Paralympic power China created by a year of closed training [Lee Jong Sung's Sports Culture & Industry]

*This content was translated by AI.

China, which is on par with the United States in the Summer Olympics, is an overwhelmingly strong country with no rivals at the Summer Paralympics. China ranked first in all six competitions, from the 2004 Athens Paralympics to the 2024 Paris Paralympics. At the 2024 Paris Paralympics, China won 94 gold medals, more than the combined number of gold medals won by Britain and the United States (85), who finished second and third.

Having conquered the Summer Paralympics, China is now showing off its overwhelming skills at the Winter Paralympics. China, which won first place (18 gold medals) at the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics, is also ranking first (8 gold medals) alone at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Paralympics as of the 9th (Korea Standard Time).

Then, how did China become the world's strongest country in both the East and Summer Paralympics.

First of all, the number of people with disabilities in China is about 85 million, which has the largest number of potential Paralympic athletes in the world. China's huge budget for the Olympics and Paralympics was also an important factor. According to the British daily Guardian in 2024, China is spending more than 4.8 trillion won a year for the Olympics and Paralympics. Through this budget, China was able to intensively foster athletes with disabilities as well as non-disabled athletes. This immediately led to remarkable results at the Summer Paralympics.

China launched a program in 2017 to encourage disabled athletes who dreamed of participating in the Summer Paralympics to switch to winter sports. It was an attempt to change the situation in which so many disabled athletes are focusing only on summer sports. As a member of the Chinese national team, it is not easy to compete in the Summer Paralympic Games, where medals are promising, so Chinese disabled prospects have switched to winter events. In fact, according to the official website of the International Paralympic Committee, the number of Chinese disabled winter sports athletes has increased from less than 50 since the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Most of the Chinese athletes with disabilities are from rural areas and were in poor economic conditions due to accidents in their childhood. If they participate in the Paralympics and perform well, they will have relatively stable jobs like teachers after retirement. For this reason, the transition to winter Paralympic events rather than highly competitive summer Paralympic events took place at a very rapid pace. After the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics, the recent Winter Paralympics has become the most important ladder of success for the poor disabled in China.

Of course, China's training in preparation for the Winter Paralympics was also special. "Chinese disabled athletes participating in the Winter Paralympics sweated at a remote training base in northeastern China without visiting outside for as long as a year," the Chinese online magazine "第六声" pointed out in 2022. This is because the Winter Paralympics adopted a closed intensive training method called Pengby Sheen Leanne (sealed training, 封闭训练). This training method often involves the problem of human rights violations in sports. However, Chinese athletes with disabilities are sacrificing this part under the flag of "patriotism" for success.

They trained at the National Paralympic Sports Training Center, which was set up for the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympics, and at ski courses located in Yanqing and Zhangjiakou. Promising Chinese athletes with disabilities who are interested in winter sports can also train at state-of-the-art facilities. This is because the number of ice rinks in China has increased by more than 300% since the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and ski resorts have also increased by 41%.

In terms of human rights, China has received considerable criticism from the international community. Hong Kong's pro-democracy oppression and Xinjiang Uighur human rights issues are representative. On top of that, criticism arose that China has established a huge national surveillance network using Internet censorship and biometric technology. At first glance, China's sports policy for the disabled has a positive function of providing new opportunities for the disabled. However, China's sports policy for the disabled, which is buried in winning medals at the Paralympics, is controversial in that it forces them to make sacrifices, not support and welfare.

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*This content was translated by AI.