China's National Gymnastics Centre: How Did China Get So Good?

On the walls of the huge, hangar-like building that is China’s National Gymnastics Centre in Beijing are words of encouragement. “Avoid bent knees, split legs, bent feet, land firmly and you can win gold,” reads one message. “Starting from nothing, we can forge gold, and the gold will shine,” reads another. The Chinese men’s gymnastic team did just that last week at the Olympics, ahead of Japan, Great Britain and the US.
Those slogans could probably be seen as old-style Maoist indoctrination, especially when taken with the subtext, implicit in much Western sports commentary before and during London 2012, that all Chinese athletes originate from a conveyor belt churning out identical, soulless competitors.
But do those words in Beijing actually differ from the “Go USA” signs displayed in American gyms, or the Union flags favoured here?
It seems that words and sports take on another meaning in the context of China. Ask Western gymnasts who have been to the elite facility in Beijing, and they will tell you the training is the same as elsewhere, and rather than being products of a brutal sports machine, Chinese athletes simply work harder.
Indeed, what we observed when we were given unprecedented access to the National Gymnastics Centre between 2009 and 2010 contrasted enormously with Western dogma. Our invitation to be the first Western photographers to enter the centre came after the Beijing Olympics. The Chinese head coach admired our previous work, but we think the decision to let us in was also prompted by a new confidence the 2008 Games had created among Chinese sporting authorities. They were comfortable with who they were, and felt ready to show the world a truly extraordinary and inspiring process. A country that one generation previously had only infrequently succeeded in world gymnastics was now dominating it. And the question being asked was: how did China get so good?

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