China Sports Review » Basketball

Top 10 Chinese Sports News in 2008

David — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:41:15 +0000

2008 is by all means an extraordinary year for China’s sports. Not merely because this country won so many golds in the Beijing Games, there’re actually so much more interesting things beyond that if we comb back closely, either about its sports administration and regime, or simply the government itself.

1. Juguo Rules the Games

51 golds, 21 silvers and 28 bronzes, a total 100 medals. China for the first time surpassed the US in the number of golds won most golds in an Olympic Games by sticking to its juguo or whole-nation sports regime. People at the General Administration of Sport of China, the governing body of China’s sports, had since been discussing about proliferating their successful juguo model into a more popular sport, football.

2. Lin Miaoke, Blackout and the Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games will be long remembered not only by its pyrotechnics and drum show, but also a girl named Lin Miaoke, who lip-synced when singing ‘Ode to the Motherland.’ “The reason was for the national interest,” said Chen Qigang, the musical director of the opening ceremony in a radio interview. Chen added that the decision of doing lip-syncing was made at the highest level. It goes without saying that whoever knew about this decision before the ceremony were cool about it, even the parents of Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi, the real singer, for whatever reasons that I can’t understand.

Chen’s so-called ‘national interest’ did scare me, along with the blackout struck our community in Beijing on August 8, 15 minutes after the show began. I saw my neighbors helplessly talking to one other in the alley and guiltily drove to my friend’s. No one told us we were to have a blackout, and no one even came to us to explain what had happened after August 8. A Caijing article later showed that at least 15 pathetic residential communities in Chaoyang District had blackout that night, together contributing to the ‘national interest’ unknowingly. The lip-syncing girl at least had a shot of rejecting doing good to the ‘national interest,’ we didn’t. And that’s only in Beijing, the capital city.

3. Age Of Chinese Women Gymnasts Questioned

Chinese women gymnasts, He Kexin and Jiang Yuyuan, were questioned about their ages after winning golds at the Games. It all began with Stryde’s hack of Chinese websites. All evidence disappeared, ID cards and passports provided. Sorry American girls, you did really well in the games but Chinese did better, if not in the indoor stadium.

4. Yi Jianlian and CBA Age Scandals

Ages of 22 CBA players were found to have been changed their ages before the new season in the new yearbook issued by CBA, the governing body of Chinese basketball. The association then told media that there’re actually 26 players changed their ages, submitting all the info to FIBA and acting like they had no idea about the situation before. Early this December, a reporter at the Chinese-language version of Sports Illustrated found evidence suggesting that Yi Jianlian, New Jersey Nets forward, is 3 years older than he claimed to be.

5. Horse Gambling in Wuhan

Some 3 million jobs and 100 billion Chinese yuan annual sales sound so enticing that gambling, after nearly 60-year ban in China, reappeared in a different form of packaging. And looks like it will be welcomed even more by the government under the current economic circumstances.

6. China Bowl Canceled by NFL Again

From Hongda’s withdrawal from Formula One to MLB and NFL’s job cuts, sports industry was so much struck by the slumping economy this winter. China bowl was once again canceled by NFL and New England Patriots closed its office in Beijing.

7. Li Ning Lit the Olympic Flame

Li Ning’s lighting of the Olympic cauldron at the closing ceremony is no doubt the biggest ambush marketing in Olympic history. Although not an official Olympic sponsor, the Chinese sportswear manufacturer must have sold more sneakers thanks to the incomparable publicity it enjoyed at the ceremony. Li Ning penned a contract with Los Angeles Clippers’ Baron Davis this November, a branding move that can be translated as ‘we don’t care much about the North American market.’

8. Fenglu Club Vs. CBA

It’s sad after so much preparation and promises and Fenglu still hadn’t gotten what they wanted, a seat at Chinese Basketball Association, China’s top basketball league. “Geographical balance” might be the weirdest explanation one can ever think of, and unfortunately that’s all CBA could offer for the club.

9. Liu Xiang’s Last Minute Withdrawal

For millions of Chinese fans, Liu Xiang is simply a source of national pride, the same complex Chinese people had towards China women’s national volleyball team in the 1980s, after claiming five straight major titles. Liu’s last minute withdrawal at the Beijing Games were widely sympathized by fans except for the anger from the scalpers. Liu, 110-meter hurdler, had been covered almost everyday by Chinese media after winning gold in 2004 Athens Olympics. Some said he was hurt not by injury, but the overzealous Chinese media.

10. Chinese Football Out for 2010 World Cup

Chinese football fans could not be downhearted more this year. The national men’s football team was eliminated in the 2010 World Cup Qualifiers this June and lost whatever match they could lose in the rest of the year. Yesterday on December 30, Wei Shaohui, the manager of the men’s team and an official at Chinese Football Association, apologized in a press conference for the poor performance of the team with his theory about potency, “we’ll be potent again when the performance gets better.”

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Age Scandal Continues, Yi Jianlian Proved to Be 3 Years Older

David — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:12:41 +0000

China Sports Review previously told you about the age scandal over Chinese basketball and football players. Li Zhigang, a reporter from the Chinese version of Sports Illustrated (体育画报), posted an article on his blog yesterday about the investigation over Yi Jianlian‘s age. Yi, now playing at the New Jersey Nets, entered NBA in 2007/2008 season. For those of you who’re not familiar with the story of his age, below are some excerpts from Wikipedia:

Although Yi is officially listed as being born in 1987,there have been several allegations that his date of birth was intentionally falsified so that he would be able to play longer in junior competitions. However, Yi has refused to comment on his age.

Yi is not the first Chinese player to come under scrutiny, as former NBA player Wang Zhizhi has been listed as being born in both 1977 and 1979. In 2004, Yi was listed as being born in 1984 in China’s Four Nation Tournament,although Chinese officials said that it was probably a typographical error. Two years later, Fran Blinebury of The Houston Chronicle reported that Yi told Shane Battier he was 24 in an exhibition game before the 2006 FIBA World Championship, although the story was refuted by both Yi and Battier. However, in November 2006, a senior CBA official admitted that past youth squads had indeed included players above the permitted age.

In 2007, a Chinese government registration site was made public by hackers, and Yi’s date of birth was shown as being in 1984. American center Jason Dixon, who had been Yi’s teammate during Yi’s entire career in Guangdong, said to Chad Ford in June 2007 that Yi was “21 or 22…It’s pretty common over [in China] to change ages”.

Li went to Yi Jianlian’s hometown, Xitou Village in Heshan City(鹤山市沙坪镇坡山村西头村), Guangdong Province for interviews in November. He found Yi’s senior high registration form at Binhe Middle School(滨河中学) which seemed to be filled by Yi himself, listing his date of birth as Oct.27, 1984, 3 years older than his NBA registration age. The reporter also found an elementary graduation group photo of Yi taken in 1997, which pretty much says it all. Li later received floods of nasty comments after posting the article and he published a new post today to those he referred to as ‘bystanders’. Below is our translation:

First, I’m a sports journalist and it’s my responsibility to report. Let’s set aside morals and patriotism and only state the facts. Truth can not be falsified.

Second, we can see the governing body of Chinese basketball’s willingness to make an improvement from the emergence of age-gate news per se. Even the widely scolded bureaucracy is now willing to change. How come a group of bystanders can’t stand a registration form?

Third, I’d like to quote Li Yingfa, a football coach I interviewed this September, who won ten consecutive league championships back in the 80s. “Our young team was playing older players at the time. It’s not like Chinese football today, trading their ages for only some good results. Players now all change their ages by 2 or 3 years. This is what keeps trapping Chinese football, as our players can’t compete with others when they get older. Our team didn’t care about the results back then. We had gotten a number of young talents and that’s what made the team successful.”

The new round of age-scandal questions all begins with Arthur Volbert’s article last month, in which 22 players were found to have changed their ages before the new season. CBA, the government body of Chinese basketball, then told media that Arthur’s number is not accurate and there’re actually 26 players changed their ages after checking their IDs together with the police.

Related Reads:

Li Zhigang’s blog: Investigation Over Yi Jianlian’s Age (Chinese)
Sports Law Blog: Yi Jianlian’s Age, NBA Employment, and Immigration Law
Shanghai Scrap: A lone blogger STILL asks: How old is Yi Jianlian?

photo: Li Zhigang

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Beijing Hoop Dreams

David — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:05:52 +0000

Dan Chung made this wonderful video about Wang Chenyang, a student at Wang Fei Basketball Training Camp at Shi Dai High School (h/t Danwei). Dan is a photographer at the Guardian.

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CBA Players And Myth About The Ages Of Chinese Women Gymnasts

David — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 02:29:33 +0000

We stumbled upon a fascinating post today on Asia Basket. Arthur Volbert, a US-based basketball writer who’s been closely following Chinese basketball, found that ages of 22 CBA players have been changed at the start of season 2008/2009. Below are some excerpts:

For Jiangsu, Tang Zhengdong went from being born in 1984 to 1982, confirming longtime rumors than he was older than his listed age. Others who became older were Han Shuo, Yi Li, Hu Xuefeng, Meng Da and Fang Hui.

For Liaoning, National Team member Zhang Qingpeng went from being born in 1985 to being born in 1981. Yang Ming, Gu Liye, Lu Wei and Liu Xiangtao also became older.

For other teams, there are the normal ups and downs with ages that happens in China. Guangdong’s Du Feng, a member of the National Team, went from being born in 1981 to being born in 1982. He keeps switching from one to the other and back, for some unfathomable reason.

Are we surprised by the news? Not at all. Your correspondent at CSR happened to be the schoolmate of two CBA players, one at Shanghai Sharks (上海大鲨鱼队) and the other at Bayi Rockets (八一火箭队), who both were officially listed last year by CBA as four years younger than we know. The two players are unfortunately not on Arthur’s list.

If someone digs, age-scandal stories of this kind can be found in almost every soon-to-be-nationalised football clubs in the country. The reason no one gives a hoot about it is because Chinese football has been lying there in a perennial slumber for so long. And oh, by Chinese football we mean men’s national football team. If you look at the performances of Chinese U17 or U20 men’s team you’ll find they’re actually not as bad as their elders, the U17 team even made it to the quarter-finals of FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2005 in Peru. This suggests that the pace, strength, stamina of these ‘boys’ outruned their foreign peers at the time. The bad news for Chinese footballers is their peers do grow, and we all know what can be expected later.

What Arthur found reminds us of the debate over ages in the Beijing Olympic Games, where two Chinese women gymnasts, He Kexin (何可欣) and Jiang Yuyuan (江钰源), were questioned whether their were below 16, the age women gymnasts are considered eligible to compete in the Games. “The girls are so little, so young,” said Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic all-around gymnastics champion at the 1984 Los Angeles Games to the New York Times when speaking of He. “They said she was 16, but I don’t know.”

Well, we don’t know either. But chances are the Chinese Gymnastics Association do, and they told media that the young ladies are old enough. We genuinely hope He and Jiang are not like those basketball and football players, otherwise they not only cheated their competitors but also themselves, and the gold medals they won will always remind them of what happened this summer.

Sources and Reads:

Asia Basket: 22 CBA Players Change Birth Years
The New York Times: Ruling Backs Chinese Gymnasts
Sports Law Blog: Yi Jianlian’s Age, NBA Employment, and Immigration Law

Photo: Baidu Baike

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The Battle Between Fenglu Club And The Chinese Basketball Association

David — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:38:32 +0000

Tan Jie, the director of Fenglu Club, cried at the press conference.

Guangdong Fenglu Aluminum Basketball Club (Fenglu, 广东凤铝铝业男子篮球俱乐部), founded in November 2006 by Guangdong Fenglu Aluminium Co.,Ltd, yesterday on November 2 made a statement about the club’s decision to quit Chinese Basketball Association(CBA, 中国篮球协会), governing body of Chinese basketball which is also the name of China’s premier professional basketball league. Below are some excerpts from the club’s statement.

- Stop Protecting Our Rights

In June 2008, Fenglu won the title of NBL, the secondary league to CBA, and thus qualified for getting promoted to the top league. The club had met all the 40 conditions of becoming a CBA team either in hardware or software in the evaluation by CBA staff in August. But on September 4, the Basketball Association and its league committee unofficially let CBA teams cast votes on whether nor not Fenglu should enter the league based on the principle of ‘geological balance of the clubs’. (CSR: Noted that CBA will have four teams based in Guangdong Province if Fenglu enters, as Olypian Professional Basketball Club (北京奥神职业篮球俱乐部) will return to CBA this year from the American Basketball Association.) The poll which is strongly against Qualification Paper issued by CBA should be questioned and we had to take it as a black box operation. Fenglu submitted the case to the General Administration of Sport of China later by the court based on China’s Sports Law and GASC’s regulations, hoping that they can do the supervising duty. The GASC replied at 6 pm on October 21 to the club: Your request is not in our accepting list, please submit it to other organizations concerned.Fenglu brought a suit against CBA on October 22 but it was rejected by the court. Until now, all CBA, GASC and People’s Court haven’t provide any possible help on this matter. Therefore, Fenglu decided to stop protecting its rights after seeing no hopes of getting protection through proper means.

- The Credibility of CBA Should Be Questioned

According to the Qualification Paper issued by CBA, Fenglu had met the requirements both in ranking and club conditions that can guarantee it a place in CBA. But the club was ‘balanced out’ due to a manipulated poll. Fenglu has been expecting CBA can deal with this matter properly based on respecting the regulations and being down-to-earth. Our club would accept the decision ifCBA could explain it in a reasonably and properly manner.

Fenglu questions CBA’s decision to disqualify the club from entering the top league. CBA staff first denied there’s a need of ‘geological balance of the clubs’ but later get it confirmed. It’s hard to understand what principles CBA has been following in doing their supervising duty. Looking back at the whole dispution process, the attitude and actions of CBA as a supervising body is disappointing, and we’re in doubt of its credibility.

Fenglu questions the so-called ‘democratic poll’, as the requirements of entering CBA are clearly stated in Qualification Paper and Qualification Details issued by CBA and there’s no so-called ‘democratic poll’ on them.

Fenglu questions the poll result. CBA tried to make up its already published first poll by orgnizing a second one on October 7 that included Fenglu Club as a voter. Had Fenglu been voted out after the first poll or the second? If it’s the first, why is it nessasary to include Fenglu in the second poll? If it’s the second, what’s the purpose of including Fenglu in it after CBA announced the club was disqualified already? This is ridicioulous.