RANDT