Tien Chin Tan

Policy transfer and learning from the west: Elite basketball development in the People's Republic of China

The article examines the engagement of the People’s Republic of China with global sport using basketball as an example. Following a discussion of the priority given to national elite team sport success in contemporary China, the article explores the range of mechanisms that facilitate sport globalization and focuses particularly on evaluating the utility of the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing. The examination of the concepts is achieved through the exploration of a series of questions relating to recent developments in basketball in China, including how the need for reform of the domestic system was recognized and articulated, who was instrumental in transferring policy, which countries were identified as suitable exemplars, and which policies were transferred. The article draws on data collected from a number of sources, including official government documents, news media, and a series of interviews with Chinese officials from key governmental organizations. The article concludes that the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing provide significant insight into the process of China’s engagement in basketball, and identifies a series of tensions arising from the process that affect contemporary sport policy.

Chinese Olympic sport policy: Managing the impact of globalisation

The article examines the extent to which, and the manner in which, the Chinese government managed its relationship with the Olympic movement following its re-engagement with international elite sport competition in the mid 1970s. Locating the analysis in the literature on globalisation, the article notes the limited research exploring the role of the state in managing the relationship between domestic and global sport. Based on extensive document analysis and interviews, the article provides an analysis of the governmental strategy to increase Chinese influence in the Olympic movement, produce a strong national Olympic squad of athletes and ensure success at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is argued that the Chinese state was not only effective in organising and concentrating resources to support its policy objectives, but was also able to incorporate aspects of market capitalism into its elite development system and, so far at least, generally manage effectively the tensions that arose from an increasingly wealthy, mobile and individualistic cohort of elite athletes and coaches.

Globalization and Chinese Sport Policy: The Case of Elite Football in the People's Republic of China

The aim of this article is to analyse Chinas engagement in global sport through an examination of the case of elite football. Although many studies exhibit a quite proper concern with the extent to which the deep structure of culture is affected by sports globalization, they generally fail to give significant consideration to the role of the state, because of excessive emphasis on other aspects of globalization such as commercialization, commodification and cultural homogenization. We attempt, therefore, to refocus on the role of the state and to investigate its relationship with global sport by adopting the theoretical framework of Held et al. (1999) as the main analytical tool for this study. By taking strategic approaches in the economic and cultural/ideological fields, the Chinese government has demonstrated, to some degree, its capacity to find effective ways to manage its relationship with global football. This was demonstrated particularly by the setting up of new governmental commercial agencies, updating sport and football regulations, and strengthening Chinese communist ideological education.

Xi Jin-Ping’s World Cup Dreams: From a Major Sports Country to a World Sports Power

Abstract Football is among the world’s most popular sports. It is also one which China has sought to develop in the field of global professional sport. Nevertheless, the professionalization of football in China has not to date actually improved China’s Olympic achievement in the sport. In stark contrast to the glory of being the country that won most gold medals at the 2008 Olympics, China’s poor football performance has been troublesome for the country’s leader. In 2009, newly elected Xi Jin-Ping made a public statement about promoting elite football and expressed his personal hope that China would be capable of both qualifying for the final stages and winning the FIFA World Cup. With such concern on the part of the state leader, attention turned to football, with many private enterprises beginning to echo government policy by demonstrating a willingness to promote elite football. In addition, to accelerate football development, the Chinese Government promised to take action on the separation of government football associations. Research on this process was based on the theoretical framework of state corporatism derived from Schmitter’s work of 1974. Semi-structured interviews were conducted as the method of data collection aimed at helping us understand how Chinese Government either integrated or controlled relevant stakeholders such as NGOs and private enterprises, and further, to discuss the interactions between them.

The Chinese Government and the Globalization of Table Tennis: A Case Study in Local Responses to the Globalization of Sport

This study aims to explore the relationship between the Chinese government and the globalization of sport. The analysis looks at how the Chinese government has developed and managed its national sport, table tennis, as the sport became more and more globalized. This research developed a theoretical framework and an analytical tool based on Houlihans model for analyzing ‘global reach and local response in sport’ and adopted a qualitative approach of content analysis and semi-structured interviews. A total of 16 interviewees contributed to this study, consisting of officials from Chinese sports administrations and Chinese scholars specializing in sports studies. This study found that the Chinese government has responded to the challenges associated with the globalization of table tennis in the dimensions of ‘participating in international organizations’ and ‘commercialization’ in two and five different ways, respectively. As this case study of China shows, a countrys response to the globalization of sport is not limited to just one of the three types of responses described by Houlihan: passive, participative, or conflictual. In fact, a combination of two types is also possible. In Chinas case, the response has been both participativeand conflictual, but never passive. This study concludes that since the Chinese government habitually prioritizes the interests of the state ahead of everything else, it has never loosened its grip on the development of table tennis. It has so far demonstrated its ability to control resources when dealing with the impacts associated with the globalization of table tennis. Chinas socialist market economy model, which features a ‘dual-track system’ and ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, has generated a unique set of values that serves to rationalize whatever conflicts arise between capitalism and socialism. Although the Chinese government currently handles its relationship with globalization effectively and flexibly, the reform and opening up policies in China are expanding and may expose conflicts of interest between the Communist regime, enterprises, and professional players in the foreseeable future.

Responding to globalisation: The case of elite artistic gymnastics in China:

This article presents an exploration of a non-Western nation’s responses to globalisation through an in-depth analysis of elite artistic gymnastics in China over a lengthy time span. The concept of globalisation and patterns of ‘reach’ and ‘response’ act as the heuristic devices underpinning the analysis. Data were collected from a range of documents and from six semi-structured interviews. The trajectory of Chinese elite artistic gymnastics’ responses to globalisation can be characterised as a passive response in the 1950s, a participative response in the first half of the 1960s, a conflictual response from 1966 to the early 1970s, a participative response from the early 1970s to the 2012 Olympic Games, and a passive response, once again, during the Rio Olympiad (post-London 2012). In this way, a nation’s responses to globalisation are seen as dynamic rather than rigid or static. China’s case also demonstrates that a nation can have a degree of autonomy when responding to globalisation, although in extreme cases, a nation-state can choose to resist this globalising context, largely depending on a government’s attitude towards globalisation and the value the government attaches to it.

Sport policy in China

Acknowledging China’s established status as a global sporting superpower, this is the first book to systematically investigate sport policy in that country. With a focus on sport development in the most recent three decades, Sport Policy in China explores a wide range of topics in Chinese sport, including elite sport development, professional sports, major sports events, sport for all, the political context within which sport is interiorised and the distinctive sporting status of Hong Kong. It examines the debates around policy, globalisation, diplomacy and soft power, as well as the significance of the principle of ‘one country, two systems’. With international appeal, this book is a valuable resource for students and researchers in the fields of sport policy, sport management, sport development and sport sociology.

Managing compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code: China’s strategies and their implications

With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of athletes. To understand China’s strategies for managing compliance with the Code and also the implications behind those strategies, this study borrows ideas from theories of compliance. China’s high levels of performance in sport, judged by medal success, have undoubtedly placed the country near the top of the global sports field. Therefore, how China acts in relation to international organizations, and especially how it responds to the World Anti-Doping Agency, is highly significant for the future of elite sport and for the world anti-doping regime. Through painstaking efforts, the researchers visited Beijing to conduct field research four times and interviewed a total of 22 key sports personnel, including officials at the General Administration of Sports of China, the China Anti-Doping Agency, and individual sport associations, as well as sport scholars and leading officials of China’s professional sports leagues. In response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, China developed strategies related to seven institutional factors: ‘monitoring’, ‘verification’, ‘horizontal linkages’, ‘nesting’, ‘capacity building’, ‘national concern’ and ‘institutional profile’. As for the implications, the Chinese government is willing and able to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. In other words, the Chinese government is willing to pay a high price in terms of money, manpower and material resources so that it can recover from the disgrace suffered as a result of doping scandals in the 1990s. The government wants to ensure that China’s prospects as a participant, bidder and host of mega sporting events are not compromised, especially as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Interrogating the Key Policy Factors Behind South Korea’s Archery Success

Abstract This paper aims to interrogate the key policy factors behind South Korea’s archery success. Based on our review on the history of Korean archery, two additional key elements in terms of organization and administration were also included to form the analytical framework of this research, aside from Green and Houlihan’s four key policy elements. Our analytical framework is thus comprised of two background elements for elite sport development – the organizational structure and administration, and four areas of elite sport policy. According to our analytical framework, this paper highlights four key policy dimensions that have influenced South Korea’s archery success, as follows: (i) establishment of the Korean Archery Association (KAA) and the involvement of business elites; (ii) emergence of potential full-time archers by the identification of, and the support for, young talented athletes; (iii) developments in sport science, coaching, and facilities/equipment; and (iv) the provision of more systematic competition opportunities for elite-level archers. In summary, the success of Korean archers might be closely linked to the result of the KAA’s staunch strategy and policy initiatives encouraged by the government for international sporting success and the way in which the organization has paid more salient attention to the policy commitments as noted above.

Assessing the sociology of sport: On globalisation and sport policy

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key scholar in the sociology of sport in Taiwan, Tien-Chin Tan, considers the field’s concerns with globalisation and how they transact with and inform the study of sport policy. In considering the trajectories of what seem to be two distinct areas of inquiry, Tan notes that much common ground exists between the sociology of sport and sport policy studies in areas such as those focused on global sport organisations, sport mega-events, athlete migration, sport for development, right to play initiatives and exploitation of child labour. Because sociologists of sport and researchers on sport policy often view sport from distinct theoretical lenses and wield different methodological tactics, a key challenge will be for researchers in each area to abandon their insistence on exclusivity and on the superiority of their respective approaches. In the future, researchers from each camp should work to learn from each other and advance cross-disciplinary cooperation that can contribute greatly to the acquisition of a more comprehensive and insightful understanding of sport, globalisation and the role of nation states and nations in relation to different socio-political contexts. The essay closes by illustrating how such a merger of approaches has advanced understanding about the relationship of social scientific work with changes in sport policy in the People’s Republic of China.