Sports should not be politicized, at any cost

I couldn't help laughing when reading an article by Hannah Beech, the Southeast Asian bureau chief of The New York Times. In typically vilifying style, "The Chinese sports machine's single goal: The most golds, at any cost", said China has a State-run gold medal machine, which relentlessly crunches preteen girls as consumables and turns them into gold medal-winning androids in a small set of dumb sports Western countries do not compete.

Crafty and despicable, that's what Beech was trying to label China as, by dehumanizing the Chinese sports system and Chinese athletes.

Beech turned Liao Qiuyun, a Chinese female weight lifter and silver medallist, into a "victim of State oppression", claiming she didn't speak about her mental toll as Simone Biles or Naomi Osaka did.

What was Beech expecting? Another Larry Nassar?

Biles is a victim of Nassar, who, as the team doctor for the US women's national gymnastics team for 18 years, sexually exploited more than 100 girls. Beech said Biles and Osaka have spoken of their emotional strain, but Liao hasn't. So Liao is a victim of oppression, or just a medal-winning android.

True, the Chinese sports system's aim is to win more medals just like its US counterpart's. Alan Ashley, former US Olympic Committee chief of sport performance, put it thus: "We want to go in and win the medal count, that's our objective." So there is no difference between the two sports giants' goals.

The highlight of Beech's article is: "Beijing's focus has been on sports that can be perfected with rote routines, rather than those that involve an unpredictable interplay of multiple athletes…"

Surely, Beech was not referring to swimming, athletics and gymnastics, because in the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games, 32 of the 46 (about 72 percent) gold medals the US won came from these three disciplines.

So, when Beech said "it's no coincidence that nearly 75 percent of the Olympic golds China has won since 1984 are in just six sports: table tennis, shooting, diving, badminton, gymnastics and weight lifting", was she suggesting there is less unpredictable interplay in table tennis than in swimming, or shooting is less unpredictable than athletics, or badminton requires fewer athletes than gymnastics?

Is this a reinterpretation of George Orwell's Animal Farm that all sports are equal, but some sports are more equal than others, and those more equal sports are, well, coincidentally those the United States is good at?

If you think there's a touch of racism in Beech's article－after all, she implies the Chinese athletes are only able to perform "rote routines" rather than excelling in sports requiring teamwork and intelligence, there's Nineteen Eighty-Four-style newspeak in her article: "Aside from women's volleyball, China has never won Olympic gold in a large team sport."

Seriously! What does "aside from women's volleyball" mean? Certainly, she didn't mean to say, "aside from eating pork, I'm a strict vegetarian". Or, does Beech mean women's volleyball is not as good as other team sports? Isn't this misogynism? And that too coming from a woman!

Let's be clear, women's volleyball is a large team sport, and China did win Olympic gold in the event. So China did win Olympic gold in a large team sport.

More ironically, when Beech said the only thing that matters to China is gold medals, she sounded obsessed with gold medal supremacy. For the record, China has won many medals in large team sports in the Summer Olympic Games. The Chinese women's volleyball team has won three gold, two silver and one bronze medals. The women's basketball team has won one silver and bronze medal each. And the women's football team won a silver medal at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games.

The New York Times used to be different, it used to be a normal newspaper. In an article published in the NYT in 1988, "China Strains for Olympic Glory", Trip Gabriel cited John Chaplin, a US coach who helped Chinese sports and trashed the idea of one race being superior to another. In contrast to Beech's mixture of racism and misogynism, Chaplin simply said, "it has nothing to do with race. It's simply that a disproportionate number of people from a certain group at a certain time are seeking success through athletics".

The times have changed. Chinese athletes have shown achievements on the sports field have nothing to do with race. But Beech wants to prove otherwise, because when it comes to China, Western journalists believe they have the license to use multiple dirty weapons against the country. Racism? No problem! Misogyny? Fire at will! Double standard? Do it, at all cost.

For those who think like Beech, that Chinese athletes are "dumb medal-winning androids", I suggest you watch a video of Liu Guoliang, Olympic gold medalist and former coach of the Chinese table tennis team, addressing his fellow athletes. In the video, Liu explains the secret of the Chinese table tennis team's success: modesty, honor and teamwork. I don't think Liu's philosophy is different from that of any other outstanding sports team's coach.

Or you could watch Lyu Xiaojun's training video. Lyu, one of the most famous Chinese weight lifters and father of two daughters, won the gold meal at the just concluded Tokyo Olympics at the age of 37. And he is admired by many Western strength training enthusiasts.

But for Beech, what I would really love to see is the Chinese sports system moving forward and pushing beyond the limits of Beech's criterion of "aside from those large team sports not recognized as large team sport".

Don't be too anxious, Beech. We Chinese still have a long way to go to win the men's football gold.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

The author is a science writer.