The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Mark Chapman.

Welcome to the Business of Sport podcast on The Athletic.

Matt Slater with us as usual.

And the focus of today's podcast is sport in China,

as Beijing prepares to become the first city in history to host both the summer and a winter

Olympics. We'll discuss sports impact on culture, politics and society, plus sport in China

since the 2008 games and how international leagues such as the NBA, the English

Premier League, the WTA operate in a challenging region that offers an enormous market for business.

Our guest today are Mark Dreyer, a China Sports Insider, an author of Sporting Superpower,

and Insiders' View on China's quest to be the best.

And also William Ney, who is the research and advocacy coordinator at Chinese human rights defenders.

The whole point in this podcast is for us to look at the interaction really between sports,

politics and business in China. That's the idea behind it. Let's see where

we end up with the discussion. And Mark, I suppose if I start with you, let's take the period that

is bookended by the two Olympics. The summer of Beijing in 2008 and now the winter of Beijing in

2022. How has sport changed in China in those 14 years?

Post-Olympics was a bit of a lull and there was some high points. There was Lina winning the

French Open in 2011, again in 2014, but it didn't really pick up again until towards the end

of 2014. There was a big

policy document which was released. And this was designed to try to build the largest sports

economy in the world. Basically, China had looked at, they were looking for other drivers for

...