Chinese athletes continue to take top honors in the Beijing Olympics, but the honors aren't merely the product of talent and training. The Chinese communist regime is a driving force behind the country’s gold medal wins, and evidence reveals that the regime has used its totalitarian rule to divert vast amounts of the nation’s wealth, shown utter disregard for their athletes’ health, and have relied heavily on steroid use in order to gain Olympic gold.
Many predicted that China might even outdo the U.S. to become the world leader in winning the most gold medals. The Former USOC Chief executive officer Jim Scherr commented that in face of China’s progress, the U.S. team had to physiologically prepare itself for possibly losing the top gold medal ranking at the Beijing Olympics.
Since 1984 when the country first attended the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, China has shown a strong drive toward winning medals, and they have also made dramatic progress in their efforts. In the 2004 Athens Olympics, China even overtook Russia to become the world’s second leading medal winner. China won 32 gold metals that year, only 4 shy of the U.S. Now in Beijing, China hopes their home turf advantage will give them the extra push they need to be the world’s number one gold medal winner.
China’s National Sports System
What’s the secret to China’s rise in Olympic gold? An athletic program known as the National Sports System is the key to this supposed triumph. “Without the National Sports System, we could not have made such glorious success,” stated the Vice Deputy Secretary of General Administration of Sport of China (GAS).
According to government reports, China’s Nation Sports System employs a vast amount of the country’s human and financial resources to train a small number of top athletes. The result is rapid athletic improvement in a short period with a focused goal of winning medals. While the system has proved effective, it leaves many casualties. Take for example, the significant portion of Chinese still live in poverty. While these people eke out a meager existence, an endless amount of the nation’s financial resources are poured into this sports system. No expense is spared in China’s lust for Olympic glory.
This system was established by the former Soviet Union, and later mimicked by other Communist dictatorships like East Germany and Romania. But after the political reform of Eastern Europe, only China continues to employ this method.
This National Sports System is solely interested in pursuing Olympic medals at any cost, and shows no regard for the true spirit of competition.
The Chinese government openly admits that the goal of this system to is simply to win Olympic medals. In other counties, Olympic committees are independent organizations; but China’s Olympic Committee and the GAS are actually one organization with two titles.
Many have demanded reform of China’s Olympics program, arguing that it kills the spirit of athletic competition. Below are a few examples of the drawbacks of such a system:
Vast Amounts of National Resources Invested in Athletics
While China’s General Administration of Sports is a program that is supposed to be used for the athletic enjoyment of the entire populace, each year billions of yuan are spent on training China’s athletic elite, leaving virtually nothing for sports activities and interests of everyone else.
According to the article “China's Sports School: Crazy for Gold” of the Time Magazine, prior to 2001, the budget for the National Administration of Sports was 428 million yuan (about US$54 million) a year. In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, this amount increased to 714 million yuan per year. According to the Director of Sports Research Institute of GASC, a gold medal won by China in international competitions costs US$ 7 million. The total cost of the Beijing Olympics is at least US$ 40 billion.
Critics point that, the fund given to the National Administration of Sports came from the tax payers, yet was used exclusively on Olympics athletes, resulting in a severe shortage of sports facilities nationwide. Feeling powerless and frustrated, many across China say that this is a waste of tax payer money.
Hundreds of Thousands of Athletes Victimized
China’s National Sports System selects athletically talented youths from across the country. These individuals receive exclusive training so that they may produce as many medals as possible. While the system produces a high rate of success, the byproduct is an appalling number of wasted lives.
To select a potential gold medalist in China, authorities sift through thousands of contenders. Through strict examinations, candidates are first selected among many talented youths from middle schools or elementary schools who are sent to physical training facilities for exclusive and intensive training. There are more than 3,000 youth physical training schools nationwide housing nearly 400,000 youths, with the youngest being only 7 or 8 years old. Then authorities pick the outstanding among these recruits for even more exclusive training. These selected young people are groomed national and international competitions.
The Time Magazine reporter visited three physical training schools in Shandong Province: the Qingdao Physical Training School, one of the key schools for providing athletes for the Olympics; Weifang Physical Training School; and the Luneng Table Tennis Training School. The article mentions a 14-year-old girl named Chen Yun from the countryside, who was considered potentially talented and selected to practice weight-lifting after measuring her shoulders, legs and waist. Another boy was selected for archery for his ability to focus, wide shoulders and excellent vision. Both teenagers initially knew nothing about the sports they had been assigned to, but only fit the qualifications of the trainers. For example, individuals with quick reflexes and outstanding hand-eye coordination are selected for table tennis. According to the article, the slogans and posters in these schools all strongly encouraged students to "Win for the Motherland."
All three facilities were boarding schools. The students from the Luneng Table Tennis Training School were allowed no more than two weeks with their parents a year. The students were given at least five to six hours of training a day, with instruction sometimes extending well into the evening. Although school authorities insist that the school was mainly focused on academics, surprisingly, the reporter could not find a single textbook on the campus. One boy practicing to become a track star, told the reporter that, besides running, his life consists of nothing but sleep.
Sadly, most of these young athletes won’t ever see a competition until the day they win for their country. Even individuals who have won medals in the past may end up with a miserable future. According to China Sports Newspaper, 80 percent of the nation’s athletes lack education and have no way of supporting themselves once their training days are over. Due to the excessive training in their youth, some athletes develop life-long illnesses may even become disabled, such as former weightlifting champion, Zou Chunlan.
The Tragedy of Zou Chunlan
Former national weightlifting champion Zou Chunlan from Jilin Province has won seven gold medals and even broke a world record. However, she had only received three years of elementary education. After her retirement from the sport in 1993, Zou worked at a bathhouse but she can barely support herself. Even worse, Zou suffers from injuries all over her body and her muscles lack elasticity, so she can no longer lift weights. Right after she joined the Jilin Sport Team at 16, she was told to use male hormones to increase her performance. She was given this pill nearly everyday for 6 years. Her body developed male characteristics and she could not conceive children. Zou says that many retired athletes have similar experiences. China is said to have 3,000 athletes retire every year.
Another drawback of China’s national sports system is the enormous interest group it engenders, combining the interests of star athletes, coaches and the sports administrative officials. The gold medals bring athletes and their coaches great fame and wealth and relevant officials receive significant promotions. The system that pushes everyone to crave medals at any cost is the source of wide-spread corruption. Cheating and scandals had become so widespread in 2005 during the 10th National Games, that it prompted China’s athletic community to purge its biggest offenders. Many believe that the system itself that creates these problems, forever killing the spirit of competition.
Meanwhile, the drug scandals within China’s athletic community have never been revealed by the Chinese media. Evidence suggests that the fast rise of China’s sports team in the 1980s and1990s may have something to do with performance enhancing drugs, especially when it comes to female athletes.
Drug Use Among Female Athletes
When the Chinese woman’s swim team took top honors among other international athletes in the 1990s, it shocked the world. In the1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, the Chinese delegation won four golden medals, five silver and one bronze. In the Rome World Swim Championship in 1994, seven Chinese swimmers won 12 of the16 medals and some of them set new world records. Many were suspicious of China’s instant success. In the 1994 Asian Games in Hiroshima, eleven Chinese athletes were found using drugs, including the world swim champions, Li Bin and Yang Aihua, who were stripped of their medals.
But this was not to be the last of China’s failed drug tests. Wu Yanyan, who set the world record for the 2,000-meter Individual Medley , failed a drug test and was not allowed to attend the Sydney Olympic Games. After 1994, Chinese woman’s swim team only won a single gold and silver in the Atlanta Olympics of s 1996. In Sydney, the team did not win any medals. Luo Xuejun, China’s only gold medal winner in the Athens Olympics, admitted that “the swimming pool of the Chinese team is not clean.”
The famous Ma Family Army Track and Field Team (led by coach Ma Junren of the Liao Ning Track and Field Team) was able to quickly turn out a batch of world class mid range and long distance female runners, winning multiple gold medals. The most famous from this group was Wang Junxia, who won the Women’s 5000 km gold medal in the Atlanta Olympics. It was reported that as part of the training regimen, Ma Junren made athletes take energy supplements.
Despite this success, in 2,000 multiple players from this team were not selected into the China Olympic delegation. Reports suggest that it was due to doping, but this was never clarified by the Chinese government. Worth many millions of dollars, Ma Junren is still the Deputy Director of the Liao Ning Sports Committee and had been responsible for mid-range and long distance running training until 2004. However, it is commonly believed now that the success of Ma’s team was because of doping.
Player doping in the Western world is normally the strategy of an individual, but in China it is a systematic institutional practice. According to Zou ChunLan, coaches in the Jilin Sports Weight Lifting team had females take a drug which produced side-effects such as excess of body and facial hair, and lowered their voice. The coaches had to admit to giving these athletes male hormones after these side effects appeared, but insisted that it was not harmful to their bodies. Despite talk of the drug’s safety, many female athletes were concerned of the long term effects, but felt helpless to break this part of the training. A few secretly threw away their drugs. According to Zou, fellow athletes stopped taking the drug a half-month before the competition and switched to another injection that masked the hormone in tests so they could pass the drug inspection.
After Zhou’s doping scandal was exposed, officials from the Jilin Sports Committee threatened her. They said that if she told the truth, all her gold medals would be deemed false.
Where did China find inspiration for the doping of its athletes? When communism fell, many East German coaches were suddenly without work, but they were soon hired in China.
The rapid development exhibited by the Chinese women’s swim team began soon after the import of East German sports physicians in 1985. The next year the Chinese team defeated Asia champion Japan in international competitions.
East Germany became the model for China. Before its collapse, East Germany was a one of the highest achieving country’s in athletic endeavors. For over 20 years it had been ranked at 3rd place for Olympic Gold medals, only after U.S. and the Soviet Union. The strength behind East Germany’s winning record was in its women’s swimming and track and field. After the collapse of Berlin Wall, the East German miracle was exposed—much of the nation’s gold medal wins were due to doping. The East German government systematically administered various drugs to more than 10,000 athletes, while they researched effective ways to pass drug inspections. The prohibited drugs helped the East Germans to shine in the Olympic Games, but they also led to handicapped and disabled players, masculine female athletes who were infertile, and in some cases even death.
After the merge of East and West Germany, the athletes who had been victimized by these doping programs sued the East Germany Minister of Sports and the Medical Advisor Horpe, seeking compensation for what had been done to their bodies because of the drugs. But instead of facing penalties, these coaches and doctors simply exported their strategy. In the past 10 years, there are 27 Chinese female athletes who have failed drug inspections—a percentage that far outweighs all other countries combined.
Voices Opposing China’s National Sports System
To date, China’s GAS is still employing those notorious East German coaches. On February 2006, Helga Pfeifter, former East German flume swimming coach—and an expert of East Germany’s Sports Doping System—appeared at the Shanghai Oriental Greenboat Training Base unveiling ceremony. The former director of East Germany’s “415 Research Team,” Pfeiffer was known to some as the “Queen of sports doping.” In classified East German records, Pfeiffer was found to be a key member of the country’s Central Doping Administration Plan. After the merging of Germany, Pfeiffer was charged with doping young swimmers. Now in China, Pfeiffer has managed to escape these charges, while continuing to carry out the same tactics.
After the 2005 China National Games, many across the country had begun to criticize the nation’s current sports policy. These voices seek a reform of China’s athletic program, abandoning the “medal driven” National Sports System and instead adopting athletic policies that benefit people’s health. However, when China won the bid to host the 2008 Olympics, officials developed an even greater zeal toward their goal of besting the U.S. in most gold medals. The strength behind the “National Sports System” was intensified, as even greater amounts of national resources have been allocated toward winning Olympic gold.
U.S.’s Time magazine said that China’s gold medal strategy is to put resources into a large number of easy win projects, such as weightlifting and fencing which offers 10 gold medals, and rowing, which offers 16. Although these sports have virtually nothing to do with the interests of the Chinese, a large amount of resources have been poured into assuring success in competition. Compared with Western countries, China puts more resources into female sports as female athletes win more medals than male athletes. At the Athens Olympics for example, among the total gold medals won by female athletes internationally, China took sixty percent.
After the 2002 Asia Games, China proposed the “119 Project,” aimed at winning 119 (now 120) gold medals in athletics, swimming and water sports. The hope is that through the 119 Project, China will be seen as a international leader in sports, rather than merely a speculator vying for gold medals in unimportant competitions.
Whether this goal can be accomplished is yet to be seen, however, the strategy of China’s National Sports System has been clearly based on the former East German model.
Principally aimed at winning medals, the strategy behind China’s National Sports System is inherited from Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union and east Europe. It sees sports as a propaganda tool used to unite the will of people, display the regime’s power and intensify their ideology and control. In the days of Chairman Mao, this ideology was communism, but in today’s China, it is nationalism. Despite ever growing criticism of the program throughout the country, Cui Dalin, vice director of GAS said, “Personally, I hope the National Sports System can continued to be used beyond the 2008 Olympics.”
