In this week’s look at all the latest news in the build-up to the 2022 Olympics and elsewhere:
- China is into the third round of 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying
- WTA set to decide on the future of China tournaments for this year
- Peter Hessler’s bizarre take on the Chinese skiing industry
- Eileen Gu Ailing nominated for an ESPY Award
- Chinese diver to compete for Australia at Tokyo Olympics
- The latest 2022 Olympics boycott talk from around the world
- All the other features and stories of interest
China into Third Round of World Cup Qualifying
China is one of 12 Asian teams still in with a chance of qualifying for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, following a second round that took nearly two years to complete. Seven groups winners plus the five best runners-up – of which China was one – will progress to the third round. Qatar has already qualified as the host nation, and so does not take part in the next round.
On July 1, the 12 teams will be drawn into two groups of six, with one team from each pot (see below) going into each group. Each team will play every other team in the group in a home-and-away, round robin format. The winners and runners-up in each group (four total) will qualify directly for the World Cup finals, while the third-placed teams will advance to the fourth round, where they will play each other to determine who advances to the intercontinental play-off.
Finishing in the top two is extremely unlikely for China in this round-robin format. China would have to somehow either finish above one of Japan & Iran or one of South Korea & Australia. South Korea, Japan and Australian have qualified for the past nine, six and four World Cups, respectively, while Iran has played in four of the past six tournaments and has been ranked around #30 in the world for the past five years. Readers of this website likely need no reminder that China has only qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, and that was largely because both Japan and South Korea qualified automatically as hosts (and Australia still played in Oceania back then).
That leaves the lottery of the playoffs. If China can come third in its group – and that’s a huge if – and then beat the other third-placed team in a one-off match, China would progress to the intercontinental playoffs for a two-legged game. AFC teams have only qualified via that route once in the past five World Cups, often losing to a superior team from the Americas, although this was the route through which Australia qualified in 2018.
In summary, don’t stick your money on China making it through. Despite the optimism generated by four wins over relative minnows during the past two weeks, which netted the players the maximum bonus of $2 million, we’ve seen this movie many times before and there’s nothing to suggest that the current China team has what it takes to make it through against the big boys of Asia.
Games in the third round are currently scheduled to be played in pairs across five separate weeks from September to March. However, given recent rescheduling, it’s likely this will later be condensed into multiple matches played in perhaps two bubbles. Scheduling is sure to be tricky, because the designated weeks are locked into FIFA’s calendar and different domestic leagues operate at different times, but China and the CFA will make sure the Chinese Super League doesn’t interfere with the all-important national team preparations.
WTA China Tour Decision Set for June 30
The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has said it will decide by June 30 whether or not its tournaments in China will go ahead this year or be cancelled for the second straight year.
Greater China was home to 11 tournaments on the 2019 calendar, including the season-ending WTA Finals in Shenzhen, with the majority of them scheduled in September and October as part of the Tour’s Asian swing. Those tournaments collectively offered more than $30 million in prize money, with the WTA Finals alone offering a purse of $14 million. A similar calendar was scheduled last year, but all the China tournaments were cancelled due to the pandemic. Nothing has been scheduled for this autumn so far, pending the WTA’s internal deadline.
While I understand the Tour’s need for clarity in terms of logistics and planning, I simply cannot see them being given any sort of assurances from China by the end of this month. For a start, the Communist Party’s 100th birthday is on July 1, and no one will make a decision of consequence before then – something I wrote about here. Additionally, China is waiting to see what happens at the Tokyo Olympics (July 23-Aug 8) before deciding how to handle international sporting events of its own.
In other words, I’d be staggered if the WTA says it still intends to come to China this year, because of the high likelihood of the tournaments getting cancelled, but at least an early decision will allow the Tour to make alternative arrangements, even if they are not as lucrative.
Last year, the men’s ATP Tour had to cancel the Shanghai Masters, Asia’s only ATP Masters 1000 tournament, the China Open in Beijing, an ATP 500 event, as well as the Chengdu Open and Zhuhai Championships, both ATP 250 events. This year, those tournaments are all still scheduled for later in the year, but see my comments above on the likelihood of that remaining the case.
Hessler’s Take on Chinese Skiing Misses Mark
With apologies to Peter Hessler, whose book River Town is among my favorites on China, he was most definitely the wrong person to be writing about the development of the Chinese skiing industry. I realize it’s the New Yorker and long reads are their thing, but frankly it’s way too long and much too self-indulgent. I won’t go into great detail, but I will mention three points:
- He seems determined to portray Chinese skiing as incredibly dangerous, when, in my experience, it’s mostly overcrowding on the beginner slopes, which doesn’t make for a particularly enjoyable experience if, like Hessler, you’re learning how to ski.
- Why on earth would you drive 1,300 miles from Chengdu to the ski resorts in Chongli (home of many of the Olympic ski events) “in order to avoid hassles at airports and train stations”? The high-speed train from Beijing gets you there in an hour and is incredibly simple and smooth.
- His line that “China has moved with a pronounced lack of urgency in vaccinating its citizens” is just nonsense. Hessler’s story is dated June 14. This New York Times piece, dated June 18, says “China has administered more than 945 million vaccine doses… with about 17 million shots injected every day.” Pronounced lack of urgency?
Eileen Gu Ailing Nominated for ESPY
China’s new winter sports star Eileen Gu Ailing has been nominated for Best Athlete, Women’s Action Sports at the ESPYS, the yearly sports awards originally launched by ESPN. Gu is up against snowboarders Chloe Kim and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott as well as surfer Carissa Moore. The 17-year-old won two world championships and two X Games gold medals earlier this year, and says she is “honored and incredibly grateful” for the nomination. Fans can vote at the link here, ahead of the awards night on July 10.
Chinese Diver To Compete for Australia at Olympics
Most of the nationality stories we’ve heard recently have concerned China recruiting athletes from other nations, whether in soccer, ice hockey, or other winter sports. But here’s a story about an athlete going the other way.
Li Shixin is a two-time world champion diver in the 1m springboard, winning gold for China in both 2011 and 2013. But after moving to Australia in 2017 as a coach, he decided to naturalize as an Australian and has just qualified for the Olympic team for Tokyo, where he will compete in the 3m springboard division. At 33, he becomes Australia’s oldest Olympic diving debutant, realizing a dream that never materialized with China because there is no 1m springboard category in the Olympics, and the Chinese team would have been far too competitive to have a 1m diver try his hand at 3m, too.
There’s a funny story about Li from when he won his first World Championship title in 2011. The sound system in Kazan, Russia, had some issues during the podium ceremony, so the Chinese national anthem wasn’t played as the Chinese flag was raised. But Li took it upon himself to bellow it out solo, earning an ovation from the local crowd and some viral fame back home.
Many Chinese athletes – especially in diving and gymnastics – have moved overseas to coach foreign national teams, although it’s fairly rare that any have switched nationalities to compete, given that most of them have already retired. Table tennis is a significant exception, where a notable number of Olympic competitors from other countries are Chinese-born, but not quite good enough to compete for China so they switch while still in their prime.
Joining Li as part of the seven-member Australian diving team is Esther Qin, who was also born in China and emigrated to Australia while in her late teens, after which she’s won some medals for Australia, most notably a gold medal at each of the 2014 and 2018 Commonwealth Games. Both Li and Qin appear to be outside bets for medals in Tokyo – and they’ll be very aware that their main competition comes from the land of their birth.
Boycott Watch
Former US President Donald Trump says that he is against boycotting the Beijing Olympics in 2022, saying it would be “unfair to the athletes” to boycott the games, and that countries around the world would see it as “sour grapes”. “I see it both ways,” Trump said, “but I would not do that.”
Elsewhere, the rhetoric is becoming more extreme. Senator Rick Scott is calling for NBCUniversal to urge the IOC to relocate the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing, citing the Chinese government’s human rights abuses. Meanwhile, future US presidential hopeful and former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley says the US must boycott the Games or else China will invade Taiwan, which seems something of a stretch:
“If we don’t boycott, if we don’t do something to really call them out, mark my words: Taiwan is next. And if they take Taiwan, it’s all over, because they will think that gives them free rein to grab any territory, not in the region, but anywhere they want to go.”
Remember that crazy piece I mentioned a few weeks ago, with a report claiming that China will try to use COVID-19 tests on athletes as a cover to sequence genetic material and create Chinese super-athletes? Well, the theory is getting some pick-up from US Senator Tom Cotton, perhaps the most hardline senior US politician on China, who included this point in a letter to President Biden about plans to ensure the safety and security of American athletes competing at Beijing 2022.
China’s friends on the international stage are few and far between these days – at least where the west is concerned – but there are still some supporters. Belarus has backed China to host a successful Olympics and condemned politicians calling for boycott, with the country’s Sports and Tourism Minister Sergey Kovalchuk saying politicians “must try to unite people by any means, build correct communications, fight for peace, fight for friendly relations between countries.”
Other Stories and Links
- All Winter Olympics projects in Zhangjiakou complete construction [State Council Information Office]
- Chinese-American swim prodigy Torri Huske shares tale of mother growing up in ‘labour camp’ after qualifying with national record [SCMP]
- China’s weightlifting world record holders Deng Wei and Tian Tao out of Tokyo 2020 [insidethegames]
- All primary students in South China’s Hainan province required to learn swimming by end of August to avoid safety hazards [Global Times]
- Chinese broadcasters are planning an 8K broadcast for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing [Engineering & Technology]
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