Sports Diplomacy: The Chinese Experience and Perspective

Summary Sport is a political and diplomatic arena where politics parodies sport and vice versa. When relations between two nations are poor, sport can be employed as a tool to heighten confrontation or, if relations start to improve, sport can also create and accelerate diplomatic momentum. In both cases, sport is politicized, but in the Chinese perspective only the latter instance can be considered as sports diplomacy. Sport itself is neither sufficient for diplomatic breakthrough, nor sufficient for diplomatic breakdown. The increasing importance of sports diplomacy also validates the transformation of traditional to new diplomacy.