Abstract
As a part of a new era in Chinese state policy under President Xi, and the investments in sport that his administration has overseen, tennis is a sport that reflects the shifts in social class dynamics that have been explicitly targeted by the government (Goodman. Journal of Chinese Political Science 19:49–67, 2014). Explicit goals of middle-class expansion have driven policy development in the last decade, and the growth in global sports, including tennis, reflects that. We use this chapter to outline the ways in which tennis has become a critical part of the dynamics of social class that exist in China into the twenty-first century. Unique in its position as a sport tied to a newly established middle and upper-middle class experience, tennis speaks to more generalized aspects of the role of global sports in this period, but also offers a particular insight to how class functions in a contemporary Chinese context.
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Notes
- 1.
For further discussion of this issue, the in-depth work done with adolescent tennis players by Li et al. (2022) is important to review.
- 2.
The growth in tennis events in China can be expressed through these statistics: “In order to develop the Chinese market, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) gave Shanghai the right to host the Tennis Masters Cup in 2002. The tournament raised about US$3.5 million through ticket sales and another US$7 million from sponsorship. Following the successful tournament, the ATP awarded Shanghai the Tennis Masters Cup from 2005 to 2008. Spectators numbering 104,000 watched the tournament in 2005. The total income reached 107 million RMB. Inspired by the success of these tournaments, the ATP and the Chinese Tennis Association jointly created the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 in 2007. It is part of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000. The event took place in October 2009. Nearly 125,000 spectators enjoyed the tournament” (Wei et al., 2010, p. 2393).
- 3.
To highlight this period of growth, Horton (2012) discusses that “A feature of the growing profile of Asian cities as venues for major sporting events has been the proliferation of major tennis and golf tournaments that are now played in Asia. The 2011 Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) season opened with the Qatar Open played in Doha in January and won by Roger Federer; six other ATP events are to be played in Asia, though the majority are still played in the US and Europe; while on the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) tour 18 of 52 are to be played in Asia. Professional golf has its own Asian Tour competition, which involves mostly Asian players and number of competitive players from other regions world-wide, including Europe, the US and Australia. There are 36 tournaments in its schedule, including major world events such as the British Open. Japan also has its own tour, which is similarly structured and has 25 tournaments. Women’s professional golf, as mentioned previously, is dominated by Asian women, with seven of the top ten players coming from East Asia. At the start of 2011, the world number one was Jiyai Shin from South Korea but following her victory in the Australian Open in February 2011 Taiwan’s Yani Tseng took over the number one ranking in women’s golf. In 2011 the LPGA in 2011 embraced a full week of tournaments in Asia, while the Asian Tour is gathering in strength, with 11 feature events held in 2011” (p. 520).
- 4.
Tennis is one of the sports involved in this process of top-down and bottom-up change that has come because of intense urbanization. This had roots in early urbanization patterns that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s but became particularly intense and widespread throughout the rapid economic expansion of the 2000s. As Xiong (2007) highlights: “Urbanization has influenced the development of Chinese sport in two major ways: first, urbanization has stimulated an institutional reconstruction of the sport system through the reform of sports strategy, policy, administrative structures and functions. This has been a top-down process on the part of the state, aiming to satisfy the increasing economic and social demands for people’s participation in sport. Second, urbanization has launched the socio-cultural rebuilding of sport with changes in sports infrastructures, participation models and sports values. It has been a bottom-up process driven by the complex demands of Chinese people at the grassroots” (p. 448).
- 5.
This idea was also reflected in responses from other participants in our study, for instance, one respondent added that: “Many factors are restricting the growth of tennis, including facilities, human resources, and participants. These personnel need to be trained, organized, and evaluated. Moreover, with the combination of professional personnel matching, the operation is challenging.”
- 6.
A good contrasting example here is the investment in soccer facilities in Iceland. The Icelandic government has made a directed and intentional policy to invest in necessary infrastructure to support the sports developments across all communities, even very rural communities.
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Rick, O.J.C., Li, L. (2023). Tennis Culture and the Booming Urban Middle Class. In: Global Sports and Contemporary China. Global Culture and Sport Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18595-3_8
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