China’s ‘big balls’ plan

We’re all aware of how the game of basketball spread throughout the United States, and how teachers and missionaries brought the game here before the start of the 20th century. But what most of us don’t realize is that the Philippines was not the only country that benefited from the American invention.

One of the Young Men’s Christian Association’s fastest-growing missions at the time was in China, which was then a land of roughly four hundred million innocently opening up to Western civilization for the first time. After basketball was invented, dozens of missionaries were dispatched to the Middle Kingdom in the dying years of the Qing Dynasty, armed with Bibles, English lessons and "The 13 Rules of Basket Ball". Today, multinational shoe companies salivate at the thought of all the soles to be sold. But then, it was all about saving souls.

Strangely, basketball’s first major impact was sartorial. Because of the dynamic nature of the sport (although it was turtle-paced by today’s standards), it necessitated getting rid of the long gowns, extended fingernails and braided ponytails of feudal Chinese dress. When Sun-Yat-sen came into power by 1911, China opened up even more, and Western ideas started to flood into the populous nation. The YMCA helped organize the country’s first national games, which became a proud expression of nationalism. By 1920, the YMCA had more missionaries in China than any other place in the world. In 1935 — a year before the first men’s Olympic basketball competition in Berlin, basketball was officially declared a national pastime.

The acknowledged godfather of Chinese basketball, Mou Zuoyun, has recalled how, in the 1920’s, he and his friends in the town of Tianjin used to play basketball and bowling at the local "Y" every afternoon. The following year, the 5’11" forward was selected to play in Berlin, in the same competition that the Philippines (captained by the late Sen. Ambrosio Padilla) was cheated out of a silver medal. But because of the long travel, though, the Chinese athletes were drained, claustrophobic and hungry by the time they reached Germany. Remember that air travel was still in the distant future. With a seventy-five year old James Naismith watching, Mou showed off his dribbling skills.

What struck him the most, though, was how tall the American players were. The US had opposed the rule forbidding players above 6’2" and thus, were the only team with tall players in a sport where a jumpball was held after every made basket. Upon his return to China, Mou saw how China could become a world power: through sports. Ten years later, Mou, then a basketball coach, won a scholarship to the sport’s birthplace, Springfield, Massachusetts. There, he learned from legendary coaches like Stanford University’s John Bunn and Kentucky and US Olympic coach Adolph Rupp (who would eventually coach an impressionable and hard-working young player named Pat Riley).

But when Mao Tse-tung came to power in 1949, he saw sports as a vital means to dominate the world, and, as Americans had used the sport to spread religion, he would use it to preach communism. In addition, physically fit workers could produce more, and contribute to the state’s output. When he was forced into retreat, basketball was used to lift the spirits of his exhausted troops as they fled into the mountains. He Long, one of Mao’s top deputies, formed a "Fighting Army team" that would sneak into villages and play underground games. Sports became an official propaganda tool, a unifying factor.

Soon after, Soviet urban planners streamed into the Middle Kingdom, starting work on the drab urban sprawl that would mark the similarities between the two societies. Among the construction, however, was a vast network of sports schools that still stands today. The militaristic model recruited young athletes, put them through a tough, year-long training program, and provided them with superior nutrition. Sports like gymnastics, diving, table tennis and basketball became part of this national project. Unfortunately, Mao also wanted to "purify" China, and this meant the exit of most capitalist businesses and investments.

After some political problems and failed attempts to win medals in the Olympic Games in 1952 and 1956, China found a niche: table tennis. The International Table Tennis Federation was one of the few governing bodies in sports that formed an alliance with the Communist Party. China has been a world power in Ping-Pong since 1959, when Rong Guotuan won the world championship. Mao called it a "spiritual nuclear weapon".

Still, it was only table tennis, not a powerhouse sport, stuck in limbo between China’s traditional superiority in sports that espoused grace and art, and the sports that required true physical prowess. It was classified in a derogatory manner, as a "small ball" sport. The country’s top leaders knew that, to compete against the West, they would have to become major players in the "big ball" sports: volleyball, soccer and basketball. He Long, now the first minister of sports, emphasized this by saying "If we don’t reach the highest level in the three big balls, I will never shut my eyes — even after death."

On Saturday, we detail how China starts to get big on basketball, though regimented training, and even arranged marriages.