Global Sports and Contemporary China

This book examines the formation of a globally oriented sports system in China, from the beginning of the reform process in 1978 to the present, focusing on the period after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It analyses how this system has shaped domestic social class identities and its role in international Chinese state politics. Despite advances in the marketization of the sports industry through previous eras, the Chinese state expanded investment in a set of global sports following the heavily government-directed drive towards national success at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. This would be a time when the government focused on policies set to service a growing domestic middle-class and an increasingly wide-ranging set of international interests, with sporting investments being at the heart of their strategic plan. However, reform has proven difficult. The book presents a well-rounded account of this effort with tennis and soccer providing important case studies of the internal and external dynamics of this time. As such, the book will be of interest to researchers and students of globalization of sport, those studying East Asian sports development, and those who are interested in understanding China more broadly.

Adds to the scholarship on sport in China by analysing the post-Olympic period Engages with a variety of sources, including policy documentation and new qualitative data Looks towards the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, to consider how a global China will shape global sport

Autorentext

Oliver Rick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sport Management and Recreation at Springfield College, USA.
Longxi Li is a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Leadership in Athletics at the University of Washington, USA.

Inhalt
Chapter 1: Introduction: Global Sport in Contemporary China.- Chapter 2: Chinese Sport Policy from Reform to the Millennium.- Chapter 3: An Olympic China: Sport and the Preparation for Beijing 2008.- Chapter 4: Global Sports and Shifting Focus: Sport Policy, Investment, and the Inter-Olympic Period.- Chapter 5: Sport and Accessing a Global Community.- Chapter 6: When the Global Game Comes to the People's Republic.- Chapter 7: New forms of Domestic Distinction: Sport and Contemporary Chinese Class Structure.- Chapter 8: Tennis Culture and the Booming Urban Middle Class.- Chapter 9: China's Sporting Self Determination: Achieving independent global sporting dominance.