A rebel and a giant: change and continuity in the discursive construction of Chinese sport heroes

Abstract

The essay examines the changes and continuities in the construction of Chinese national sport hero(in)es after the Beijing 2008 Olympics, and investigates this development in the context of the reform of Chinese elite sport. Through employing Critical Discourse Analysis to interrogate the Chinese sport hero discourse from government-run media concerning two of the most renowned Chinese national sport hero(in)es, the paper identifies the maintenance, albeit with subtle changes, of the traditional nationalist account concerning the athletic and political qualities of Chinese national sport hero(in)es. Concurrently, there are also new features, which are argued to be the consequence of a shift in the political climate in Chinese sport, in the post-2008 construction of national sport hero. The paper concludes with a discussion, from a Foucauldian perspective, of the relationship between the discourse, knowledge and the power of/over discourse in the construction of Chinese elite athletes as national hero(in)es throughout the period.

Keywords:

• Nationalism
• sport nationalism
• Chinese elite sport
• sport hero
• discourse analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The GAS is an institution directly affiliated to the National Council and is responsible for the administration and development of sport affairs in the PRC (Wu 1999).

2 Mr Yuan Weimin, the Sport Minister from 2000 to 2004, was a former volleyball player and coach leading the Chinese women’s volleyball team that won five international champions in a row in the 1980s.

Mr Cai Zhenhua, the vice-Sport Minister from 2007-2018, was a former table tennis player and the former head coach of the Chinese table tennis team that has been a dominant force in the table tennis world since mid 1990s.