generally play sports than what I have seen in the US or most other countries (including Japan, where I had lived previously). Young people seemed much more focused on school and academics relative to sports, compared to the West; it seems cultural, or maybe it’s the Tiger Mom thing that drives that. This was something that many foreigners there talked about, especially since the foreign schools there had active athletics programs and our kids did lots of sports, which the Chinese thought was kind of weird.

The sports that are somewhat popular to play are also different from in the West; for example, there are lots of badminton courts, but you don’t see young people playing soccer or basketball as much as in most other countries (although both are popular spectator sports there). Gymnastics and acrobatics are relatively popular there; the Chinese acrobat shows are great (and the basis for what we see in Cirque du Soleil).

In any case, after living there it’s easier to understand why China punches way below its weight in world sport, relative to population size, even as it has gotten richer. In Tokyo 2020, China only ranked 49th in medals per capita, and 40th in medals per $100B of GDP. In soccer, they’ve only ever qualified for the World Cup finals once, despite its popularity there as a spectator sport; that’s even less than its much-smaller neighbor North Korea, which has managed to qualify twice (and beat Italy there in 1966).