Regina Ip

Opinion | How to achieve Olympic success? China offers some answers

The making of victory on the Olympic stage involves a combination of factors, from population and geographic diversity to sufficient funding

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China’s Chen Meng (right) and Wang Manyu react after a winning set against Japan’s Miwa Harimtoto and Hina Hayata during the women’s gold medal team table tennis match at the Paris Olympics on August 10. Photo: AP

Regina Ip

Published: 9:30am, 18 Aug 2024

The Olympic Games mean different things to different people. Which country has done best in the games also depends on how you count the medals. Where gold medals are concerned, China’s performance in the Paris Olympics is doubtless its best since 2008. This year, it tied with the US in gold medals, recording the most golds medals it has ever won at a Summer Olympics away from home.

China maintained its dominant position in table tennis and diving, while also performing well in swimming and tennis, sports traditionally dominated by Western countries. Pan Zhanle’s record-breaking performance in the men’s 100m freestyle competition was met with disbelief from swimming coach Brett Hawke, who commented that the Chinese swimmer’s record-breaking win was not “humanly possible”. That’s despite the fact that Pan had taken doping tests 21 times between May and July.

China’s swimming team only started competing in the Olympic Games in 1988, and won its first gold medal in the women’s 100m freestyle competition in 1992. Since then, China has produced many gold medallists in swimming, with the majority coming from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, as well as Shanghai. How did China pull off this amazing feat and why have most gold medallists come from the coastal areas of the country?

The secret to China’s Olympic success is a combination of economic growth, a large population base and geography. As documented by sociologist Wang Feng at the University of California, Irvine, in his book China’s Age of Abundance: Origins, Ascendance and Aftermath, China’s spectacular economic growth since its reform and opening up enabled Chinese people to become much better fed.

In the early 1970s, China managed to produce less than one egg per person each week. But between 1978 and 1983 there was a 50 per cent increase in consumption of eggs, followed by continuous subsequent increases. As China became richer, its children grew much taller. Wang notes that at age seven, a boy in urban China was 5.2cm taller in 2002 than in 1992 and a girl was 5.7cm taller.

Parts of China’s east coast have a reputation of being the cradle of Olympic gold medallists, and for good reason. China’s east coast has long been its richest region; the people there are more well fed and physically fit than those elsewhere.