Why China sucks at team sports

Why are the Chinese so bad at team sports?

Even with a population of 1.4B people, china is not ranked highly on any team sports

Athletes from China are usually good at solo sports. But, they struggle at team sports.

For example, China is great at Olympic sports like gymnastics, weightlifting, and diving. But, it doesn't do great when it comes to games like basketball, soccer, or baseball.

The Chinese Soccer Team failed to qualify for the World Cup in 2022, extending its absence to 20 years.

But other Asian countries like South Korea and Japan qualified, ranking at
24th and 28th in the world at that time

In 2023, the Chinese basketball team was knocked out of the FIBA Basketball World Cup. They lost three games and won only one match against Angola

As a result, they missed qualifying for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
This disappointed many Chinese fans since they again have no men's squad to root for

Apart from soccer and basketball, China struggles with other team sports like baseball.

This is the final moment of the 2023 World Baseball Classic for China against Korea. Korea beat China 22 to 2.

In the end, Japan won their third title. They won after beating the defending champion United States 3–2 in the championship game.

Some of the other team sports China struggle with include like rugby, cricket, and hockey.

Even with a population of 1.4B, China does not perform well when it comes to the most popular team sports.

I believe that China fails to compete due to a culture focused on education, a lack of infrastructure, and a lack of passion and pride for these given sports.

Basically, athletes in China lack incentives to pursue sports careers, despite a huge pool of people to pick from and world-class athletes.

To be great at a sport, there has to be tradition and pride. This cannot created overnight.

This requires tremendous sacrifice at a national level and individual level most of these athletes are not going to make it.

Instead, the truth is China does not take team sports seriously like we do in the west. There is no althetic scholarships for student athletes nor are there hundreds of development teams and organizations helping these kids grow.

Instead, China mostly relies on the old model of scouting children who have nothing else going for themselves and feed them to a system that is built to chew you out.

Unlike solo sports that require repetition and the require genetics. There is no effective roadmap for finding the next Messi in China.

And to do so requires a national obsession for a sport. It also requires individual sacrifice and the right culture and system for kids to grow.

And to be honest, I would much rather see thousands of engineers being created in China versus 1 talented soccer, baseball, or basketball player.

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[lieutenantkettch]

I mean, the Japanese and Koreans also value education and also have their fair share of cram schools to get into university.

[rome]

I work in China as football coach with kids, I think one of their issues is that they are very individualistic. It is hard to fight against that and make them play for the team instead of for themselves.

[juandeag]

I visited a chinese school a few years ago and was kinda shocked at everything. They had stunning sports facilities with a massive badminton hall and a full size soccer pitch as well as basketball courts on the roof of the school. Bear in mind, this was downtown Beijing so it was all very impressive. Throughout the day they played lots of sports so calling out their lack of time for sports is just BS. However, following a student assigned to me throughout the day i really notized how different going to school in China is compared to Denmark where i'm from. There was absolutely NO team/group work or time for thinking or reflection for any of the students when they had classes. The teacher would just talk and write down on the chalkboard whilst students took notes. I observed math, english and some kind of writing class. It was all the same. I asked my student if it was normal and she said it was like that every day. From my small experience, i got a feeling that China are raising kids who are like robots and i think their society also reflects this in many ways. How can they do team sports if they have never been taught how to work together as a team?

[lamchunting]

"I don't know anything about Angola, but Angola's in trouble"

[ethercarp]

I’d say there is a deeper cultural reason related to the educational style that bleeds into attitudes around sports. Negative feedback might work in education and ends up producing kids who get all 100 questions right to avoid having to answer for the one or two wrong answers. In sports, you can’t take this approach with a goalkeeper, batter, or three point shooter and expect the team dynamic to stay strong.

I work in a Chinese school that focuses on sports, and I see talented footballers blame their teammates for not receiving a pass. Coaches lay into goalkeepers during the game. In Europe, the culture of team sports is more focused on relieving pressure from teammates so they can play more naturally, not looking to blame them. “You’d better not make a mistake” doesn’t work as well as “let’s play well” in team sports.

[HaiLeQuang]

It's also about priority. Team sports take much larger investment while still worth only same 1 gold Olympic medal. Priority is given to individual sports the

[gw]

There is also a recent story about the dopping agency allowing 23 Chinese athletes who tested positive for steroids to compete at the last Olympics, and kept it secret

[luishernandezblonde]

There are two things that facilitated China’s lack of team mentality:

First, the One Child policy. China forcibly restricted parents to have only one child from 1978 to 2016. This meant the kid was raised to become the best, and teamwork mentality vanished. This has a disastrous impact in China’s team sport development.

Second, poor design of education system. Chinese education system is designed to restrict, not to be flexible like in South Korea and Japan, both are similar to China in term of harsh education. However, South Korea and Japan have been able to design their education curriculums to navigate and enable young people to embrace sports if they are not academically blessing, something China failed to do so.

[WayneWst]

I had a Chinese friend who was in the soccer training camp, he has a big passion for the game and his parents were Palace fan (most likely due to Fan Zhiyi). He said one of the problem he found in the state training camp was no one wanted to be there, lots of students were they because they don’t wanna study. The training are very static and using old format like teaching Fundamentals of the game just doesn’t work. But however when he trained with BSU, there’s a sense of light.

[blbl]

My question is, why don't South Korea and Japan have the same problems with education hindering their sports development. Im not incredibly informed about the specifics but doesn't all 3 of those countries largely focus on education

[Ledpooplin]

Guy kind of drops the ball at the end. Chinese kids are too busy studying? Not the strongest conclusion. That's like what the Chinese government would say.

[prfwrx]

Honestly, a nation's ability to perform at team sports is quite indicative of its sociological ability at collective action. It doesn't matter if you have billions of people and millions of "the best", if they're all brought up by society to always look after their own ass above all else, to fuck over everyone else along the way just to get ahead. Such sociological attitudes are antithetical to effective labor unions (one that's an independent social corporation, not part of capital or state), bottom up social reform, or having a competent sports team.

[gbalph]

At one point China’s women’s soccer team was one of the best in the world. They managed to draw with the US in 1999 before losing in penalties. The government funded them well and they were the first Women’s World Cup host. Now they can’t escape the group stage.

[HomuresuBijuarukei]

Chinese women’s teams have traditionally been quite competitive - there was a film made in 2020 called Leap based on the women’s national volleyball team. The coach Lang Ping is very famous for coaching both the Chinese national team and the US National team. The national football team has a storied history too.

[andrewflage]

This is an excellent video, minimal yapping and a good script, keep it up, I honestly didn't realize how few views it had because the quality was so high

[TruthSeeker-is]

No sibling, no cousin leads to lack of family bond. Team sports are like families working together.

[AAirways]

At one point China was actually decent in women's hockey and basketball, but IIRC these are the only team sports where China actually achieved any measure of international success...

[felipenachmanowicz]

Tho from what I've spoke to some chinese ppl, they are a bit frustrated by how bad they do in football. I see them wanting to have a more competitive football team.

[rh]

So no mention of the Chinese women's national volleyball team (five world cups, two world championships, and three Olympic titles), I guess it didn't fit your narrative. And have you ever thought that maybe due to the average height of Chinese people, there are not many NBA stars, as is the case for all other Asian nations?

[sml]

There are a lot of factors but the system is the most important in my opinion. Before their unification, East Germany won way more Olympic individual medals than West Germany. But West Germany was way better at soccer than East Germany. They are the exact same people and yet you see a big difference in results in a short period of time.