China’s Olympic tennis glory tracks booming middle classes

BEIJING – Zheng Qinwen’s historic tennis gold at the Paris Olympics followed a decades-long surge in the sport’s popularity among China’s burgeoning middle class, and her victory is set to boost it further.

The 21-year-old won China’s second-ever tennis gold, and first in singles,

hailing the triumph as a “proud” moment not only for herself but for her country as well.

This week in Beijing, tennis centres visited by AFP were full of kids and adults, while club bosses reported a spike in interest following Zheng’s title.

“It’s really fun to play tennis and I’ve been playing it for three years. I truly like this sport,” Zhang Xinghao, 14, said at the Beijing International Tennis Academy.

He had returned a day earlier from an educational summer camp in the United States, where he could not play tennis and came straight to the club for a lesson in spite of the jet lag.

Elsewhere in Beijing, a dozen children lined up to whack balls teed up by coaches at the Open Star Tennis Club, where player numbers have more than doubled in recent weeks after Zheng’s success.

“She is at the top of the pyramid and her win has had a huge impact and now more people are coming to play. It is a huge boon for the tennis industry,” said club owner Liu Yingjun, 41.

Tennis was introduced to China in the 1860s, but it failed to gain mass appeal and was largely an elite sport reserved for the wealthiest families.

However, the rapid growth of the country’s middle class in recent decades has brought profound economic and social changes to the country, and tennis has followed.

In 2000, just 4 per cent of urban households were considered middle class, but now the official estimate of China’s middle-income population has exceeded 400 million – almost 30 per cent of the country’s 1.4 billion.

Simultaneously, its tennis-playing population has exploded from less than two million in 2006 to nearly 20 million in 2021, ranking second only after the United States.

Sports marketing expert Adam Zhang said “tennis mania” had hit China – from children going through grassroots programmes to companies spending big on corporate sponsorship.

Zheng’s Olympic gold triggered her racket and shoes to trend online, while racket manufacturer Wilson saw a 2,000 per cent surge in sales for the model she uses.

“When players do well in their games, like winning the four Grand Slams or the Olympics, they become idols for young people,” Zhang said.

Zheng was first inspired by the 2008 Beijing Games, her father Zheng Jianping – a former track and field athlete – told local media.

And on watching Li Na – China’s most successful tennis player with two Grand Slams – win the Australian Open in 2014, an 11-year-old Zheng told a TV crew she wanted to “fight for championships”.

After picking up a racket in her home town of Shiyan, her obvious talent and hard work led her to training centres in the provincial capital Wuhan and then on to Beijing.

That ambition, however, came at a significant financial cost.

Her father reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on his daughter’s coaching, overseas travel, food and accommodation.

But savvy Chinese parents have long seen tennis as a means to help their children stand out in applications for cut-throat higher education places – both home and abroad – as well as better connect with their peers.

The mother of Beijing teenager Zhang, Qiu Jingchong, hopes her son “can sharpen his will by practising tennis”.

“I also hope that his tennis skills will be a highlight on his application when he goes to middle school or studies abroad in the future,” she said as her son toiled in his training session.

Her expectations are not unusual.

Aaron Cao, owner of the Beijing International Tennis Academy, said she has noticed many parents have a steadfast goal in sending their children to lessons.

“They want their children to start playing tennis in primary school so that when these children go off to the US for college, they will have the common hobby to socialise with others,” she said.

“You can’t do that with ping pong.” AFP