Medals and mobs: China's 'toxic' sports fans face crackdown

BEIJING – Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans.

They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling "toxic fandom", and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it.

Some of the adulation toward China's sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes' personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges.

Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities, before China's ruling Communist Party moved to rein in the fanatical hype surrounding them.

Quan has been the focus of intense interest since winning two Olympic diving titles at the Paris Games, adding to the gold she took home from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.

Such is the clamor surrounding her, with people mobbing her hometown in rural Guangdong, that she avoided going home.

This week, as China's Olympic team made a visit to Macau, Quan was photographed in tears after being overwhelmed by fans at her hotel.

Online abuse

Jian Xu, an expert on Chinese celebrity studies at Deakin University in Australia, said that China's sports stars have increasingly appeared on television shows and in livestreams, turning them into celebrities.

Jian called it the commercialization and "entertainmentization" of China's athletes.

But there is a flip side. While some athletes have been feted as national heroes, others have suffered at the hands of trolls online.

Gymnast Su Weide, 24, received online abuse after he fell twice during his horizontal bar routine at the Paris Olympics.

"He dragged the whole team down on his own," read one comment on the Twitter-like Weibo, while others accused him of gaining his place on the team through "connections" rather than talent.

In the all-Chinese women's table tennis final between Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha, Sun received vocal support in the arena and online, while Chen was booed and abused on social media.

"The whole country was hoping for Sun Yingsha to win the women's singles gold, where's your sense of justice?" one Weibo comment aimed at the winner Chen read.

Days later, China's Ministry of Public Security announced the arrest of one abusive online fan.

Since then at least five people have been detained or punished for targeting China's athletes or coaches, part of the move to deal with abusive fans and fan groups.

Pan Zhanle, the 20-year-old swimmer who broke the 100m freestyle world record on his way to gold in Paris, disbanded his official fan circle on Weibo just weeks after his triumph.

Online clubs for fans of celebrities are notorious for their fierce loyalty to their idols, promoting and defending their stars, trying to advance their careers -- and smearing their competitors.

The groups were usually for pop singers and movie stars, but recently they have been formed around China's increasingly marketable and commercialized sports stars.

'Correct outlook on life'

According to the expert Jian, many young people turned their online attention to sports stars after authorities began strengthening oversight of celebrity fan groups in 2021.

Authorities were worried about the influence of the fan clubs on youngsters and some of the behavior that went with them.

Fans thought the sports world was "a relatively safe area due to the importance of sports to the nation and the high status of sports stars as role models", he told AFP.

"They can express their national pride and patriotism through supporting their sports idols who fight for China."

But now authorities appear to think that as a conduit for national pride, it has gone too far.

Last week, China's General Administration of Sport (GAS) condemned "distorted fan culture" for "damaging the reputation of the sports industry".

Gao Zhidan, director of GAS, also warned athletes they can play their part as role models that have a "correct outlook on life (and) view fame rationally".

Ms. Tan, a 41-year-old in Shanghai who only provided her surname, approved of the swimmer Pan disbanding his fan group.

Successful stars, whether sporting or in other fields, "should care more about their own progress and not care too much about what people around them or their fans think," she said.