From Urumqi to Paris: Xinjiang’s quest for Olympic boxing fame

Boxing is one of the most popular sports in this far-flung corner of China, which has, in recent years, captured international attention less for its sporting prowess than for accusations of human rights abuse of its Muslim ethnic minorities.

Xinjiang, one of five provincial-level autonomous regions in China, including Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet and Guangxi, is home to nearly 26 million people, of whom Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui and other ethnic minorities make up nearly 15 million, with the rest being Han Chinese.

Boxers in Xinjiang share a similar pugilistic style with those in former Soviet republics such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, which have won many Olympic boxing medals.

Ethnic Kazakhs, like Little Bieke, and Uighurs dominate the boxing fraternity here – a consequence of not only Xinjiang’s population make-up but also a regional culture steeped in the love and pursuit of macho sports.

As China continues to pursue its ambition of becoming the world’s dominant sporting superpower, Xinjiang has emerged as a fertile ground for boxing stars to be uncovered. There are even dreams to create a “Xinjiang boxing style”.

For the Xinjiang authorities, grooming the country’s future generation of athletes in “the sweet science”, as boxing is referred to, not only fulfils the national sporting agenda, but also provides an avenue to young people of the land to break out of the hardscrabble life of their herdspeople parents.

Crucially, improved socio-economic opportunities and exposure also contribute to the political stability of a restive region once rocked by unrest.

Many of Xinjiang’s boxers have been selected to represent provincial teams other than their own region’s, and some of them have also moved on to become coaches at commercial combat sports gyms that have gained popularity all over the country. Yet others have turned professional.

After three decades, Xinjiang boxing is now on the cusp of a breakthrough.

“Xinjiang boxing is at a turning point,” said Mr Abdushukur Mijit, a former boxing champion turned coach and now the director of the Xinjiang squad and its training centre. “We’ve never won a gold medal at the Olympics, only a bronze.”

Since the provincial boxing team was officially formed in 1994, the region has made a name for producing tough, resilient fighters, some of whom have gone on to international fame: Abudureheman Abulikemu, who won gold at the 1999 Asian Amateur Boxing Championships and was the first Xinjiang boxer to compete at the Olympics in 2000; Yushan Nijiati, bronze medallist at the 2007 World Championships; and Mehmet Tursun Chong, two-time Olympian and bronze medallist at the 2010 Asian Games.

Boxing clubs have proliferated throughout the expansive land – nearly 2,300 times the size of Singapore – from the northern ski country of Altay to the southern oasis town of Hotan, as the sport grew in popularity thanks to influences from neighbouring Kazakhstan and the other former Soviet states.

The local sports authorities also systematically scout for talent in schools, grooming boys and girls as young as nine for the local teams and an eventual stab at making it to the provincial team, if not the national squad. There are as many as 15 boxing teams representing various cities of the region.

But with the exception of a bronze medal from welterweight Hanati Silamu, also known as Kanat Islam, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the podium has eluded Xinjiang boxers, although China has taken home 14 medals since 2004: three golds, five silvers and six bronzes.

Sixteen years on, can Little Bieke (below, right) break the dry spell and bring glory home to Xinjiang? His coaches and mentors are excited about the prospect, but also clear-eyed about the challenges awaiting him in Paris.

The national team has come to Urumqi this particular weekend for an international training camp organised by Mr Mijit’s centre in preparation for the Summer Olympics. For three days, Little Bieke and his teammates train and spar with boxers from the Xinjiang squad, and also visiting teams from other provinces like Henan as well as neighbouring countries Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

For Little Bieke, who has been training in Beijing since he won at the Asian Games, it is a happy homecoming. He still has his shared dormitory room on the second floor of the training centre, where his dombra – a traditional Kazakh long-necked lute – hangs.

“I miss home,” said the soft-spoken national athlete as he plucked away at the musical instrument, playing a song called Mood Swings while sitting on his dormitory bed (above).

Born in a remote mountain village in northern Altay Prefecture, he started boxing at the age of 10 after a coach at his school thought he displayed potential for the sport.

The coach convinced his parents to transfer him to Habahe city about 150km away, where he trained and studied at the same time, going home for short visits only during the summer and winter holidays.

Little Bieke tears up remembering how badly he had missed home then, and how his father, a herder, had no money to return home after taking him to the city. His mother is a homemaker and he has an older brother who is also a herdsman.

In 2011, at the age of 15, he got selected into the provincial youth team, representing Xinjiang and winning the national youth championship three years later. At 17, he made it into the national squad.

In September 2023, he struck gold at the Hangzhou Asian Games, beating favoured Filipino boxer and Olympic bronze medallist Eumir Marcial and earning a qualification for the Paris Olympics.

Xinjiang’s boxing team had a later start than other provincial teams, which sprouted soon after boxing became a state-sanctioned sport again in 1986 following a three-decade ban nationally.

Mr Mijit, who was the first batch of boxers after the team was established, remembers that he and his teammates did not even have boxing gloves then, training with thinly padded cotton mitts that were not designed to absorb the force from hard pummelling.

A pair of those old brown muffs hangs in a corner of his office, a constant reminder to the 53-year-old coach of Xinjiang boxing’s humble beginnings.

In those early days, the team would go across the border to learn from the Kazakhs, whose boxing legacy goes back to at least the 1930s when the first championship was held in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital at the time.

Over time, the team members built up their skills, learning the highly technical Soviet style of boxing that has made boxers from neighbouring countries like Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan such fearsome fighters in the ring internationally.

Those schooled in this style include Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk, the first undisputed heavyweight world champion in 24 years after beating British professional boxer Tyson Fury in May; fellow Ukrainian Vasiliy Lomachenko, who took the International Boxing Federation lightweight world title also in May; and Russian Dmitry Bivol, current World Boxing Association light-heavyweight champion.

Coupled with their own physical advantage, thanks to their hardy nomadic stock and a love for traditional sports such as wrestling and all kinds of horsemanship, the Xinjiang boxers quickly gained respect for being tough opponents to beat.

Their diet of horse meat and milk – rich in iron, essential in athletic performance and recovery – and regular training in the rugged high mountains that cover the land are said to also give them an edge.

“You can tell from the way they fight. Their style is very robust and strong. You can also tell from their physical condition. They’re aggressive and are constantly pressuring their opponents,” said China’s most decorated female boxer, Li Qian, 34, who is heading to Paris for her final stab at a third Olympic medal.

She won a bronze at the 2016 Rio Games and a silver in Tokyo in 2020.

“Xinjiang boxers excel in the higher weight classes because they have the strength and power. They are the best in the entire country in those categories,” said Li, who is from Inner Mongolia and enjoys training in Urumqi because she says it feels like being in another country. Eight in the national squad, including her and Little Bieke, will represent China in Paris.

“I think we may not have done enough. It feels like we’re close to breaking through, but we haven’t yet managed to transcend this barrier,” conceded Mr Shang Hongbo, former director of the Xinjiang boxing training centre, who is now deputy director of the Xinjiang Sports Bureau, the official body responsible for governing and promoting all sports in the autonomous region.

Xinjiang boxers, who tend to be physically bigger than the regular Chinese boxer, also face stiff competition in the heavier weight classes internationally.

“These foreign boxers could be taller, more powerful and even stronger than you,” said Mr Shang. “That’s when our shortcomings become obvious. We haven’t handled our defence game well.”

Mr Shang believes another reason is that Xinjiang boxing has yet to develop its own technique and style.

“Do you think the Russians will let you in on their core methodology? They, the Kazakhs, are also constantly developing and refining their technique,” he said.

All that could change in Paris, when a new training pedagogy is put to the test.

In a bid to innovate and up their game, both the Xinjiang team and the Olympic squad have in the past two years leaned on top coaches from boxing dynamo Cuba – a decision that athletes say have made a difference to the way they fight.

The Chinese national boxing team had in the late 1980s also relied on foreign coaches from Cuba, the former Soviet Union and the Philippines to bring it up to speed after the three-decade nationwide ban on boxing was lifted.

Cuba is a heavyweight in amateur boxing, having won 41 gold medals and 78 overall medals at the Olympics, ranking second only to the United States in its impressive haul.

At the 2020 Tokyo Games, it bagged four of the eight gold medals up for grabs in the men’s division.

“The Cuban coaches came and fine-tuned the fundamentals, teaching us techniques that are more commonly seen internationally and giving us strategies. It was a systematic, step-by-step process and you can definitely see the difference,” said Little Bieke.

At his first Olympic outing in Tokyo in 2020, the young athlete lost to Brazilian Hebert Sousa, who eventually took home the gold medal for the 69-75kg middleweight division.

Mr Mijit said the Cuban coaches have brought new techniques into the mix, introducing greater variety into the footwork, defence and distance game of the fighters.

“We used to be more about mid- to long-range fighting, but after the Cuban coaches came, we quickly discovered our problems,” said Mr Mijit, who hired two such trainers from Havana about a year ago.

“Cuba has not just long-, mid- and short-distance fighting, but also short-mid and mid-long techniques. We were never exposed to this before. The way we fight is more holistic now.

“We want to create our own Xinjiang way of fighting,” he said.

One of the two coaches, Mr Luisbey Sanchez, who is in charge of the youth squad, credits the Xinjiang boxers with being tough, fast and disciplined.

“But a Cuban boxer has very good fluidity in the legs and a lot of speed, rhythm and coordination. These are some of the things we have tried to introduce into the training system here,” he said, adding, with a wink, that he has taught salsa to his students to improve their footwork.

The biggest challenge that awaits Little Bieke in Paris is a new weight class – 80kg – that is the result of two former weight classes, 75kg and 81kg, being folded into one, making this category a highly competitive one.

But his success at the coming Games will inject a much-needed booster shot to Xinjiang’s push to become a boxing powerhouse in the country and make further headway in its sporting ambitions.

Officials like Mr Shang hope it will inspire the next generation of athletes who are plucked at a young age from villages and towns and groomed for sporting stardom in China’s quest to be an Olympic superpower.

Some, like Little Bieke, make it into the major league. Some drop out after a few years.

For the sport of boxing, there remains much work and catching up to be done.

Banned by Chairman Mao Zedong in the late 1950s, as it was considered a bloodthirsty and capitalistic pursuit, boxing made a comeback nearly three decades later, ironically thanks to Muhammad Ali.

The American boxing legend visited Beijing in 1979 as an envoy of then US President Jimmy Carter to lobby China to take part in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

When he met Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, he advocated for boxing to be reinstated as well, to which Deng reportedly said: “China should promote whichever sport as long as the people like it.”

A year after Ali made a second trip to China in 1985, boxing got its official recognition.

In the main hall of the Xinjiang training centre, a large red banner with gold lettering hangs down a wall in front of a ring.

“The honour of the motherland, above all else,” it reads. It is a doctrine that has been instilled into the Xinjiang boxers from a young age.

“We want the children to know how they got here from the ravines and the mountains, and who are the ones who have been paying for their food, lodging and transportation to and from competitions,” said the sports bureau’s Mr Shang.

“We used to have this saying – that it takes 40 farmers to toil a year to feed one boxer. We tell these kids that their personal effort is one aspect, but the opportunity provided by the country is a necessary condition for their growth.”

Nineteen-year-old Ai Li Da Na, a Uighur from a village in Urumqi, was spotted while playing football by a coach who asked her to give boxing a try. She was 13 then.

She was selected for the Xinjiang youth team in 2019 and got elevated to the women’s team in 2024.

The provincial champion said going to the Olympics is a dream that she and others in the Xinjiang team harbour.