Can they represent the nation? Nationalism, national identity, and naturalized athletes in Chinese football

Are They Really Chinese? Examining Chinese Audiences’ Emotions and Perceptions Toward Naturalized Athletes at the 2022 Winter Olympics

“…This might reflect that these connections could improve the relationship between these athletes and the general public. This finding was also supported in Han's (2022) study where he found that Chinese fans often claimed naturalized soccer players with Chinese heritage as "ours" to confirm their sense of belonging to the Chinese nation, but described athletes with no Chinese heritage as "a foreigner having a Chinese passport" to separate them from the group. These results also revealed that spectators have a strong ethnic identity in regard to the Chinese nation and they attempted to accept these naturalized athletes through emphasizing their same ethnic identity.…”

“…Previous literature (Han, 2022;Wang, 2019) found that Chinese social media users had negative sentiments toward naturalized soccer players. However, our study revealed that naturalized Olympians received generally favorable attitudes and sentiments on Chinese social media.…”

“…As Poulton and Maguire (2012) noted, different countries and different sports have to be understood under their unique social-cultural and political-economic contexts. Due to the absence of research that has examined athlete naturalization in China (Han, 2022), this study seeks to understand the Chinese public's perception of sporting migrants in China and explore the impact that naturalized Olympic athletes had on Chinese nationalism. In addition, this study also seeks to examine Chinese consumers' perceptions toward this issue.…”

“…Based on the 2010 census, only 1448 foreigners have acquired Chinese passports (Sullivan et al, 2022). Therefore, naturalization has always been seen as impossible in China since it involves multiple internal departments' cooperation between immigration and legal administration (Han, 2022).…”

“…The increasing prevalence of naturalization in Asian sports in recent years has been investigated, with most studies focusing on South Korea (e.g., Shin et al, 2022), Japan (e.g., Chiba et al, 2001), Qatar (Campbell, 2011), and Hong Kong (Yung et al, 2021). Among the limited academic interest in Chinese sport migrant issues, most of them focused on soccer and these studies have examined the policy change in athlete naturalization (Chen & Rocha, 2022), media discourse (Han, 2022), and public opinion (Sullivan et al, 2022). The purpose of this study, therefore, is to explore how Chinese spectators perceive athlete naturalization during the 2022 Beijing Olympic Games.…”