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.

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?"