Olympics: Behave yourselves, China tells its sports fans

Previously, China has seen the banning of celebrity rankings, the restructuring of fan clubs, and the regular scrubbing of “harmful” content from fan pages. In the last few days, the state-run Global Times newspaper published several articles denouncing “fan culture” in sports. One of its reports said “numerous Chinese people” were now worried about “the visibly aggressive fan culture that threatens to erode the sporting world”. In addition to inflammatory comments directed at sporting personalities, authorities have also criticised fans who cheer loudly or use flash photography during matches, and those who profit by selling memorabilia signed by athletes. “The [fan culture] not only affects the training and competition of Chinese athletes, but also seriously affects the reputation of Chinese sports,” state news agency Xinhua said in a video report on Wednesday. Late last year, the Chinese Olympic Committee and General Administration of Sport of China told fans off after repeated incidents of them filming and following athletes. “It seems that these ‘low-level fans’ are driven by their love for idols and impulsively make irrational actions that endanger the normal order of events, public order and good customs, sportsmanship and social morality,” they had said in a joint statement. Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the committee warned Chinese Olympians not to get involved in fan clubs, adding that it wants to “resolutely put an end to the spread of the chaos of fan culture to the field of sports”. Veteran table tennis player Deng Yaping, for instance, had urged fans to “express our preferences without attacking others”. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjdk5l94p1zo