Youngsters prepare on the Shandong Luneng Desk Tennis Membership in Jinan, East China’s Shandong Province. Picture: VCG
Editor’s Word:
Who’s the Communist Celebration of China (CPC)? What’s the CPC’s function within the new period?
The CPC has grown into one of many largest ruling events on the earth within the technique of main the Chinese language individuals in looking for liberation and happiness, making China as sturdy and affluent as it’s at this time.
Because the CPC ushers the nation into a brand new period of growth, the previous decade has witnessed nice achievements in nationwide power and prosperity, with individuals’s confidence and recognition of this path rising to unprecedentedly excessive ranges.
With greater than 96 million members, the CPC concluded its twentieth Nationwide Congress in October, which has realized the objectives of unifying considering, fortifying confidence, charting the course for a brand new period, and boosting morale. The World Occasions is publishing a sequence of tales to assist the world perceive the CPC on this new period, via tales from CPC members engaged on the frontlines of assorted fields, in addition to via observations made by revered students.
This installment tells the story of an excellent desk tennis participant and delegate to the twentieth CPC Nationwide Congress from Beijing, whose experiences replicate China’s continued breakthroughs in sports activities over the previous decade.
Over the previous decade, Ding Ning has made large positive factors in aggressive sports activities on the worldwide area, and in selling mass health in her dwelling nation.
As some of the profitable feminine desk tennis gamers to have ever received a Grand Slam singles title, over her 26-year profession, Ding has been a supply of numerous inspirational tales within the historical past of Chinese language desk tennis.
However Ding’s supply of delight is not simply from being an exemplary skilled athlete.
From being a Celebration delegate and experiencing the profitable conclusion of the CPC Nationwide Congress within the Nice Corridor of the Folks, to returning to academia after her retirement, and dealing as a visitor commentator whereas witnessing China claiming its fifth consecutive title on the 2022 ITTF World Group Desk Tennis Championships Finals… After taking a step again from the aggressive area {of professional} desk tennis, Ding has taken the initiative to use her champion spirit in additional areas.
“These new identities are each alternatives and challenges for me, and I’ll proceed to uphold the identical ardour that I had once I fought in most of the desk tennis matches, to advertise campus sports activities tradition and public health, and encourage extra individuals to domesticate a love for the game,” she instructed the World Occasions.
Ding Ning. Picture: Courtesy of Ding
Path of breakthroughs
“My desk tennis dream is carefully associated to the event of China as a sports activities powerhouse,” Ding stated.
Ding began enjoying desk tennis on the age of 5, becoming a member of the nationwide staff at 13 and turning into captain of the ladies’s nationwide staff at 27. Over the course of her profession, she received a complete of 21 world championships, however she has all the time attributed these glittering honors to her staff’s and nation’s help.
In 2001, when Beijing received the Olympic bid, the 11-year-old Ding was earmarked by the Beijing desk tennis staff as a seed participant for future coaching. Ever since then, Ding sporting a buzz reduce has made it her life’s dream to compete for her nation and win as many championships as she may.
On the Beijing 2008 Olympics, as a spectator, Ding witnessed the Chinese language desk tennis staff profitable the on the Peking College Khoo Teck Puat Gymnasium, and was touched by the transferring scene of her compatriots singing the nationwide anthem collectively.
Ding joined the CPC in 2012 simply earlier than attending the London 2012 Olympics, and received the ladies’s staff desk tennis title. On the Rio 2016 Olympics, Ding received two gold medals within the girls’s desk tennis singles and ladies’s staff, incomes her Grand Slam title.
This yr, Ding grew to become a torchbearer for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics to cheer on the collaborating athletes another way.
Ding’s story is a microcosm of the emergence of lots of of 1000’s of elite Chinese language athletes. “The enjoying discipline is all the time about profitable and dropping. Making an attempt to win the best honors is each a testomony to the athletes’ personal prowess and some of the fascinating components about aggressive sports activities,” she stated.
From China profitable unimaginable huge within the AFC Girls’s Asian Cup, extending the ninth title for the reason that final championship in 2006, to the Chinese language males’s volleyball staff profitable the primary championship of the Asian Cup in 10 years, and Su Bingtian turning into Asia’s quickest man to set an Asian document of 9.83 seconds on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Video games held in 2021, the final decade has seen a sequence of breakthroughs showcasing China’s high-level complete growth of aggressive sports activities.
In response to the Normal Administration of Sport of China, from 2012 to 2021, Chinese language athletes received 986 world championships and set 127 world information.
In Ding’s view, elite athletes’ success can’t be achieved with out authorities help. “We’re totally immersed within the good coaching and aggressive setting supplied by our nation, and we’re additionally all the time able to repay our nation with glorious outcomes.”
Ding talked about that the Chinese language desk tennis staff has a practice of actively becoming a member of the CPC. She recalled that when she was an athlete, the staff would maintain a weekly coaching summative assembly to emphasise the significance of defending and carrying on China’s sports activities legacy.
“The Chinese language desk tennis staff additionally has one other good custom.” Ding revealed. “Bootcamps are performed within the coldest time of the yr, to domesticate the collective consciousness and patriotism of the athletes.”
Though desk tennis is extra of a person sport on the courtroom, each participant on the nationwide staff is properly conscious of their obligations, Ding famous.
“The pursuits of the nation and the staff are paramount to us,” she stated.
Inextricable from nation’s progress
“From the motto of ‘One World, One Dream’ of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to ‘Collectively for a Shared Future’ on the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, China has not solely cultivated many excellent athletes, but additionally demonstrated to the world that it’s assured and powerful by efficiently internet hosting numerous sporting occasions,” Ding stated.
Within the technique of Ding’s transition from athlete to scholar and coach, she was additionally delighted to see her nation extra actively and proactively take worldwide heart stage. “For instance, the success of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics served as an inspirational information for numerous athletes of their coaching, and actually established a bridge of communication to the world in a posh and turbulent international context,” Ding stated.
Ding believes that the event of Chinese language sports activities is inextricable from the nation’s opening up and progress. Taking desk tennis for example, Ding instructed the World Occasions that the “little white ball” has impressed many tales which have promoted the event of friendship between China and overseas nations.
In November 2018, backed by the Shanghai College of Sports activities, a desk tennis school heart was established in Butuka Academy, a Papua New Guinea (PNG) and China friendship faculty, in Port Moresby, PNG. After lower than a yr of coaching, in July 2019, the PNG desk tennis staff members received two silver medals on the Pacific Video games, setting the most effective document within the nation’s historical past on the time,
Historical past additionally was made in Houston, Texas, in November 2021, as Chinese language and US gamers joined forces on the 2021 World Desk Tennis Championships Finals within the yr marking the fiftieth anniversary of “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” and continued the legacy cooperation and interplay between the 2 nations.
Ding identified that lately, Chinese language sports activities have additional offered a assured, inclusive, and worldwide picture. On this context, along with the pursuit of efficiency, Chinese language athletes have additionally proven extra multidimensional and optimistic traits in numerous fields.
Within the discipline of desk tennis, through the years, many former Chinese language gamers have actively participated in worldwide desk tennis affairs, including to China’s worldwide sports activities contributions and exhibiting the world that “we need to get pleasure from sports activities with gamers from everywhere in the world,” Ding stated.
As China’s nationwide sport, desk tennis enjoys excessive recognition, and gamers represented by Ding and Ma Lengthy have been younger individuals’s idols.
Within the face of the eye out and in of the sector, Chinese language desk tennis gamers are stricter on themselves, continuously enhancing their complete skills, and positively contributing to numerous public welfare actions, whereas enriching the general public’s cognition of sports activities.
The brand new technology of younger athletes, comparable to the present world No.1 girls’s singles participant Solar Yingsha, and reigning world champions Wang Manyu and Wang Chuqin, are extra capable of categorical their very own personalities, higher talk with the skin world, and present a better vary of abilities on the courtroom, Ding stated.
Passing on sportsmanship
In September 2021, then 31-year-old Ding started to review for a grasp’s diploma in bodily training at Peking College after her retirement. Whereas finding out, she additionally works as a instructor within the campus’ superior desk tennis class.
After retiring from the sector, Ding has now totally tailored to campus life.
“Once I was an athlete, I maintained an intensive each day coaching schedule,” Ding stated. Now again on campus, Ding enjoys extra stability and a shifted focus.
From discussions with academics and fellow college students, Ding believes that campus sports activities are at present receiving better consideration.
Ding has been centered on the promotion of youth campus sports activities, hoping to use her specialization in bodily training and contribute to nationwide health.
“This course of is blissful to me; I sit up for working with extra individuals to encourage discovery and understanding of sports activities from a distinct perspective, in order that Chinese language individuals can train higher and profit from it long-term,” Ding stated.
In 2014, Health-for-All actions was made a key nationwide technique.
A toddler learns to skate on the Nationwide Pace Skating Oval. Picture: Xinhua
“Specializing in assembly individuals’s calls for, we should construct extra services for Health-for-All actions and set up a higher-level public service system for Health-for-All packages,” stated Chinese language President Xi Jinping, additionally common secretary of the Communist Celebration of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Navy Fee, who has on many events expounded on his understanding of sports activities and laid down rules for the trigger.
By the tip of 2020, 37.2 p.c of individuals in China had been recorded as repeatedly collaborating in bodily train, and 90.4 p.c had handed the nation’s customary bodily health examination. By the tip of 2021, there have been greater than 2.7 million licensed social sports activities instructors in China.
From the pursuit of “peak competitors” to the promotion of public health, and now as a scholar, Ding not solely teaches skilled desk tennis abilities however passes on the tenacious spirit of sportsmanship to her college students.
“I hope to make extra individuals really feel and procure the resilience that sports activities deliver, to ‘maintain on just a little longer’ once they encounter difficulties and setbacks,” Ding stated.
“The Celebration and the nation have supplied diversified decisions for the long run growth of the youth, and I imagine that the Chinese language youth will emerge on the world stage in additional fields and acquire extra ‘champions’ sooner or later,” she stated.
