Sports

The Chinese national team won the first e-sports gold medal at the Asian Games, marking a landmark moment in the country’s gaming history. But with Beijing cracking down on youth gaming addiction and parents frowning upon it as a professional career path, what will it take for e-sports to go mainstream in China?

China’s soccer industry development has been disappointing, made worse by the recent corruption probes into the league’s senior officials. Political commentator Jin Jian Guo notes that the introduction of the "whole nation" system to boost the country’s soccer profile has left it wanting, to no surprise given the system’s abysmal history.

Nearly every sports fan would know of the NBA in the US, but few would be familiar with the “Village BA” in China, a four-day event in a rural village in Guizhou. By most accounts, this China-version basketball tourney would give the NBA a run for its money as it gains popularity and expands.

Learning of a recent performance in the US by Suzhou musicians, SPH Chinese Media Group editor-in-chief Lee Huay Leng muses on the role that the Philadelphia Orchestra’s visit to Beijing had played in US-China relations in the 1970s. While no substitute for hard diplomacy, cultural exchanges can sow seeds of friendship among different peoples, and help the world reap something beautiful in the future.

Hong Kong scion Kenneth Fok seems to be favoured as a future candidate for Hong Kong’s next chief executive by the higher-ups in Beijing. The eldest grandson of the late "patriotic" tycoon Henry Fok Ying Tung and the husband of former Olympic gold-medal diver Guo Jingjing, Kenneth Fok's background is "politically correct" and fits well into the “patriots rule Hong Kong” governance model.

Skiing star Eileen Gu has announced that she will be an ambassador for Salt Lake City’s bid for the 2030 or 2034 Winter Olympics, sparking online debate in China. In today's increasingly polarised world, can a "globalised" person gain acceptance and recognition from conflicting parties and be that communicator of goodwill?

Translation studies professor Xiao Weiqing muses that the media and the Chinese Olympic Committee must have taken great pains to standardise and romanise Chinese names in their coverage of the Winter Olympics.

South Korean angst directed towards China during the Winter Olympics suggests that anti-China sentiment in South Korea has not completely subsided from the time of China's reprisals against South Korea for the THAAD missile system deployment some years ago. In such a climate, bilateral relations could get rockier if Yoon Seok-youl of the conservative People Power Party makes it to the finish line in South Korea's March presidential election.

Zaobao correspondent Yu Zeyuan feels that the Beijing Winter Olympics has turned out much better than what was initially expected. Despite diplomatic boycotts by some Western countries and political bickering about China's human rights issues, the Chinese are more than pleased with the event. Not only did China give its best-ever showing at a Winter Olympics, it also pulled off a decent event despite the pandemic, and has generated great interest in winter sports among the Chinese public.