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Chinese athletes bagged the most gold medals at the 2008
Beijing Olympics, a feat accompanied by a wave of national
pride, the culmination of China's "100 year dream" to host the
world's most prestigious sports event.
At the London Olympics four years later, China came second to
the United States in the medals table.
Unveiling a lengthy plan mapping out broad goals for China's
sports sector for the five years to 2020, the sports ministry
said it would aim to further strengthen China's international
competitiveness.
"At the 2016 Rio Olympics work hard to maintain and consolidate
existing advantages in sports events and results positions," the
ministry said.
"At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, strive to get a leading position in
sports results," it added, without offering details on how China
might achieve this.
Olympic medals are generally won by a minority of
government-supported athletes who receive huge backing from the
state and a failure to perform is accompanied by massive public
pressure and hand-wringing back home.
The government has warned that the country's obsession with
winning gold medals has caused problems like corruption and must
be ditched if graft is truly to be rooted out.
China is gearing up for another place in the Olympic spotlight
after Beijing, along with the neighboring city of Zhangjiakou,
last year won the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Only
one other city wanted it, Almaty in Kazakhstan.
Though China is far from a winter sports power, the sports
ministry said hosting the Winter Olympics would help the country
further raise its influence on international sports and spur the
development of winter sports in China.
China will study best practices from other countries to ensure
its Winter Games are on par with the best internationally, the
ministry added.
While Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Games to wide acclaim, its
bid for the Winter Games had been dogged by concerns over a
number of issues such as the city's notorious smog problem, a
lack of snow, corruption and China's poor human rights record.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
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