China’s road to becoming a great power on snow and ice

Since the Olympics were awarded to Beijing in 2015, the People’s Republic has wanted a quarter of its citizens to be enthusiastic about movement on snow and ice. That’s not true, but many are anyway.

In its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing pledged to introduce 300 million people to winter sports. In a country where skiing hadn’t played a role until then, that was quite an ambitious announcement. In mid-January, the Chinese sports authorities announced the completion. The target was even exceeded: Since the Games were awarded to Beijing in 2015, 346 million people have taken part in “ice and snow activities”. That is 24.56 percent of the population, reported the national statistics office.

As is always the case when China handles symbolic numbers, how they were actually measured is not disclosed. It was clear from the start that the goal would be achieved on paper. Even if one counts every school child who has learned to ski for one hour in class, it is inconceivable that one in four Chinese should have practiced winter sports. After all, the country consists largely of subtropics and desert. “If you’re being generous, you could say it’s symbolic,” says sports analyst Mark Dreyer, who has just written a book on China’s sporting power ambitions. The number is “nonsense”, but the “growth” is real.