man there is so much bovine excrement here its making my eyes bleed.
first, china is not a "new" sports power, it has been a sports power for a long time now.
secondly, corruption is a huge problem that does mess up sports developement. that being said, korea wasnt esactly squeaky clean, it took many many years for south korea to be where it is at. China will also get there. there is a question of relativity here, but whats upsetting is that the poster "korean" uses china's corruption to goad chinese posters into flame war.
as i posted numerous times since recently joing pakistan defence is that the chinese super league is very very new and soccer developement take a long time. i have to fully agree with shuttler's view that it is only a matter of time before chinese football becomes world level. but with that being said, how fast it does so does depend on level of corruption too.
now some people said USA sucks at football. i have to repectfully disagree. for a country that dont give a sh17 about soccer, playing on par with south korea is pretty d@mn good in my opinion. noone here knows or care who landon donovan or coby jones is. these guys really love soccer and that is why the team performs. you just need eleven guys like this to have a decent team.
lastly, sports have always been mired in corruption and controversy. Adolf Hitler used the olympics to showcase nazism. soviet union and the usa have been using it to show the superiority of their system of government for years, even biycotting each other to piss each other off. south koreans used it as a "coming out" party which pissed off the north koreans. and recently the chinese used it for the same exact reason. the south africans used their world cup to cement national unity. and so on and so forth.
and while they do this, there is this really dirty back negotiations to pump up a country's medal count and for corporations to mooch money from. ALL the countries are guilty of this whehter we are talking about china, usa, korea, or whereevrr. and it will probably continue to do so.
but for me, i think the second poster of the thread pretty much sums it nicely when a non-chinese person looks at this thread.
if we go by medal count on a per capita basis, i think it is the aussies who reign supreme. but they are good swimmers and there are tons of swimming competition in the summer olympics. if we start doling out lots of medals for commonwealth games like cricket and rugby, we might see india and pakistan also pile on those medals.
anyway, medal counting is great for nationalists with nationalist agenda. for the rest of us, it is a good way for corporations to keep people glued to their television so they would buy Tide detergent, drink Coca cola, and drive Chevy trucks.