China and the Olympics

WHEN will China send athletes to the Olympics? When will China win the gold? When will China host the Games?” asked a magazine in an article entitled “Athletic Sports” as far back as 1908.

The answer to the first question finally came in 1932, when Liu Changchun participated in the Los Angeles Olympics, and the second question was answered when China came away with 15 gold medals at the 1984 Games, also in Los Angeles. The final question will be settled exactly a century after being asked, when Beijing plays host to the Olympics for the first time in 2008.

China’s involvement in the Olympic movement, however, can be traced all the way back to the beginning of the Games, when Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics, wrote to Li Hongzhang, chief minister of the Qing Dynasty, in 1895 urging China to attend the first Games. The preparatory committee of the Athens Olympics also sent China an invitation on August 16 through foreign embassies, but the country was at the time being threatened both by domestic unrest and foreign invasion, and was consequently unable to attend.

In 1904, many Chinese newspapers and periodicals covered the third Olympic Games, and beginning in 1907, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and missionary schools in China started publicizing the Olympics. On October 24, Zhang Boling, an advocate of sports and a well-known educator, delivered a speech to the fifth school athletic meeting organized by the Tianjin YMCA urging China to intensify its preparations and to participate in the Games as soon as possible.

Four years later, the Chinese press reported that London would host the fourth Olympics, and declared that “the Olympic Games are unparalleled in the world.”

1932: China Attends the Olympics for the First Time

China first sent a team to the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in the United States in 1932. The three-man delegation consisted of the team head, Shen Siliang, the coach and interpreter Song Junfu, and the sprinter Liu Changchun, who became the first Chinese athlete to compete in the Games.

Liu was born into a poor family in northeast China in 1909, and at the age of 19 was admitted to Northeast University on the strength of his outstanding athletic ability. He first established his reputation in men’s 4×400 meter relay race in a Chinese-Russian track and field competition, when despite a 50-meter lag behind the Russian runner, he finished 50 meters ahead, achieving instant fame. Later, at the 1930 National Games, Liu won three events – the 100-meter, 200-meter and 400-meter races – in a row.

Because northwest China had been occupied by Japan in 1931, Liu’s participation in the Olympics the following year was a source of intense patriotic enthusiasm. On the eve of the 1932 Games, he flatly refused to represent the puppet regime of Manchukuo, traveling instead to the United States with financial assistance from Zhang Xueliang, president of Northeast University.

When Liu eventually arrived in Los Angeles on July 29 after a 20-day voyage, American reporters asked him to raise his hands high for a photograph, but Liu refused at first, thinking the gesture was an indication of surrender. Not until it was explained to him that he would be symbolically “holding up the Chinese people” did he consent.

The Games began the next day, and during the opening ceremony he marched in carrying the Chinese flag as the only Chinese athlete. China had finally joined the modern Olympic movement.

As a sprinter in the men’s 100-meter dash, Liu’s fastest time at home had been 10.06 seconds – more than a match for any foreign competitor. However, after 20 days of being tossed about at sea and being unable to stay in top form, he was eliminated in the first heat. Still, Liu did not leave the Games following his defeat, staying on to watch various events and to attend the championship dinner. In addition, he and his coach, Song Junfu, took part in the World Youth Debate Convention in Los Angeles, where the latter addressed the meeting in English to denounce the Japanese occupation of northeast China.

Upon Liu’s return home in late August, he was joyously greeted by the Chinese people, who clearly felt that given that political situation, Liu was an inspiration to have represented China at the Games.

China next took part in the Summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936, this time with a full lineup of athletes and coaches, including Liu Changchun and Song Junfu. In all, 69 athletes participated in events ranging from track and field, to the swimming, weightlifting, bicycling, boxing, basketball and football competitions.

However, the total cost to the Chinese team was 220,000 yuan, and the Chiang Kai-shek government had only allocated 170,000 yuan, leaving a 50,000-yuan shortfall that became a real problem for the national team. Despite a countrywide drive to solicit donations, a 20,000-yuan shortfall remained, so the Chinese football team, which had won nine straight victories in the Far East Games, left early to participate in fundraising matches in Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and India.

Led by the famous captain Li Huitang, the team played 27 games within two months, winning 23 and drawing four. As a result, the undefeated team demonstrated China’s football prowess, winning favor with fans everywhere and earning far in excess of the required 20,000 yuan in ticket sales.

1984: China Wins Gold at Last

China continued to send athletes to the Olympics after 1932, but war and economic turmoil meant that the teams consisted of fewer than 100 people. Later, as a consequence of the Taiwan issue, the newly founded People’s Republic of China (PRC) broke off its relationship with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1958, and did not rejoin the Olympic family until 1979.

Finally, at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, China participated with a large delegation for the first time. The lineup included not only 225 athletes in 16 events and 50 coaches, but also a visiting group, a press delegation and a performing arts troupe comprised of Chinese celebrities.

During the opening ceremony on July 28, when Chinese players wearing the national emblem entered the stadium, the host specially played the March of the People’s Liberation Army to welcome them. As the American sports commentator for CNN said, “The whole audience bursts into warm applause as the Oriental dragon, the Chinese delegation, enters the arena.”

In joining the Los Angeles Olympics, China had established itself as a sports power, but no Chinese competitor had ever won Olympic gold. The marksman Xu Haifeng became the first to achieve a “zero breakthrough” by winning a gold medal for China in the very first competition of the Games.

In fact, the 27-year-old Xu was not even a professional athlete, but a clerk in a supply and marketing company. When he clinched the victory in the shooting competition, a Chinese sports official rushed onto the field with tears in his eyes, embracing him and praising him for the monumental event in Chinese sports history.

Xu’s teammate won a bronze medal in the same match, which presented a problem for the Games’ organizers, who had only one Chinese national flag on hand. As a result, the award ceremony had to be postponed for over an hour. “Today is a great day for China’s history,” said Juan Samaranch, president of the IOC at the time, as he presented Xu with the medal.

In all, Chinese athletes won 15 gold, eight silver and nine bronze medals during the 1984 Games, ranking China fourth on the overall medals list. The championship events included shooting, gymnastics, weightlifting, diving, fencing and volleyball, and the Chinese National Women’s Volleyball Team went on to win three times in a row in world-class competitions. Since then, shooting, gymnastics, weightlifting and diving – and later table tennis, badminton and judo, which subsequently became Olympic events – have all been dominated by China.

China’s outstanding performance at the 1984 Los Angeles Games was an incomparable boost to the morale of the Chinese people, and the first fruits of China’s reform policies were gathered in the sports arenas. Following the 1984 Olympics, terms like “zero breakthrough” and “three-straight-win” become synonyms for “advance valiantly” in all walks of Chinese life.

2008: The 1.3 Billion People’s Olympics

China’s wins at the 1984 Olympics were especially exciting events for Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, who had been in charge of sports in the 1970s. According to the recollections of a Chinese sports official, Deng had entertained the idea of “bidding for the Olympics” from the moment China rejoined the IOC, but the outside world would not learn of it until later.

In November 1985, Deng finally announced to the world that China would bid for the Olympics, telling Kim Il Sung, chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, “We will spend over a decade preparing to bid for the 2000 Olympics, which will be linked to the development of our tourism industry.”

In July 1990, while inspecting preparations for the Beijing Asian Games, Deng conspicuously wore a hat emblazoned with the Chinese national flag and the Olympic rings logo, and specifically asked officials from his entourage: “When will we bid for the Olympics?” That conversation was later reported to the highest levels of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and during the closing ceremony of the Asian Games, a banner reading “Succeeding in the Asian Games, Expecting the Olympic Games” was displayed in the grandstand.

In February 1991, China announced that it would bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics, but on September 23, 1993, Beijing lost out to Sydney by two votes in the IOC’s balloting in Monte Carlo.

He Zhenliang, the first vice president of the IOC, concluded later that Sydney’s infrastructure at the time had indeed been better than Beijing’s, and that in any event Sydney had already bid three consecutive times for the Games. In addition, two IOC members that firmly supported Beijing’s candidacy were unable to attend the voting.

In November 1998, Beijing bid for the 2008 summer Olympics, and on July 13, 2001, the IOC voted in Moscow and Beijing won the bid in the second round with an overwhelming majority, gathering 56 votes to second-place Toronto’s 34.

This time, He Zhenliang could say that conditions for Beijing’s bid had been ripe. With the return of Hong Kong in 1997, China’s spectacular economic growth, as well as third place on the gold medals list at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, China’s Olympic dream could finally become a reality.

The entire country was seized with excitement once the good news from Moscow came out, and Beijing embarked on a night of revelry during which an estimated million people swarmed onto Tian’anmen Square. No one noticed the horrendous traffic jam, everyone being content to wave national flags and congratulate one another with handshakes and hugs.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin stood on the Tian’anmen Rostrum and waved to the people on the square, even conducting them in a song celebrating the country. From that night, the 2008 Games became an Olympics for 1.3 billion Chinese people.