For a long time, the Chinese Communist Party has been investing heavily in the Olympics to defeat the West, in an attempt to demonstrate the so-called superiority of the communist system. This trend continues in the current Paris Olympics. However, after enduring three years of harsh epidemic lockdowns and economic downturns, people in mainland China are starting to openly question why the CCP is spending so much money to win Olympic gold medals instead of using that money to help the struggling population in economic distress.
The usage of international sporting events, especially the Olympics, to promote the legitimacy of CCP rule is a consistent practice of communist regimes.
Since the Soviet Union’s participation in the Helsinki Olympics in 1952, providing a template for competing with Western countries on the global stage, the CCP began emulating the Soviet model known to Western scholars as the “communist sports machine.”
While the gymnasts from Romania and the swimmers from East Germany, cultivated under the Soviet model, are no longer present, Communist China remains one of the few countries investing such vast national resources into sports.
Before returning to the Olympics in 1979, Communist China clearly stated that the Olympics were a “significant and urgent political task” aimed at winning five gold medals. After the successful bid for the 2008 Beijing Olympics in 2001, the “2001-2010 Olympic Glory Program Outline” was launched, aiming to rank in the top three in the medal standings of the 2008 Olympics. In 2011, authorities issued the “2011-2020 Olympic Glory Program Outline,” with the core objective remaining the same, to maintain a leading position in gold and medal counts.
For decades, the CCP has established a comprehensive “national mobilization system” in which the entire sports system revolves around winning gold medals in the Olympics to showcase the so-called “advancement” of the Communist Party.
Former Chinese national basketball team player and sports coach Chen Kai stated to Epoch Times that in a country without genuine elections, it is logically illegitimate. The CCP knows it is illegitimate and seeks to prove its legitimacy through space missions, winning gold medals, and large domestic infrastructure projects.
“It invests in sports that have no relationship with the people, like field hockey. Do Chinese people play field hockey? Why choose field hockey? Because it’s a niche sport that can easily yield gold medals.”
While other departments and industries have gradually become more market-oriented, even though the State Sports Commission was downgraded to the General Administration of Sport of China in 1998, the nature of these sports institutions did not change. They are all led by CCP party branches, firmly under the control of the Party.
The main goal of the General Administration of Sport of China is to win Olympic gold medals, while provincial sports management centers are responsible for selecting and training elite athletes for the national team.
Under the concept of “national chess,” each province and city should focus on developing projects with the opportunity to win international competitions and Olympic gold medals. Every athlete, every province and city must comply with the overall planning of the CCP to achieve the unified goal of winning Olympic gold medals.
Imitating the Olympics with the National Games, China’s largest national sports event, serves as a key platform for selecting Olympic gold medalists.
According to a research paper from 2008, Vice Minister of the General Administration of Sport of China, Cui Dalin, said that the head of the sports authority must sign a contract with the government to achieve the predetermined Olympic gold medal targets. Failure to meet the mission could result in severe criticism from the Sports Administration Party Committee or even dismissal.
The same applies to provincial sports bureaus and provincial sports management centers. For example, Shandong Province has set up 12 provincial sports management centers for athletics and swimming projects, concentrating resources on the medal winners of national and Olympics competitions. The director of the Shandong Provincial Sports Bureau stated that failure to meet the mission would lead to immediate dismissal and disqualification from similar positions for four years.
As a small gear in the “communist sports machine,” the authorities have established thousands of sports schools in various provinces and cities in China. These schools select future Olympic champions from children as young as 4 or 5 years old, nurturing 95% of China’s Olympic athletes.
However, the majority of these children miss out on regular education. The China Sports News estimates that around 80% of retired Chinese athletes face unemployment, poverty, or chronic health problems due to overtraining.
Jubin, a former member of the Chinese national basketball team and now a basketball coach in Canada, told Epoch Times that in China, sports are merely a tool to serve the CCP’s rule. The Communist Party is cunning; it brainwashes the Chinese people through sports, investing in sports projects that have no relation to people’s livelihood, obtaining a kind of illusory legitimacy to make people forget its illegal or sinful history.
“In terms of efficiency in handling matters, the national chess model may sail smoothly. But these are all man-made things that can lead to more severe consequences, such as athletes taking banned substances to achieve results, which could lead to organ aging, vascular rupture, or other organ weaknesses, violating natural laws and bringing serious consequences,” said Jubin.
While countries invest in the Olympics, few governments, like the CCP, completely dominate the funding. In contrast, Australia, which performed well at the Olympics, had only about a quarter of its Olympics funds controlled by the government last year. American athletes do not accept government sponsorship; they rely on private sponsorships, charities, broadcast revenues, and endorsements.
The amount of funding the CCP invests in preparing for the Olympics has always been a tightly guarded secret, especially in recent years. However, there were reports around the time of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
According to the Global Financial Observer in its eighth issue of 2004, a report detailed that prior to the Athens Olympics in 2001-2004, the state allocated approximately 5.7 billion yuan, garnering 32 Olympic gold medals averaging about 178 million RMB per gold medal.
Zhang Xiaoning, a Party Secretary at the Tennis Management Center of the General Administration of Sport in 2004, told CCTV: A tennis player requires over a million yuan in expenses per year, totaling around 7 to 8 million annually in non-Olympic years. The expenses generally exceed 10 million during Olympic and Asian Games years.
After Liu Xiang won the gold medal in the 110m hurdles at the Athens Olympics in 2004, Bao Mingxiao, the Director of the Sports and Social Sciences Research Center at the time, revealed that Liu Xiang’s training and competition costs in the previous year amounted to over 3 million RMB.
Qian Kui, a gymnastics coach of the national gymnastics team, stated that from 2001 to 2003, the annual cost for the national gymnastics team was 20 million yuan, covering only training expenses and excluding construction costs for sports facilities.
Following the successful bid for the Beijing Olympics in 2001, the sports budget experienced a surge. The administration proposed the “119 Project” for Olympic success, involving millions of dollars for constructing new training facilities, along with hiring top foreign coaches at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By 2024, the sports budget of the General Administration of Sport of China reached 7.8 billion RMB, with even higher budgets for provincial sports units.
According to a research paper from 2022, the total national sports financial investment was 47.12 billion yuan in 2018, with 91.1% coming from provincial investment totaling 429.5 billion yuan. In 2019, the total national sports investment was 46.29 billion yuan, with provincial investment accounting for 98.9% of the total.
Hosting two Olympics in Beijing incurred massive costs; the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics reached 52.7 billion USD, while the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had an official budget of 3.9 billion USD. If infrastructure expenditures such as the Olympic Village, highways, railways, and airports were included, the actual cost could exceed 38.5 billion USD.
With the injection of enormous funds, Chinese athletes enjoy privileges beyond those of ordinary citizens. Sport insiders have stated that “our expenses have been increasing year by year, and our expenses are guaranteed.” An American women’s rowing coach referred to Chinese athletes as “robots with all the resources they want.”
A 2004 article on Netease revealed that national team athletes were fed special pigs at their training bases, provided with special oils valued at over a thousand yuan, and herbal soups worth over two thousand yuan.
Jubin mentioned the privileges of Chinese athletes; he said, “Once they receive a red-head document, everyone else must yield to them. When I used to be with the national team in China, police cars would clear the way for us. All vehicles had to give way; we would run the red lights with sirens on. Is it worth doing this for an athlete going to a match?”
To date, China has accumulated the second-highest number of gold medals at past Olympics, trailing only behind the United States. However, Olympic gold medals have not brought reputational benefits to the CCP.
A recent survey by the Pew Research Center showed that China has consistently poor global perceptions. Worldwide, with a median of 67% of people holding negative views of China, countries such as Australia (87% negative views), Japan (87%), Sweden (85%), U.S. (83%), Canada (79%), Germany (76%), France (72%), and India (67%) portray particularly unfavorable opinions.
At the Paris Olympics, the loudest cheers were reserved for the host country of France, followed by Ukraine, with very few cheers for the Chinese team.
In this edition of the Paris Olympics, China sent 716 athletes to participate in 30 sports, 42 disciplines, and 236 sub-events, making it the overseas edition with the most events, as per CCTV.
According to Party media reports, China’s state broadcaster CCTV would deploy a team of over 2,000 personnel for production, broadcasting, and technical services, with over 200 members in the reporting team. Xinhua News Agency also dispatched a team of over 200 to report from France.
However, netizens are not buying it; the attention on China’s national team has been continuously decreasing since its establishment. Many citizens believe that gold medals are meaningless compared to livelihoods.
After enduring three years of harsh epidemic lockdowns and economic downturns, with university students facing unemployment, middle-class citizens and small businesses going bankrupt, and white-collar workers experiencing pay cuts, numerous property owners are struggling with debt. While the CCP is generously spending taxpayers’ money on winning gold medals, it is hesitant to provide relief to the people when the economy is deteriorating, which has sparked public outrage.
One netizen posted, “Isn’t it strange that the attention on China’s team heading to the Paris Olympics is very low? Even if people don’t post updates or cheer on social media, at least the discussion on winning gold medals used to be a popular topic.”
The only trending topic is that the Chinese national team brought their air conditioners to Paris, leading to criticism from netizens for extravagance and the waste of taxpayers’ money.
Many commentators express, “How much money is needed for 700 people? It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.” “Sorry, but what benefit do we taxpayers get from their air tickets, hotels, transportation costs?,” “So much spending for what purpose? Give the money to the unemployed instead.”
“What does winning gold medals have to do with us, ordinary people?” another netizen responded, “These expenses would be better spent on improving people’s livelihoods!” “How much money is spent on sending so many people? It would be better to allocate this money to support the unemployed.”
“The national system spends so much for a few medals, what’s the point? It would be better to focus more on food safety and improve people’s lives rather than this superficial display.”
Another netizen wrote, “No matter how many Olympic gold medals you win, you still cannot afford medical treatment, you still have mortgage payments, car loans, and internet loans. If alive, you are a beast in the prosperous era, cannon fodder in turbulent times, and even after death, your body might be sold as a corpse.”
“If the country can achieve 100 gold medals, can they give me back my electric scooter so I can continue my food delivery job?”
Chen Kai expressed that Olympic gold medals have no relevance to people’s livelihoods, but they are used to brainwash the population, diverting attention to gold medals, major projects, and plans, making people forget that the CCP is an illegitimate regime.
“In an autocratic regime without elections, how can there be a concept of taxpayers’ money? The money of the Chinese people is all looted by the CCP; it is a matter of being exploited like leeks, and the sickle is not in your hands.”
He said, “It is a deceptive political and cultural form built entirely on lies. When people suddenly wake up from this deception, the regime will collapse because it is built on falsehoods.”