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China does fund team sports, and their participation in soccer and basketball is huge. They're still horrible. Hockey would be much more difficult, particularly because there is no existing interest. I doubt that in six years China could improve enough to ensure that a top country couldn't blow it out, if the opposition was motivated to do so.
I don't agree with the participation in soccer in China being huge. Soccer has been marred by cases of corruption that government-led initiatives have only recently fought to fix. Until recently, this has driven many people away from soccer in China, as parents have been reluctant to enroll their children in soccer programs associated with corruption. This, along with the corruption present within the leagues and development systems, has driven the quality of soccer in China downward. In addition, contrary to your beliefs that soccer participation in China is huge, the Chinese Football Association reported that in 2011, there were fewer than 10,000 registered soccer players in China. As I said, government initiatives have only recently sought to remedy these issues by seeking to remove corruption in the Chinese soccer system, pushing for more schools to field soccer programs, and pumping bigger investments into developing soccer in China into a more respectable state. We won't know how this works out until some years down the line.
In the case of basketball, I would definitely not call Chinese basketball "horrible," and I'm also uncertain about the amount of participation in the sport in China being "huge." Although the Chinese Basketball Association reports that there are 300 million people playing basketball in China, I would reckon that only a small fraction of this 300 million actually plays the sport in any serious manner (in East Asian cultures, school and work typically takes up most of your time, to a much greater extent than it does in the West). Also, while Chinese basketball is certainly far from the level of say, basketball in America or many parts of Europe, it is certainly not as awful as you seem to be making it out to be. China currently ranks 14th in the FIBA rankings and outright dominates FIBA Asia. Sure, FIBA Asia isn't exactly rigorous competition, but you almost seem to be making the case that Chinese basketball is the joke of the world or something. For comparison, Latvia's IIHF ranking is 10th. In addition, Chinese national teams have faced off against American national teams in basketball in recent times. Although the American teams were obviously much more dominant, it isn't as if the American teams beat the Chinese teams by a thousand points every time or something. I've seen some people here and there making the case that South Korea has one of the better teams in ice hockey in Asia (though it isn't exactly a high bar) and as such, they're definitely worthy of praise and should be allowed to participate in the upcoming Winter Olympics. If this South Korean team who isn't even ranked first in Asia (a very weak region for hockey) is worthy of praise, then how does that make the Chinese basketball team, who is by far the most dominant team in Asian basketball, a complete joke? Sure, China has quite a ways to go to reach their potential in basketball, but I wouldn't go so far as to call Chinese basketball absolute garbage.
As I briefly touched upon earlier, in the context of history and culture, China has for the longest time (dating back to at least the creation of imperial examinations during the Han Dynasty) been largely focused on academics and schooling (a quality that has likewise spread to other nations in the Sinosphere). This
could have a possible negative effect on the development of athletics in China, but in an ideal case, due to the sheer population size of China, there will likely always be a decent amount of people who may at the end of the day just feel like being athletes instead, regardless of what their parents or societal norms tell them to do. I think, however, three things need to improve before we get to this level: socioeconomic levels need to catch up such that the middle class is a much more sizable portion of the population in turn allowing households to have enough income to take some risks career-wise, developmental systems need to improve to be able to more effectively allow athletes to find and work toward reaching their potentials, and corruption needs to be more widely rooted out. Obviously, corruption will ALWAYS exist in every country to some degree, no matter how hard you work at getting rid of it, but I feel like these three goals can more or less be achieved with time.
I also disagree with any possible notions I've seen in other threads in the past that, somehow, Chinese people are inherently unable to work with each other, and that this is the reason for the poor record of Chinese team sports. I find this to be a completely ignorant view and challenge whoever might think this to look at things like doubles badminton and eSports. Although doubles badminton may not be as team-heavy as actual team-based sports such as hockey, soccer, and basketball, doubles badminton still requires a deep level of synergy with your partner and knowledge of partner-based strategies. And yet, China is absolutely dominant in Olympic doubles badminton, often besting countries such as South Korea, Denmark, and Japan. Although eSports obviously lack much of the physical elements of common team-based sports, anyone who has been involved in eSports or even played online team-based games competitively can tell you that teamwork, strategy, and coordination is absolutely vital to success in eSports. Yet, for many years (until a recent slump), China has dominated one of the biggest games in eSports: Dota 2.
Now, does any of this mean I believe China can field a passable ice hockey team in 2022? I don't know, but I'm leaning toward no, barring a miracle. As a Chinese, I have faith that China can definitely improve in hockey if the will is there, but I don't know if that will have a noticeable effect by 2022. I'd only like to challenge people who believe that hockey cannot succeed in China due to some perceived inherent inferiority of Chinese people. I've been lurking these boards for a while and it often seems that racism against people such as Russians (and whenever it comes up, Chinese) and Cold War-style xenophobia is largely ignored. I know better than to expect it to change, but I thought I'd make an account to at least fight back against some rather ignorant things I see, as I've been disappointed time and time again about people rarely getting called out for their BS.
