94 gold medals, 220 podiums… why is China so strong? – Liberation

Wednesday September 4, mid-morning, at the side of the road in Clichy-sous-Bois, we were twiddling our thumbs a little while waiting for the runners to pass. To pass the time, an employee of the French Paralympic and Sports Committee suggested that we play his favorite game at the moment: find the exact number of gold medals for China. A sort of fair price Paralympic version. “Be careful, you have to give an answer quickly, because maybe in a minute they will have three or four more,” he said ironically. At the time, the Chinese had “only” 59 titles. This Sunday evening, they will leave Paris with 94 gold medals. That is more than Great Britain (49) and the United States (36) combined, despite being second and third nations in the medal ranking, and far ahead of the 19 French titles.

This monstrous and undivided domination is not new. Since Athens in 2004, China has always crushed the competition at the Paralympic Games. Of course, it also plays the leading roles in the Olympics, but not with as much margin over its competitors. In almost all sports, its representatives bring home medals. In Paris, a Chinese climbed onto the box in 19 of the 22 Paralympic disciplines, with raids in athletics (59 medals including 21 gold), swimming (54 medals including 22 gold), table tennis (24 medals including 11 in gold) or in fencing (19 medals including 10 in gold). A few days ago, in the stands of the Défense Arena, a colleague said ironically: “Swimming is a bit boring. We hear the Chinese anthem more than we see swimmers in the water.”

Slogans that encourage you to surpass yourself for your nation

However, it was not always like this. In the 90s, China was just another Paralympic swim. In 1992, in Barcelona, ​​she only finished thirteenth (with 11 gold medals), before doing barely better in 1996 in Atlanta (ninth with 16 titles). And then, Beijing began to dream of organizing the Games, both Olympic and Paralympic. The country won its case in 2001 and has seven years to prepare to welcome, in the summer of 2008, the elite of world sport. From then on, having the best athletes in the world becomes a necessity, a soft power issue. It would be inconceivable in the eyes of leaders that the Chinese did not shine at home, under the gaze of the media from around the world. So, the State pulls out all the stops to find athletes, train them and make them perform.

In 2007, a year before the home Games, a huge sports center was built in the north of Beijing. A sort of Chinese-style National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (Insep), but only intended for para-sport. It extends over 23 hectares, explains the World who was able to visit it recently, which in fact, from afar, “the largest preparation center for high-level disabled athletes in the world”. We see the red flag with yellow stars everywhere, and on the walls slogans telling athletes to surpass themselves for their nation.

The training center does not work alone. All over the country, other, smaller structures see athletes with disabilities passing by in droves and are responsible for detecting medal winners. The population of the most populous country in the world is rich: it is estimated that there are around 85 million Chinese with disabilities. “We invite people who aspire to practice, we detect them and the Chinese machine is on its wayexplains in the Team teacher-researcher Arnaud Waquet, specialized in the social sciences of sport. We select a large cohort of 1000 people, we quickly reduce it to 100, 50 then 10 people who we will overtrain. It’s pyramid selection.”

“Industrial factory for top athletes”

China also cultivates mystery around its Paralympic athletes: most rarely leave the country, only compete in the obligatory competitions to qualify for the Games and do not respond to requests from international journalists. So much so that it often happens that we discover a Chinese who comes out of nowhere or almost nowhere and who explodes the competition during a Paralympiad. The fencer Maxime Valet, beaten in Paris by the Chinese as soon as he entered the fray in foil and sabre, complained: “As the International Federation does not force them to compete, they are poorly ranked. But they are so superior that they don’t care.”

If other nations are also investing in parasport, none has pushed the system as far as China. And it should be like this for a few more years. “Unless a country is prepared to replicate this type of industrial factory of top athletes and invest resources at that level and beyond – or China decides it no longer wishes to do so –, it will continue to dominate for many decades to come”British researcher Ian Brittain, specializing in Paralympic sport, told CNN.

However, Beijing is far from being impeccable when it comes to the inclusion of people with disabilities in society. In 2013, a Human Rights Watch report spoke of an education system that massively rejects them. Consequence: 28% of children with disabilities did not have access to education and more than 40% of adults were illiterate. Rates well above national averages. “A part of the population is completely discredited. In schools, people with disabilities are pushed aside. They have no or very little access to education and jobs. We hide them. They are not at all in a mechanism of inclusion, said, still in the TeamArnaud Waquet. In recent years, new laws have been passed to combat this discrimination. But China is starting from afar.