Chinese Women Striving for Status: Sport as Empowerment

With a cross-disciplinary perspective, a variety of illustrative cases, and a detailed account of modern sportswomen in China, Dong and Mangan provide a comprehensive overview of the context, dynamics, achievements, and implications of Chinese sportswomen’s contribution to China's advance in global status. It is a valuable text for those with general interest in China and students and academics concerned with women in sport, sports diplomacy, and international politics.
– Zhang Qingmin
Professor and Chair, Department of Diplomacy, Peking University

Striving for Status traces the trajectory of Chinese women's struggles for status in the "Age of Empowerment" in the specific context of sport, gender and society. It is an in-depth discussion. The monograph includes excellent, original research. It constitutes a successfully ambitious academic study. I strongly recommend the publication to scholars, researchers, graduate students, and those more widely involved in historical studies and sports sciences both in China and other countries of Northeast Asia – and indeed, in the wider international academic community.

– Hiroaki Sakakibara
Secretary-General, The Northeastern Asian Society of the History of Physical Education & Sport (NEASHPES)

In an era of aggressively masculinist “wolf warrior diplomacy” emanating from China, this book addresses the contrasting role of Chinese sportswomen in the exercise of soft power via sports diplomacy. Dong Jinxia and J.A. Mangan take the reader on an absorbing tour of the confounding complexities of contemporary China, sweeping through the Beijing 2008 and 2022 Olympics; association football; gendered lives, bodies and prospects; celebrity culture and social media; sexuality and fame, and much more.

– David Rowe
Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University, Author of Sport, Culture and the Media and Global Media Sport

In Europe with its rising interest in women's sport, this publication could not be more timely. It also captures the growing interest in the great power China and its cultural strategies. Authored by two eminent academics with a detailed knowledge of East Asia, Sport and Society, it stresses the intention of China to dominate world sport as a manifestation of geopolitical soft power. Chinese women lead the charge. Striving for Status: Sport as Empowerment is a significant publication – geopolitically!
It contains invaluable information on China, its women and their determined striving for status and its global implications.

– Hans Bonde
Professor, Københavns Universitet, Denmark

Striving for Status: Sport as Empowerment is an important addition to the literature on sport in China – and a compelling demonstration of how sport throws light on Chinese studies. The gendered dimension has not often been considered despite the stellar achievements of many Chinese women athletes across many sports! Striving shows what a serious omission this is, setting out an impeccably researched account of women's changing body imaging, the evolution of women's sport and the relation of gender to the design and implementation of China's state driven sports-development – throwing a revealing light on Chinese politics, business and media, and the administration of state sport. This analytically and empirically rich study is a fascinating “must-read” for anyone interested in modern sport in China or women’s sport in a non-western context.

– Jonathan Sullivan,
Director of China Program, University of Nottingham, Asian Research Institute

Perhaps the most underappreciated accomplishment of the modern Olympic Movement has been its foundational role in promoting and showcasing women’s advancement in a wide range of elite sports and the ripple effects this has had on women’s sports participation more broadly. The remarkable success of Chinese women athletes in recent Olympic Games is one of the most significant instances of this development, and this new volume, by distinguished and experienced scholars, is a deeply informed exploration of the matrix of personal determination, state support, educational and training structures, and media and corporate interests that has brought Chinese elite female athletes to the fore.

– William Kelly
Professor of Anthropology and Sumitomo Professor of Japanese Studies, Emeritus, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale University

I marvel at the complexities of the summaries.The book is certain to be important.

– Sheldon Rothblatt
Formerly of the Department of History and Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California (Berkeley)

Chinese Women: Striving for Status: Sport as Empowerment is a substantial and magisterial contribution to global Chinese studies and most particularly, to the exploration of the role that modern Chinese women have played in the international rise of China by way of their performances in world sport. Their success in international sport testifies to, and has contributed to, concrete emancipatory progress. Striving, written by two eminent authorities on modern China, analyses the close interelationship between political, cultural, social and educational national progress and modern women in China! The volume offers both a deep and broad insight into the both the national and international aspirations of the women of modern China. Not least of its research virtues is the bibliography which is comprised of publications both in Chinese and English.

– Gigliola Gori
Professor, University Carlo Bo of Urbino, Italy

This monograph presents an authoritative insight into the contemporary engagement and success of Chinese women in modern international sport and the significance for both China and Chinese women. It analyzes, in the context of globalization, the political, economic, and cultural forces that are facilitating change in gender relationships in modern China. With a sharply focused vision, it views, using appropriate conceptual analytical instruments, nation branding, soft power, cultural capital, and feminist theory – all current ongoing debates concerning the dynamics between gender, sport and modern society, in China. With the rise of China to superpower status, the monograph is both timely and important internationally.
– Xiufang (Leah) Li
Lecturer, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University


The new study of the global challenges of Chinese women's sport culture by Dong Jinxia and J.A. Mangan is an important contribution to the scientific understanding of modern China and its global outreach. Despite China’s obvious difficulties to adjust to the western dominated global culture, Chinese development will dictate the future of human mankind.
– Henrik Meinander
Professor of History, Helsinki University, Finland

China’s rise as a sporting superpower clearly owes much to the contributions of Chinese sportswomen. Drawing on a wide range of Chinese sources, little used in previous English-language literature, Professors Dong and Mangan have produced a powerful and cogent analysis that both enlightens and provokes. They forthrightly set the recent development of women’s sport in China against the complex interplay of dramatic socio-economic transformation domestically and rising geopolitical soft power internationally.

– Brian Bridges
Former Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

Amidst the increasingly antagonistic attitude of the West toward China, Dong Jinxia, the premier expert on sport and gender in contemporary China, and J.A. Mangan, the leading editor of scholarship on Asian sports, counter simplistic stereotypes with meticulously-researched information. They pull together a huge range of Chinese sources, many of them not publicly available, including interviews with key figures, government statistics and policies, and conventional and social media. It is the most comprehensive and up-to-date book available about Chinese sportswomen in the 21st century.

– Susan Brownell
Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri-St. Louis