China: The Bubble that Never Pops is out today.

Here's a thread about what I learned about China by spending way to much time pursuing my dream of table tennis stardom.

First - order the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/China-Bubble-that-Never-Pops/dp/0190877405/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bubble+orlik&qid=1592794844&s=books&sr=1-1

I spent a lot of time in China playing table tennis.

I played in sweaty basement clubs, with members of the Shanghai Jiaotong university team, in the HQ's of major state-owned banks.

Here's me losing a game in Beijing in 2010:

大球还可以小球不行 spectators would politely say – he gets the big balls OK, but no touch...

If you understand how China's table tennis system works you understand a lot about China’s economy.

There are a lot of problems. A few years ago the men’s team went on strike following a political power grab by the sport's ruling body. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1053958.shtml

To have any hope of making it, children start training aged 8 or 9.

At 12 or 13 they drop out of school and play full time – repeating the same drills again and again. 

Professionals I spoke with said cash bribes to the coach were also required.

So – political infighting, corruption, a mechanistic and repetitive approach to training – some of the problems that bedevil China’s society and economy – are also entrenched in table tennis.

And yet…. China’s players are the best in the world. Fan Zhendong and Chen Meng – #1 man and woman are both Chinese. The joke in China is that if the 100th best player in the country got to Olympics they could win the gold, the trouble is they can’t get into the national team.

So how does China table tennis manage to be nepotistic, corrupt, mechanistic, and still the best in the world?

Reason #1 - Size. China has a population of 1.3 billion and everyone tries table tennis. The national team is selecting from the biggest pool of talent in the world.

#2: Learning foreign technologies. When a foreign player develops a threatening new serve or shot, the Chinese team video it, break it down, replicate it, and master it. A new trick might throw them off in one tournament. It won’t work twice.

#3: Training. Guess what – innovation and creativity are only important at the frontier of technique. To get to the frontier of technique, a lot of mechanical training is required.

A massive talent pool, determined efforts to learn foreign technologies, hard work.

Writ large, China’s economy has all of those in spades.

It also has serious problems. As in the table tennis system, those problems are not the dominant factors.

Want to find out more? Read my book: China: The Bubble that Never Pops

https://www.amazon.com/China-Bubble-that-Never-Pops/dp/0190877405/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=bubble+orlik&qid=1592794844&s=books&sr=1-1