Football is just a pawn in China’s game

But this analysis is quite wrong. The truth is subtler and more Machiavellian, and it takes us to the heart of the curious relationship between sport and China that has existed since the Long March. To see how, let us rewind to 1953, four years after the revolution.

It was in that year that Chairman Mao took what, at the time, seemed to western observers to be a curious decision: he decreed that table tennis would become the national sport. Tables were sent to schools, all-weather tables positioned in railway stations and makeshift tables constructed in the vast rural hinterland. Millions started playing the game.

Sympathetic observers reached for the public health explanation, arguing that Mao was concerned about the wellbeing of his “beloved proletariat”. But this explanation cuts no ice at all. Throughout his reign, Mao demonstrated contempt for the countrymen he ruled over. This was the leader who oversaw the Great Leap Forward, the catastrophic attempt to increase industrial production. Even when he knew the plan was heading for the rocks, he pressed on. More than 30 million perished. A decade later, he masterminded the hallucinogenic madness of the Cultural Revolution, a naked attempt to sow mass confusion and terror. Millions were tortured or killed.

No, table tennis was not a public health policy — Mao didn’t give a damn about the public — but something more calculating. The chairman, like all dictators, suffered from a crisis of legitimacy. He could sustain his power and privileges through escalating repression, but that was expensive, both in terms of lost lives and resources. So, he restlessly looked for opportunities for propaganda. And what better way to demonstrate the wisdom of the communist system, and his genius as leader, if China could defeat its capitalist rivals in open competition?

Table tennis, then, was a vehicle not of public health, but of political indoctrination. That the sport was amateurish around the world gave China a chance to gain pre-eminence through sheer weight of numbers. By the mid-1950s, more people were playing table tennis in China than the rest of the world combined. The finest players from the provinces were funnelled through to Beijing, and by 1959 China had its first world champion in any sport, Rong Guotuan, who triumphed in Germany.

The victory was milked for all its worth. Rong and Zhuang Zedong, his successor, who won three consecutive titles, were paraded in Tiananmen Square and held up as icons of revolutionary virtue. Mao decreed that everyone should read Zhuang’s book on table tennis (which meshed with Mao’s “principles” of hard work and sacrifice), and when he retired, he was promoted into the inner sanctum of the Communist Party — the central committee — to sit alongside Mao. Table tennis and the cult of Mao’s personality were inextricably linked.

But this politicisation of top sportsmen was no accident; it was an essential part of the dynamic that always exists between dictatorial power and sport. Erich Honecker, the East German tyrant, surrounded himself with steroid-ridden athletes; Fidel Castro continually exploited the soft power of his world-beating boxers; a succession of Kremlin general secretaries wielded Olympic success as a grotesque advert for the “superiority” of its political system.

President Xi Jinping posed for photos with Agüero when he was in Manchester last year

MCFC HANDOUT/PA

Fast-forward a little and the same analysis continues to assert itself in China. The market reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and the economic growth they unleashed, put democratic agitation on the back burner for more than two decades, but the unelected rulers nevertheless continued to seek out tools of self-promotion.

The most audacious, of course, was the frenzied assault on the Olympic medals table, coupled with the staging of the Games in Beijing in 2008.

This was not, as widely supposed, a “coming out party”; it was not an attempt to “sell” China to the world. Rather, it was a naked attempt to sell the rulers to the Chinese public. To defeat other nations in the most prestigious sports event couldn’t have been more politically seductive. The Chinese public were, in effect, paying for a duplicitous advertising campaign designed to protect the grotesque privileges of an unelected cadre.

Football is merely the latest device. Xi is not interested in public health any more than Mao. With growth slowing — and just yesterday the announcement that the bloated coal and steel industries will shed 1.8 million jobs — and with growing resentment about endemic corruption, the establishment is seeking new ways to bolster itself. Unlike democratic leaders, who are incentivised to win the next election, dictators have only one goal: to delay free and fair elections for as long as possible.

China’s football team have been consistently humiliated in recent years, failing to reach the World Cup finals since 2002. This embarrassment has been compared (a little grandly) to the trauma of the Opium Wars. The attempt to turn China into world-beaters follows the familiar pattern: top-down planning and the use of vast (unaccounted for) resources. “There is no other country that has a government policy like China’s to develop grassroots football and expand the talent pool,” Byer said.

I doubt it will work, not least because football is globally competitive and has huge financial resources. But the attempt to rise up the rankings, and to stage the World Cup, is testimony to the growing paranoia of China’s elite. Repression has escalated under Xi as the economy has slowed, and propaganda is set to do precisely the same. In that sense, football is a mere pawn in a game of much higher stakes.

The sooner UFC is choked to death the better

There can be no doubting the skill and courage of the protagonists of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Sitting up close to the so-called Octagon — a wired, eight-sided cage — was to instantly admire the technical prowess of the fighters, not least when they grappled on the floor, seeking a clinching move with hands or legs.

There can be no doubting its popularity, either. The O2 arena, which staged the card on Saturday night, sold out in minutes, and the victory by Michael Bisping over Anderson Silva in the last bout has been hailed as an instant classic.

But I have to confess to having experienced a deep sense of unease. This was, partly, because of UFC’s no-holds-barred nature. You are allowed to elbow, kick and choke. The only nod to a rule book is the banning of such things as eye-gouging, biting and “groin attacks”.

The basest instincts of the human pysche were celebrated as Bisping, left, and Silva produced “a classic” at the O2 on Saturday night

DEAN MOUHTAROPOULOS/GETTY IMAGES

My deepest unease, however, was directed at the audience. Any time there was a let-up in violence, the booing started. And any time there was a clean hit, particularly one that drew blood, there was a deafening roar. “Kill him” and “mangle the bastard” were two of the incitements I heard from ringside.

Enthusiasts argue, with some justification, that boxing also has violence at its heart. They also point to a safety record that compares favourably with some other contact sports. But is this a sufficient defence? I would never advocate a ban: what consenting adults get up to in a cage is no more a matter for the law than what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom.

But I do wonder about the way this slickly marketed activity legitimises the basest instincts of the human psyche, and celebrates bloodshed. The sooner it falls out of favour, the better.