Fair play is sadly missing from Chinese sporting world

• Source: Global Times
• [22:02 October 22 2009]
• Comments

Illustration: Liu Rui

By David Yang

With the Olympics now a year past, top Chinese athletes are gathering once again in Shandong Province to compete in the nation's premier sports event, the National Games, which has been held every four years since 1975. The 11th Games started officially on October 16 in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong.

Like previous National Games, the media is abuzz with coverage of match-fixing, age-faking, and other scandals.

Earlier this month, a front page story in Chengdu Business Daily caused a sensation when a judge in the diving competition accused Zhou Jihong, head coach of China's national diving team, of controlling the judging panel and manipulating the result of the finals. The judge, speaking under a false name, said she's now retired and has nothing to be afraid of.

The accusations were denied by China's sports officials, saying it's "impossible, irresponsible and groundless," without mentioning any possible investigation into the case.

According to them, match-fixing is simply "impossible" at the Shandong Natioanl Games, even though scandals such as doping and match-fixing were exposed four years ago during the 10th National Games in Jiangsu Province.

The public has reasons to doubt the results, as the accusations came from a judge who served for decades in the taxpayer-funded sports system.

If the organizers meant it when they chose the slogan as "Harmonious China, People's Games," then the people here deserve a better answer.

Strangely, the central level media has kept silent on the issue, which makes it all the more doubtful.

Match-fixing is not new in China. Its presence has been reported in Chinese football and, more recently, basketball. And it's not the only problem that blemishes sport in this country. Age-faking is another.

For decades, Chinese sports administrators focused on getting more and more gold medals at the Olympics, rather than paying attention to the grass roots. This caused fierce competition among provincial sports teams in the 1980s, when age-faking became a severe problem.