ABSTRACT
After the modern Olympic movement was introduced to China at the beginning of the twentieth century (Guoqi 2008), a seminar organized in October 1908 by the Tianjin YMCA raised the famous ‘Three Questions about the Olympics’. When would China send its first athlete to participate in the Olympic Games? When would Chinese athletes win their first gold medal at the Olympic Games? When would the Olympic Games be held in China? (Hong et al. 2008) China spent 100 years in finding the answer to these questions. China sent its first athlete, Liu Changchun, to participate in the Los Angeles Olympics in
1932 but he failed to win a medal for his beloved motherland. China won its first Olympic gold medals at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. China hosted the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. It ‘grabbed a total of 100 medals at the Beijing Games – a happy coincidence as the country has dreamed for 100 years to be the Olympic host – and overtook the United States to top the gold medal table with 51 golds’ (Na et al. 2008). China’s quest for global power and Olympic glory had been achieved and it successfully transformed from the ‘sick man of East Asia’2 to a world sports superpower in just 100 years! The triumph of Chinese sport is deeply rooted in China’s elite sport system. It is called ‘Ju
Guo Ti Zhi’ in Chinese and translates as ‘whole-country support for the elite sports system’. This system channelled all resources for sport in the country into elite sport and effectively produced hundreds of thousands of young elite athletes in a short time in pursuit of ideological superiority and national status. Its main characteristics are centralized management and administration and guaranteed financial and human resources from the whole country to ensure maximum support (Qin 2004). This chapter will examine China’s elite sports system from a historical perspective and analyze
the following aspects of the elite sports infrastructure: government policy; financial resources; athlete’s selection and training; retired athlete’s education and re-employment; coaching; and sports facilities.
