Abstract
This chapter establishes that following on from the Olympic Games in 2008, the country would see yet another change in its approach to sport policy. While not eschewing the lessons learned and the advancements made in elite sport through the push for home Olympic glory in the previous period, there was a resetting. Without the driving force that was the Olympics in 2008, the country could retool its focus. We contend that this primarily came through a new focus on what we have termed ‘global sports’ in this text. As part of this category, we have included sports not identified for their place in an Olympic program, but rather sports that serve as an entry point to the global economic system and aim at servicing the interests of an ever-expanding urban middle and upper-middle class in China.
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Notes
- 1.
The piece titled Chinese State Sports Policy: Pre- and Post-Beijing 2008 by Wei et al. (2010) is an incredibly detailed investigation into the sports policy developed in China post the 2008 Beijing Olympics. They provide a broad summary and provide key details as to how policy oriented around three main areas: elite sport, mass fitness, and the commercialization of sport.
- 2.
We decided to use the provided list of key policy documents in this chapter constructed by Zhu et al. (2018); however, we also added some of our own insight into the policy developments in this period drawn directly from an article printed in Mandarin and information provided by the state—see Table 4.1.
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Rick, O.J.C., Li, L. (2023). Global Sports and Shifting Focus: Sport Policy, Investment, and the Inter-Olympic Period. In: Global Sports and Contemporary China. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18595-3_4
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