China's Olympians and team sports

Why are the Chinese not better at team sports?

Or to put it another way, why have American athletes fallen short in individual competition that they used to do well in (boxing, weightlifting) but still excel in team sports?

It’s an interesting issue. Scratch most sports fans here and one finds great pride in the Olympic medal tally but a little sensitivity about the lack of team sports medals.

In a newspaper column that dealt with this issue, a Duke University political scientist, Michael Allen Gillespie, says the matter goes to the way societies are organized.

Since each member of the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball teams won gold medals, as did the men’s volleyball team and the women’s soccer team, the total number of gold medals taken home by U.S. athletes is higher than the total for Chinese athletes.

If one looks over all of the Olympic sports, Americans took home 118 gold medals, 99 silver medals and 76 bronze medals, while the Chinese took home 76 gold, 35 silver and 38 bronze medals. That is 293 total medals for the USA to 149 for China.

The point here is that Americans are much more successful in team sports than the Chinese, and perhaps this is no accident. Voluntary cooperation has always been a hallmark of the American system, suffusing the lives of children and adults alike, an outstanding factor in our playrooms and in our boardrooms.

China, by contrast, has always put much less emphasis on voluntary cooperation than on hierarchical control and the obligation of those below to take directions from those above. Such discipline and obedience can produce individuals who become superb at repeating individual tasks, as in the diving competitions where the Chinese were outstanding, but it cannot produce the creativity and voluntary cooperation necessary to the successful operation of a team.

The Chinese government has begun to learn this lesson in the case of industry and the world has applauded its success, even if many have been intimidated by it. One might anticipate a similar success if the Chinese loosened the reins on other sections of their society.

Anybody out there disagree strongly with this analysis? One criticism of China’s soccer efforts that one hears constantly in China is that it has been “commercialized.” In other words, money corrupted the soccer federation because there wasn’t central state control as there is in other sports. Could China produce a winning soccer team if Beijing took the reins?

Comments

[A B]

The problem is, centralized control also produced the doozies of loser teams. To wit:

- Ching Dynasty's attempts at modernization

- Republican China

- Early People's Republic of China

Everyone obeying have certain advantages when the problem is well defined, the means self evident, the goal(s) clear, control easy to do, and the leadership and the led both committed.

Problem is, at least half of the problems that have to be solved are largely unstructured problems that do not fit this description.

[shenqh]

It needs both Money and government control to be successful.

[jeff]

Agree.

China is still a developing country. Let's hope China stable and focus for another 30 years.

[Helena Cobban]

Jeff is right.

Development of excellence in most team sports requires a huge, multi-decade infrastructure to support all those youth leagues, feeder leagues, training facilities, etc-- much more than for individual sports. Also, a lot of discretionary free time for parents (ok, mainly moms) to drive their kids to the league's meets etc. Soccer is probably the big exception to this rule of thumb, because it has such strong grassroots support worldwide.

How many other middle- or low-income countries are able to field winning teams in sports other than soccer? I don't think this has just to do with China.

At the end of the day, running seems to be just about the only equal-opportunity sport there is-- vide the great performances of Usain Bolt, the other Jamaicans, the Kenyans, and Ethiopians. Apart from running and soccer, all the other Olympic "sports" seem in-your-face elitist and remind us of the great structural inequalities among the world's nations.

[AG]

Tribal society is good at team sports. I really mean hunter-gatherers society.

People with long civilized history will be weak at `hunter-gatherer' team work without obvious leadership. This kind of `team ' work need spontaneous or intuitive cooperation.

But, when coming to even larger organized activity, for example, a team of thousands people, leadership hierarchical control is critical, then people of long civilized history like chinese will domniate.

Spontaneous cooperation only work for small team, not for large organized empire.

Also it is also true for army. Huge organized army is strong for civilized people. Hunter-gather society is only good for small raiding party.

[andreas]

If the USA had won more gold medals, then we wouldn't be hearing any of this. It'd just be "USA #1". But China won, so the USA then tries to come up with alternative arguments: the USA won more overall medals (silver and bronze); US teams did better, etc. That last argument is ironic: if the Chinese had won in team sports, then we'd hear that "communist societies" suppress individualism, etc. As for the bronze medals: who cares? Nobody pays for endorsements from 3rd place athletes. All of this is just sour grapes justifications.

[PaZhuLian]

There is no "I" in "TEAM".
But "I" is central in "CHINA", while as "U" is first in "USA".

[Pffefer]

His analysis is crap. What "v oluntary cooperation" is he talking about? Soccer aside, the Chinese used to be and are still quite dominant/good on various team sports such as volleyball, basketball, hockey (not ice hockey) etc. Does that mean the Chinese society experienced a major change in its dynamics?

Chinese soccer is a topic which merits a separate discussion. It just sucks to no end. Why? I don't know.

And the US happens to dominant men's basketball and women's soccer, that's it. Why is the US not so dominant on men's soccer? Something about "voluntary cooperation" again?

Oh, am I the only one who found this quite pathetic? "If one looks over all of the Olympic sports, Americans took home 118 gold medals, 99 silver medals and 76 bronze medals, while the Chinese took home 76 gold, 35 silver and 38 bronze medals. That is 293 total medals for the USA to 149 for China."

They don't count the medals this way. The US wishes.

[TS]

Jeff and Helena are absolutely right. It has a lot to do with resources. If you have a limited amount of resources and want to break into the ranks of top medal winning nations, what is the fastest way to do that? Individual sports, of course. Shooting, weigh lifting, swimming, diving, etc. Soccer, basketball, etc, take decades.

So Gillespie's argument is crap, another silly attempt to blame something on presumed deep cultural differences when there are much more obvious reasons.

[sam]

The demise of the India and Pakistan in men's hockey, reveals the mistaken logic in the author's post.Womens volleyball, basketball, hockey, are highly ranked while soccer has fallen away.Meanwhile I dont see the UK Canada Australia figuring very highly in the teams events.

[IC]

Carol Huynh is Chinese Canadian who won first Gold medal for Canada. Yet, Canadian media at low profile at 3ird page of newspaper. However, a white athelet won bronze medal was at front page with large picture.

Western media is obviously racist. Racism is worst violation of human right. They do not treat other race as equal human beining. Shame on whites.

[sam]

China has a different approch to team sports.. They do not like to play a physical in your face type of game, which is quite often seen in basketball and soccer.

Sam

[I don't think so]

Most Olympics sport programs, especially team sports, are created and defined by the West. Eastern people take less time in individual sports to succeed. But for team sports, it demands more time and efforts to catch up with the West.

Well, if team sports of the East are included in Olympics. You will see the western teams also have hard time to catch up with the East, for example, foot shuttlecock (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFZMjXO81s).

Same thing happens to brain exercises. Russians are dominant in Chess. Westerners are dominant in Bridge poker. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are dominant in Go (Weiqi). It is not the problem of brain differences, but the problem of gaining skills since childbirth.

[B]

"Carol Huynh is Chinese Canadian who won first Gold medal for Canada."

Complete, utter bullshit...she was plastered all over the front pages

[bkg]

On the soccer note - China's government already has too much control over the federation with respect to FIFA's rules. They've been told they face expulsion if they don't allow it more freedom.

The government's sports bureau has control over who runs the soccer federation (谢亚龙 - Xie Yalong) and that's not allowed in FIFA. (Whether you think FIFA will actually do anything is a different argument)

Unfortunately for Chinese soccer fans, they'd like to see the required changes, but nothing's happening from the top levels.

[nanheyangrouchuan]

"Development of excellence in most team sports requires a huge, multi-decade infrastructure to support all those youth leagues, feeder leagues, training facilities, etc-- much more than for individual sports. Also, a lot of discretionary free time for parents (ok, mainly moms) to drive their kids to the league's meets etc. Soccer is probably the big exception to this rule of thumb, because it has such strong grassroots support worldwide.
How many other middle- or low-income countries are able to field winning teams in sports other than soccer? I don't think this has just to do with China."

What bullshit. Spain does not have a long history or basketball, neither does Argentina or former Yugoslav teams and yet they are continually contenders.

How about distance running for the African nations? You'd think those are individual sports but in reality the headline runner(s) are paced by their teammates through most of the race, with those other runners from their countries running out in front to allow the headline runner to "draft" behind their teammates. Only after the halfway point does the headline runner(s) take over on their own steam.

That is teamwork and from much poorer countries than China.

[bemis]

Hey, NAN-GROUCH! (Or whatever your name is): What on earth are you going to do next, now that Beijing Olympics have been so successful?

Posted by: bemis | August 25, 2008 at 07:11 PM

[Dana]

I think the only thing that China has true grass-roots, soccer-mom approach for is basketball. There are lots of places to play, and lots of kids willing to develop their skill.

Soccer requires lots of funding, or at least lots of space. The US little league soccer is enormous.

[PaZhuLian]

China joined FIBA in 1974 and ranks 10 in the current FIBA Men’s world rankings. With the exception of USA for obvious reasons, all of the other higher ranking countries were either FIBA’s founding members (Argentina, Greece and Italy - 1932), or early participants (Spain & Germany - 1934, Serbia as part of Yugoslavia - 1936, Australia & Lithuania as part of Soviet Union – 1947).

Much have been written about the dominance of eastern African athletes in mid to long-distance running, in search of explanations from various physiological, genetic or socio-economic factors. Yet, none of the studies had been conclusive…like the debate between “Creation” and “Evolution”. Could NHYRC’s brilliant “teamwork” theory be that missing link that put all those controversies to rest? And it was so easily done. He only needed to trim off his toes a few inches to make that pair of pumps fit.

NHYRC has been so used to his own bullshit for so long. You wonder if he had developed a taste for it himself.

[A B]

Somewhere lost in this debate is that there are some events in which certain races and ethnicities excel.

For example, Africans who do not have the "ice age gene" in every non-African's mitochondrial DNA have roughly a 1% higher efficiency in energy production in their muscles.

This may sound minute, but it is enough (all things equal) to give Africans from areas of the continent that have the "right" body shape an advantage in events they excel at --- track.

Chinese, culturally, come from a tradition that emphasize repetitive repetition of patterns (think learning how to write Chinese characters), particularly with fine hand and eye coordination, and this gives them certain advantages in events from ping pong to (in theory) fencing (which they did not do that well in).

Then there is the problem that for every generality, there are exceptions, like your Yao Ming, or the "foreigners" (read non-Japanese) that excel in Sumo wrestling. Kind of cause little affronts when Africans beat out the "master race" once upon a time in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Isn't it nice we can celebrate in the diversity of abilities across different races, ethnic groups, etc.?

It would be a boring world if we are all good at the same things.

[A B]

Just in case people question the "ice age gene" and want a reference...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E6DE1F31F93AA35752C0A9629C8B63

January 9, 2004
Ice Age Ancestry May Keep Body Warmer and Healthier
By NICHOLAS WADE

A team of California geneticists has found that many of the world's peoples are genetically adapted to the cold because their ancestors lived in northern climates during the Ice Age. The genetic change affects basic body metabolism and may influence susceptibility to disease and to the risks of the calorie-laden modern diet.

The finding also breaks ground in showing that the human population has continued to adapt to forces of natural selection since the dispersal from its ancestral homeland in Africa some 50,000 years ago.

The genetic adaptation to cold is still carried by many Northern Europeans, East Asians and American Indians, most of whose ancestors once lived in Siberia. But it is absent from peoples native to Africa, a difference that the California team, led by Dr. Douglas C. Wallace of the University of California, Irvine, suggest could contribute to the greater burden of certain diseases in the African-American population.

[PaZhuLian]

@A B
From the article:
"Several other experts said that Dr. Wallace's ideas were promising but that the role of mitochondria in degenerative diseases had yet to be established..."

Some how I'm getting that "polished" feeling.

;-)

[PaZhuLian]

@A B "Chinese, culturally, come from a tradition that emphasize repetitive repetition of patterns..."

You know people in some part of the world have been calling soccer a boring and repetitive sport...

[A B]

@Pa

Vive le difference!

[Sparkle]

I just have to say that "the coorperation" thing is a piece of c***. Better is better... If us basketball team wanted to play, they could beat all other teams in the world. There is simply no other team in the world had so many good players. It has nothing to do with "culture" or psychological mind sets.