JERRY FENG pens an Op-Ed on the unequal treatment that Chinese athletes have to endure under the scrutiny of Western media and society.
On July 31st, day 6 of the Paris Olympics, Chinese swimmer Pan Zhanle won the 100m Freestyle swim race and broke his previous World record, finishing 46.40 seconds, just 0.40 seconds faster than his previous world record set in February at the World Championship in Doha. Normally, events like these are a cause of celebration and joy — people congratulate the athletes, and athletes show sportsmanship to one another, honoring the hard work that each of them put in to deserve their place on the podium or even just to compete. Instead, Pan Zhanle’s victory became a cause of scandal, controversy, and unsportsmanlike, mostly arising from the Western (mainly the US, the UK, and Australia) teams’ doping allegations against the Chinese Olympic Team.
This controversy largely dates back to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. 23 Chinese athletes tested positive for a banned heart medication, but the Chinese team justified their reasons for failing the tests as a result of contaminated foods in their hotel kitchen that triggered the doping tests. As a result, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) allowed the swimmers to compete, who went on to win five medals, three of them being gold. These reports have largely avoided public scrutiny until they were unveiled in April by the New York Times and German news outlet ARD. 11 of those swimmers who tested positive just before the Tokyo Olympics were also allowed to compete in Paris. Pan Zhanle was not one of the swimmers who tested positive before the Tokyo Olympics.
Nearly two weeks before the swim events started, World Aquatics said that “a certain number of athletes from specific nations will be tested four times” by a Lausanne-based International Testing Agency; China, specifically, was said to be tested “no less than eight times.” Specifically, Chinese swimmers were tested, on average, 21 times before the games, significantly higher than the number of times that the Australian and American teams have had to test, at five and seven times, respectively. In addition to having tested a disproportionate 21 times, these tests were also conducted at numerous different times of the day, morning and night. Many Chinese athletes have also mentioned its effects on their sleep schedules, normal exercise, and eating routines, which could’ve easily had a very negative impact on their athletic performance in these races.
This biased treatment of Chinese athletes disrupts the integrity of sports as it is. Even if an athlete is truly to be clean, unfair accusations destroy any faith in a clean record, discounting all the hard work athletes put in. Zhang Yufei, a Chinese swimmer who went on to win one silver and five bronze medals in Paris felt “wronged” that this doping scandal would cause other athletes to view her through a “biased lens.” Zhang was one of the Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a doping substance ahead of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and she went on to win four gold medals, including two Gold.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), unsurprisingly, took on one of the main players in accusing the effectiveness of WADA in enforcing rules regarding the integrity of the sport. In addition to US Senators, USADA, and the White House calling for more details regarding the positive tests in 2021, they have also threatened funding to WADA on grounds to which the IOC responded by threatening to revoke its awarding of the 2034 Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City in the US.
But, China was not alone in having athletes who have been accused of doping. US Track-and-Field sprinter Erriyon Knighton also tested positive for a banned substance in March, but the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency accepted the explanation that the result came from contaminated meat, not unlike the explanation provided by the Chinese three years earlier. Knighton was allowed to compete.
These attitudes towards Chinese swimmers did not seem to just originate after the results of that race; in a post-race interview, Pan said that he felt “the Western swimmers looked down on us [them]” and that they would ignore interacting with the Chinese swim delegation and purposely splash water on the Chinese swim coach.
This is also not the first time that Chinese athletes were treated with disdain and disrespect and is reflective of a broader change around the world, especially the West, in their treatment of Chinese athletes. In a separate piece titled “A Crisis of Dual Identities: a Blessing or a Curse?” I talked about the experience navigating Chinese and American identities as a Chinese American in addition to the increased scrutiny that Chinese American athletes had to face during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics that their peers from other countries such as Japan, Jamaica, or New Zealand did not.
Chinese athletes have been victims of double standards both at home in the US and abroad. Chinese American athletes, such as Eileen Gu, who chose to compete for China instead of the United States fell victim to terms such as being a “traitor” to the US and being “ungrateful” for being American. Even at the 2024 Olympics, pole-vaulting champion, Mondo Duplantis, whose mother is Swedish but was raised in Louisiana, won a gold medal but did not receive the same type of treatment that Chinese American athletes like Eileen Gu had to endure.
To be clear: it is fair to criticize the WADA for keeping Chinese athletes’ testing positive in 2021 a secret on grounds of transparency. It is also fair to criticize doping as a whole, violating the integrity of sports and sportsmanship, but there should always be equal standards being upheld for all countries regardless of politics.
Jerry Feng is an undergraduate student at Yale College studying History and Global Affairs. Jerry can be reached at jerry.feng@yale.edu.