China’s Sports Reform Must Give Ordinary Children Somewhere to Play

Repeated defeats are a real problem; their causes need separating

By the Macau event on September 12, Chinese men had failed to reach the singles semifinals at four consecutive major WTT events: the US Smash, Yokohama Champions, Sweden Smash and Macau Champions. In the United States they stopped a round earlier. Wang Chuqin lost 1–3 to Anders Lind in the round of 16, and Lin Shidong lost 0–3 to Alexis Lebrun, leaving China without a men’s singles quarterfinalist. US results, summary of the four events

Macau had different conditions. Wang Chuqin and Lin Shidong were absent through injury. Huang Youzheng lost to Kanak Jha in the first round, Chen Yuanyu lost to Darko Jorgić in the round of 16, and Zhou Qihao lost 1–4 to Tomokazu Harimoto in the quarterfinals. Injuries and the lineup explain part of the background to that event; they cannot retrospectively explain the US defeats when the leading players were present.

Four events provide sufficient grounds to review squad depth, training and changes among opponents. They also show that the old expectation of reliably sweeping the honors is no longer dependable. But the results alone do not prove unfair selection, nor that Fan’s move abroad caused the defeats. Chinese women’s singles and doubles still produced strong results. Sun Yingsha and Kuai Man met in the US women’s singles final. Pressure on the men’s singles team should not become a claim that all Chinese table tennis has lost competitiveness.

Fan’s position also needs accurate description. He withdrew from the world rankings at the end of 2024; that was not an announcement of retirement. In July 2026 he moved from Saarbrücken to Düsseldorf for the 2026/27 season. A club match report on August 23 recorded two singles wins. Club report

Whether established athletes may play abroad and how the national team evaluates and uses them are two sets of rules that need to connect. Treating movement as an automatic loss of talent overlooks overseas leagues as opportunities to train and compete. Conversely, if the assessment system cannot explain how overseas results enter selection decisions, questions from athletes and spectators will not disappear on their own.

How far have Japan’s and Germany’s young players progressed?

Japan’s Sora Matsushima defeated Harimoto in the semifinals of the 2026 All Japan Championships and Hiroto Shinozuka 4–0 in the final, winning the title for a second successive year. He later beat Vladimir Sidorenko 4–2 in the US Smash final. Shinozuka also defeated Wen Ruibo and Hugo Calderano at that event. These are signs of young players delivering in high-level senior competition, not merely promising names on a junior-team roster. Japan Table Tennis Association, full US results

Germany’s evidence is at another level. Two Germans, Andre Bertelsmeier and Wim Verdonschot, met in the men’s singles final of the 2026 European Under-21 Championships, with Bertelsmeier winning 4–3. That identifies prospects worth watching. There remains a distance between an Under-21 title and the top of the senior world game. Nor can a German club employing Fan be credited as German youth development producing an Olympic champion. European Table Tennis Union report

Likewise, a stretch of defeats for young Chinese players does not mean nobody can compete. Lin Shidong has already achieved high-level international results. The issue is whether players can respond consistently to different opponents and keep challenging for leading roles, not whether there has ever been a young champion.

Testing a claim of a missing generation requires sustained observation of peers’ senior appearances, performances against strong opponents, injuries and depth. Comparing the single best young player abroad with everyone who lost at one Chinese outing turns a real problem into an emotional assertion.

What gold medals prove, and what they leave unanswered

China’s women’s volleyball team won five successive major world titles from 1981 to 1986 and another Olympic title in 2016. Those achievements reflect real training and competitive ability. Concentrated resources do not make them count for less. But a national team’s victories do not tell us whether ordinary students have courts, whether a county can sustain a league, or whether children who were not selected can continue playing.

Centralized development is good at directing limited resources toward a small number of high-potential athletes, maintaining access to coaches, medical support and intensive training. Its vulnerable point is whether those rejected early, or unsuited to highly centralized living, have another route. The earlier selection comes and the higher the cost of leaving, the more likely families are to treat one trial as a decision about a child’s entire future.

Football, basketball and volleyball depend especially on repeated competition over long periods. A place on a training-camp roster is not the same as gaining decision-making experience against opponents. Weekly matches, minutes played and the quality of opposition tell us more about development than the number of activities attended in a year. That is why adding designated schools alone may not deliver results.

More community teams and clubs do not automatically mean fairness

Having schools, communities and clubs alongside one another lets children participate first and gradually choose how much to commit. There are observers beyond one coach. Rejection by one institution may be followed by an opportunity in another league, club or age group. German football’s regional talent network offers an organizational approach different from a single centralized selection. Yet one country and one sport cannot stand for all sport abroad.

The real value of such a route lies in preserving another chance: a late developer gets more years, someone changing sports can start again, and someone whose interest never becomes a career can keep participating.

Markets have barriers of their own. Project Play’s survey of families participating in youth sports found average annual spending of $1,016 on one child’s primary sport in 2024, 46% above 2019. This is not an average across all US households, but it is enough to show that club routes can select families by money, transport and parents’ time. Survey explanation

Professional prospects are even less suitable as a promise of widespread returns. NCAA estimates for men’s basketball in 2024 counted approximately 43 NBA selections among an estimated 4,359 draft-eligible players, or about 1%. This measures the NBA draft alone, not the share reaching any professional basketball opportunity. Even within that limit, it shows why the earnings of a few successful athletes cannot underwrite an ordinary family’s training bills.

Coaches responsible only for immediate results may also favor children who mature earlier and can win now. Multiple institutions offer chances to correct such judgments, but that requires transfers, appropriate groupings and matches for those not selected. Otherwise, “free choice” may simply mean that affluent families can afford more chances.

Reform has begun; the next test is the participant’s experience and costs

The 2020 guidelines on integrating sports and education explicitly promoted cooperation among schools, sports schools and community sports organizations. The 2026 national youth-sports meeting continued to emphasize links between broad participation and higher performance. It would be wrong to say reform has not begun. Beijing’s 2025 Hundred Teams Cup attracted 1,369 teams, offering a concrete example of open registration and competition at multiple levels. National meeting, Beijing practice

The size of an event does not establish that every child can afford to participate or keep getting games. Whether reform reaches families can be assessed through results closer to their actual experience:

Barrier to address	Results worth publishing consistently
Having a team does not guarantee matches	Matches per season and actual playing time for ordinary participants
Children can participate in primary school but leave later	Participation after entering junior and senior secondary school, and reasons for leaving
Training fees hide other barriers	Total household spending on travel, equipment and events, and assistance for families in need
Rejected children have nowhere to go	Ordinary leagues, transfers, changes of sport and routes back into mainstream education
Selection criteria are hard to understand	Observation periods, assessment standards, opportunities for reconsideration and appeals

Sports schools’ professional coaches and accumulated expertise can support schools and grassroots organizations; they need not be rejected wholesale. Public money should also fund opportunities for the majority rather than follow only a few prizewinning teams. Elite development can maintain demanding standards while ordinary participants receive dependable facilities, organizers and another match.

Fan’s matches raise questions about how elite athletes are used. Repeated men’s singles defeats raise questions about who comes next. Those pressures can drive reform, but recovering a few gold medals should not be where the work ends.

A child should be able to find a court and a team on Saturday, then have another match next week after a loss. Years later, discovering that a professional career is out of reach should still leave room for normal schooling and games with friends. Whether that life becomes common is what determines whether sport has truly taken root in ordinary people’s days.

References

The discussion of competition results is current through September 15, 2026. Results from different age groups, events and years are not combined into an overall win rate.

写作附记

Original Prompt

$blog-writer In China, many sports operate under a state-run system rather than being driven by personal interest, especially in light of the recent Fan Zhendong incident. Previously, people in China believed that table tennis was an invincible discipline for us—as long as we competed, we would win gold medals. Now things have changed: the key players we’ve cultivated have left, those who remain lack sufficient ability, and issues have emerged in the selection mechanism. This doesn’t even mention football, basketball, or volleyball. The former glory of the Chinese women’s volleyball team was also a product of the sports school era—mobilizing national efforts made everyone feel that the Chinese women’s volleyball team was incredibly strong. In foreign selection models, children in elementary school are free to participate in various sports, choosing what they like. During holidays, they can continue training at clubs. If coaches think they have potential, or if they’re spotted by scouts, they can advance to higher-level clubs, participate in youth professional leagues, and work their way up. Analyze the progress of China’s sports reform and the advantages and disadvantages of foreign models.

Supplementary Prompts

The article content is incomplete. Chinese table tennis has lost quite a few matches recently. Please add the corresponding content.

The article content has missing content. Chinese table tennis has lost quite a few matches recently. Corresponding content needs to be added. Japan and Germany both have successors, while China seems to have a gap in this area.

Rewrite the articles from these three months. Note: if an article was not written by AI, do not rewrite it.