In the long run, China will win

This used to be a joke. Especially during my younger days. But now, everybody is taking China seriously. Very seriously. As it is, they’re leaving the world behind in awe. First step was the 2008 Beijing Olympics, showing the whole world, including the perennial front-runner, United States of America, how a new race can start dominating the universe, in the field of sports.

And I thought I had seen it all. Till I experienced the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games. Wow. Boggles the mind. When I came here more than 20 years ago attending a FIFA football conference, there was only one skyscraper. A 30-story White Swan Hotel owned by the Chinese mogul Henry Fok, who had close and influential power with the Chinese hierarchy and our FIFA vice president then. Now, nobody can show me where it is and nobody cares. Cause it’s all high buildings everywhere with beautiful architectural designs. Motorbikes are even banned here, unlike Shanghai and Beijing. And lo and behold, even the traditional bicycles are nowhere to be found. They’re gone in this part of China, where 120 million people are surrounded by super football stadiums everywhere. Which makes me predict that they will bid for the Olympics after three more Games due to its closeness to the 2008 Beijing Games. Maybe 2024. And the football World Cup bidding will also be in the offing by 2026, after Russia (2018) and Qatar (2022).

If you saw the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games, we all thought that was the height of it all. Well, most delegates, athletes, and journalists who covered this particular event thinks otherwise. The opening and closing here was unbelievable. They wanted to show the world that if Beijing can do it, so can Guangzhou. Maybe better. Divide and rule. That’s how progressive China is today. The infra and road networking is something else. Subways, trains, etc. just name it. Even a scenic international golf course in the middle of a retirement county on top of the mountain? Wow. This is Communist China today?

Their biggest international problem now is simply communication. Unless they encourage the use of English, the tourists and investors will just have to hire interpreters. And they know this too. That solves half of their problem.

But if their economy is on a roll, sports is just another tool to show their progress as the most powerful sports nation in the whole world. They showed this in Beijing two years ago, leaving everyone by a mile.

Now comes the l6th Asian Games, and they’re rehearsing again for the 2012 London Olympics. Combine all the gold medals all over Asia and it cannot even come close to their total tally. Actually, it reminded me of the Hitler racial quest against the world in the 1935 Berlin Olympics. We’re lucky we had the fastest man in the world then, Jesse Owens. Or we’d all be eating dust.

Who ever heard of Chinese dancers before in dance sports? Yeah, dance sports. Well, they all got the 10 golds at stake here. ALL. When the Chinese sport of wushu was over, they also got all seven golds. ALL. Hometown? Happens everywhere.

We should be happy they allowed us to get three golds, especially in boxing, where we fought China. We were all praying for that. Especially since it fell on the last day of competition. Thanks to Rey Saludar, Biboy Rivera of bowling, and Orcollo of billiards.

Not because they were good hosts. Our boys well deserved it. The odds were all against them.

They are everywhere. Even in boxing, where they were unheard of before the Beijing Games. That’s where they got their first gold. Swimming? Watch out in London. Gymnastics is given. Table tennis? Badminton? Aquatic diving? Forget it. It’s a matter of time, probably two more World Cups and they will be playing in the football World Cup too.

Sports is a priority and they put their money where their mouth is. Foreign coaching, sports academy, sports identity, international exposure, facilities, nutrition, sports medicine, etc, etc.? You name it, they have it. Guangzhou spent $30 billion to host the games. That’s priority. That’s equal to our annual budget of P1.5 trillion.

And the most important ingredient? DISCIPLINE. This is where they lord it above all democratic forms of government. Every athlete is forced to excel. For love of country, for money, or whatever. They MUST excel. This is the main difference between China and the rest of the world.

So where do we go from here? This is the very first international competition under the newly unified PSC POC team. First six months of uniting these two major stakeholders in Philippine sports under the new P-Noy administration. Yes. It’s been cats and dogs all along before this. Remember when the Philippine team rode in two airplanes to the last SEA games in Laos last year? One for POC and one for PSC? Wow. Two jackets? Two maletas? We were the laughing stock of the SEA countries then. Cannot get worse than this.

Ten years after it was launched and successfully held, everyone is suddenly talking about BATANG PINOY, the penultimate grassroots program for children 12 years and under. Suddenly, everyone wants to go back to grassroots. From Congress to the mayors and governors, everybody wants to go back to the basics.

Fine, but who said that sports is a priority in this sports loving country? Everybody demands our athletes to win but do you realize that our sports budget for the last decade is not even one percent of the P1.5 trillion budget? That’s right. And I’m not talking only about this administration but for the last two decades, with the exception of the late Cory Aquino administration when PAGCOR then gave what the law specified — five percent of gross income. But that’s not the real picture today.