Winton Dong

dht0620@126.com

TABLE tennis, or pingpong, is of great significance in China. It is regarded as not only the country’s national sport, but also an important diplomatic means for improving relations with other countries. In 1971 and 1972, table tennis players from both China and the United States took part in a series of historic exhibition matches. Such sport exchanges helped break the thick ice between the two nations, thus leading to the normalization of diplomatic ties between two of the most important countries in the world.

Due to its importance in China, every change in the pingpong sport sector will surely strike the nerves of Chinese people. On Dec. 1, 2018, China announced that Liu Guoliang, former head coach of Team China, had been appointed new chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association.

Liu got his lovely nickname “Fatty” after the men’s finals at the 2016 Rio Olympics when a Taiwan netizen obviously not familiar with the sport asked online: “Who is that fatty guy sitting behind Team China? He knows nothing about table tennis.” Such an interesting comment didn’t hurt Liu’s image at all, but only made him more renowned among Chinese people.

Liu stepped down as the head coach in June 2017. Since he left, the once formidable Chinese table tennis team has been facing mounting pressure in the past year from rivals such as Japan, Germany and South Korea. For example, in the 2017 World Cup, all Chinese pingpong players were squeezed out of the men’s final match by their German counterparts. That was a very rare and humiliating phenomenon for a country like China, which has been dominating the sport for several decades.

Liu’s quick return shows the Chinese Government’s determination to build a better future for the sport and recapture former prominence in the coming 2020 Tokyo Olympics. His return also demonstrates that China is trying to adhere to the principle of letting professional people do professional things.

Liu himself was once a top-notch table tennis player. He achieved many world titles and turned out to be the first Chinese male player to win the career grand slam by taking gold medals in the World Championship, World Cup and Olympic Games.

Moreover, Liu is a competent coach. After retiring his paddle in 2002, he kept promoting the country’s glory as its national team head coach until 2017, nurturing numerous household names in the sector such as Wang Liqin, Ma Long, Zhang Jike, Fan Zhendong, Ding Ning and Liu Shiwen. Under his guidance, the Chinese team took home more than 60 Olympic gold medals and world championship titles in 15 years from 2002 to 2017.

Liu has also shown his potential in management. After taking helm of the association, he has quickly reshuffled and streamlined its governing body, sharply reducing its governing members to six. The association originally had about 20 chairpersons, honorary chairpersons and vice chairpersons, and most of them were retired high-ranking officials who were not good at the sport at all.

Frankly speaking, Liu is not the first professional to take helm of a national sport association. In February 2017, former NBA superstar Yao Ming was elected chairman of the Chinese Basketball Association, thus leading the Chinese basketball team to Asian titles.

While praising such efforts for making full use of the advantage of successful professionals, we should also give more tolerance and understanding to them because they are burdened with greater pressure and higher expectations than ever before. No matter what the result may be, I think that, at least, they can make sports in China more open, international and market-oriented.

(The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)