Beijing 2022: China's foreign hockey recruits still smiling

US-born goaltender Jeremy Smith wants you to know that he's proud to be playing ice hockey for China, even if that means picking the puck of out his net a lot more than he is used to.

"I'm here to inspire young Chinese hockey players," Smith told DW after his adopted country's 8-0 drubbing on Thursday at the hands of the United States in its first-ever game at a Winter Olympics. The Chinese side did improve dramatically by the time they faced Germany on Saturday, though, losing just 3-2 to the 2018 silver medalists.

"It's truly an honor. I'm proud to put on the sweater that says China on the front. I'm thankful for the opportunity that Team China has extended to me," said Smith.

With a lack of homegrown talent readily available, the 32-year-old and many of his teammates have been parachuted in to help support the fledgling ice hockey nation. Two thirds of the 25-man squad hail from outside China, with Smith among three Americans who faced off against their compatriots on Thursday. There are also 11 Canadians in the squad and one Russian.

For the foreign-born players, their inclusion represents a once-in-a-lifetime chance to take part in a competition that would normally be out of their reach. For China, it demonstrates how far the country is willing to go when its sporting reputation is on the line. 

Mark Dreyer, a Beijing-based Chinese sports expert and author of "Sporting Superpower: An Insider's View on China's Quest to Be the Best," characterizes it as an exercise in saving face.

"It quickly became obvious that Chinese homegrown players were not going to be competitive at the Olympics," he said. "It was looking very, very bad indeed, and so everyone was going to end up with egg on their face. China was going to get massacred on the ice."

Questions over Chinese citizenship

China has some of the strictest citizenship laws in the world, and, unlike some other countries, is reluctant to naturalize foreign-born athletes to achieve success. But desperate times have called for desperate measures.

Quite how Smith and others on the team have been able to represent China, however, is for the most part unclear.

Barring what would be an incredibly rare exception, China doesn't allow dual nationality, while rule 41 of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) charter says: "Any competitor in the Olympic Games must be a national of the country of the NOC [national Olympic committee] which is entering such competitor."

Mark Adams, the IOC's spokesman, told Friday's daily press briefing that he wasn't aware of a change in his organization's rules. "Usually they would have to have a passport," he said.

Something had to give if the players didn't want to surrender their foreign passports, and Dreyer believes it was the Chinese side that blinked first.

"I think the primary option was 'give up your passport — here's a Chinese passport' and the players were like, 'No,'" Dreyer said. "They have a lot of leverage as a group because China knows that they are desperately uncompetitive and need these heritage players.

"Eventually, I think China had to buckle and say: 'Alright, well what's the workaround here?'" said Dreyer. "It's definitely a loophole. They just don't want it to get out because then it's seen as these people getting special privilege."  

'This is sport, this is ice hockey'

Trying to solve the riddle for certain is a challenge, though, because Chinese ice hockey officials have sought to limit media access to the players.

Prior to the Olympics, they were instructed not to give interviews. After Thursday's heavy defeat, most of the team walked through the mixed zone, the postgame area where players talk to reporters, without stopping for questions. Those who did stuck to a planned script.

Parroting a line from Eileen Gu, the US-born Chinese freestyle skiing star who is straddling a geopolitical divide at these games, Smith sidestepped a question from DW about whether he had renounced his US citizenship.

"This is sport, this is hockey," said Smith, who is competing under his given Chinese name, Shimisi Jieruimi. "I'm here to represent China. When I'm in China, I'm Chinese, I'm supported by the Chinese, and I'm truly thankful for that. And when I go to America, I'm American. Here I'm building bridges for a younger generation."

China's ice hockey association didn't immediately reply to a request for comment on the citizenship issue.

Plans to grow Chinese ice hockey

Captain Brandon Yip, otherwise known as Ye Jinguang, has been here from the start of what he refers to as "the project." The Canadian is the most experienced player in the squad, having racked up 174 appearances in the NHL for three teams. Prior to moving to China six years ago, he played for Mannheim and Düsseldorf in Germany. 

"We got a phone call, and they said they were building a team in China to compete in the KHL [Russia's Continental Hockey League] with hopes of playing in the Olympics," Yip told DW. "So, we're just really proud of everyone. The national players have come a long way, and for them to get their first game here was pretty exciting."

China has already plowed many millions of dollars into developing ice hockey in the country, including building up infrastructure and hiring a legend of the game, Wayne Gretzky of Canada, as a consultant. If it wasn't for the pandemic, Yip believes the country's progress in the sport would be even more evident.

"There's already hundreds of rinks popping up all over China," he said. "Unfortunately, COVID happened, but, two or three years ago, we started to get a lot of fans at our games. We built on that everywhere, and hopefully we can come back to Beijing or Shanghai or wherever we're going to be in China and continue to play here and grow the game."

Hopes for the future

At one of those rinks during a recent training session in Beijing, coach Fu Lei put a group of young local players through their paces. Their enthusiasm for their new sport is clear, even if their knowledge is not. "I don't know much about ice hockey players," one of the youngsters admitted. "If I knew more, I would have a favorite player."

Despite the gaps in his team's knowledge, Fu is optimistic about ice hockey's future in China, hoping that the Winter Olympics will help bring the sport to a wider audience.

"Ice hockey was a niche sport in China," he said. "But, with the Winter Olympics, more and more people will be interested in it. Ice hockey will become better and better in China in the next few years."

Whether the fad will last beyond the Games, Dreyer said, depends on what China does next. 

"I think they will try to fade out the heritage players and certainly the imports as more and more Chinese players get better," he said. "But whether or not they're able to do that and stay competitive is a different story. It needs grassroots participation. It's the same with football.

"You have a bunch of people, you have a few million to choose from, and naturally you're going to get someone who's quite good," said Dreyer. "The numbers always play out to China's advantage. The problem is they just can't put in the proper systems and have a long-term plan."

Edited by: Michael Da Silva