维以不永伤

Aug 21st 2008 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

TO A surge of jubilant national pride China is poised for the first time to win more gold medals at the Olympics than any other country. For China’s leaders, the gold-medal haul is wonderful news after a grim few months that have seen crippling snow storms, upheaval in Tibet and a deadly earthquake. America, the sporting superpower, has been defeated. Russia, third-ranking at the Athens Olympics in 2004, has been left in the dust. But some Chinese are openly questioning China’s route to Olympic triumph: unfettered investment by a gold-fixated government that controls the careers of athletes. 

沉浸在一拨骄傲与欢腾的情绪中的中国已经准备好成为本届奥运会金牌总数最多的国家。几个月来，经历了破坏性的雪灾、西藏暴乱以及特大地震以后，奥运会上金牌数量对于中国的领导人而言不啻为一个好消息。体育强国美国已被中国打败，2004年雅典奥运会上金牌数位列第三的俄罗斯如今也对中国望尘莫及。在中国的奥运夺金过程中，一些中国人仍公开表达了质疑：执著于金牌的政府在资金投入上不计成本，并且掌控着运动员的人生。

By mid-week China was on course to top the gold-medal table by a comfortable margin (see chart). The state-controlled press has so far mostly avoided crowing (as indeed it should, if China’s huge population is taken into account—see table below). Officials have doggedly pretended that China cares more about promoting international friendship than about winning. But the gold tally achieves a long-standing goal of Olympic supremacy. A few newspapers have already called the medal-count a symbol of the nation’s rise. Doubtless many others will join in when the games are over and tact allows.

This year China is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the launch of the “reform and opening” policies that have swept away state controls over much of economic and cultural life. But the sporting system, modelled on the Soviet Union’s, has survived. Under a regime known as juguo, or “whole nation”, the state identifies talented young children, puts them into special schools and, if they are good enough, employs them as athletes, with government-paid coaches. Juguo’s impact has become evident internationally only since China rejoined the International Olympic Committee in 1979 and competed five years later at the Soviet-boycotted Los Angeles games. China’s gold-medal tally fell at Seoul in 1988, when the Soviet Union turned up, but has soared since then.

Central planning in sports has its limitations. After the 2000 Olympics in Sydney China adopted a new strategy to maximise gold medals. It was dubbed “project 119” after the number of golds in China’s weakest sports: track-and-field, swimming and other water events such as rowing. The idea was to win more golds in these by pouring more state financing into them.

The results have not been striking, so far anyway. In 2000 China won one gold in these sports. In 2004 it won four, and three so far this year. An injury forced China’s best hope for a gold on the track, Liu Xiang, to abandon his defence of his 110-metres hurdles title. Some Chinese media have described Mr Liu’s win in 2004 as a breakthrough for the yellow race in an event dominated by black people.

Amid great enthusiasm in China for the country’s sporting achievements, there has also been some remarkably frank questioning of the juguo approach. The website of Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, this week published a commentary by a provincial newspaper which described profligate spending on sporting facilities reserved for the athletic elite as a “waste of the state’s precious financial resources” and “extremely unfair” to the public. It argued that the General Administration of Sport (the sports ministry) should be scrapped and state funding for professional athletes withdrawn. Government money should go instead to sport in schools and universities. Juguo, it said, “seriously deviated from the Olympic spirit”.

China Youth Daily, a newspaper controlled by the Communist Party’s Youth League, published a commentary on its website saying China should learn from America (not something Chinese officials often admit), with its sports clubs and commercial backing for athletes. More and more Chinese athletes are taking commercial sponsorship but they have to share the rewards with the government. Another newspaper lamented that young athletes missed out on a normal childhood. 

团中央机关报《中国青年报》报表评论，认为中国应当借鉴美国的运动员培养模式（这是官方不愿意承认的），采取体育俱乐部的方式以及商业资助运动员。越来越多的中国运动员已经获得了商业赞助，但他们必须上缴部分所得给国家。另一家报纸则为这些运动员哀悼他们所失去的普通孩子的童年时光。

Supporters of juguo argue that without it China might end up like India, which only this year won its first individual gold medal (in air-rifle shooting). But an article on the website of a Shanghai newspaper argued China should give up sporting elitism even if it meant getting fewer medals. “I’m afraid India is already ahead of us in this respect,” wrote this heretic.

 赞成举国体制的人们说，若非如此，中国的下场可能会和印度一样。今年，印度获得了第一块个人项目金牌（气步枪射击项目）。在网上，一家上海报纸认为中国应当体制职业运动员的国家训练和选拔，哪怕奖牌数量会减少。这个特立独行的作者写道：“从这个角度看，恐怕印度已经走在我们前面了。”