Hegemony is almost maddening. At the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games, China won 141 medals, including 63 titles. In 2008, at home for the Beijing edition, the Middle Kingdom crushed the competition with 211 medals, including 89 gold. Four years later, there are 231 awards, with 95 in gold, or 20% of the titles at stake in London. In Rio, in 2016, China is once again at the top of the ranking, with 239 medals, including 107 in gold. In Tokyo, during the sixteenth Summer Paralympic Games, from August 24 to September 5, the Chinese delegation will try to finish at the top of the medal ranking for the fifth time in a row.
This supremacy is largely due to the system put in place nearly fifteen years ago by the Chinese authorities to detect and train Paralympic athletes. a “Elitist system”, as Guan Zhixun, associate professor at Zhejiang University and author of the book describes it Body and Politics: Elite Disability Sport in China (published in the United States in 2018, untranslated). The system is based on a national training center reserved for disabled sports (the China Disability Sports Training Center) and 225 centers located in the provinces of the country.
The results it produces are first and foremost a communication tool for China, according to Antoine Bondaz: “They formed a sporting elite because they realized that few countries were investing heavily in Paralympic sport. Which offers sporting hegemony and major political gain ”, specifies the researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research.
This architecture and its successes have also been thought by the Chinese state as vectors of greater inclusion of people with disabilities. Because, if the Chinese handisport shines on the world level, the daily life of the handicapped people in China remains difficult. “The 85 million people with disabilities have low visibility”, notes Antoine Bondaz. Their access to social services, such as education and training, remains low compared to the rest of the population.
In 2013, Human Rights Watch called for an end to the discrimination and exclusion suffered by children with disabilities, arguing in particular about difficulties in education. “This is proof that there is still a lot to do to erase this almost cultural discrimination of disability”, continues the researcher.
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