Liang Wenbo at the Quarter Final of the Betway UK Snooker Championship, December 6, 2019. Credit: George Wood via Getty Images
China may be enjoying plenty of success in international sporting events like the Olympics these days, but it’s among the global leaders in a less desirable area too: sports-related corruption.
Recent scandals in soccer, snooker and even the relatively new world of eSports have demonstrated the downside of China’s huge and fast-growing sports industry. Chinese leader Xi Jinping, a self-proclaimed sports lover, has often expressed support for the sector whose overall value rose to more than 3 trillion yuan ($448 billion) in 2021, up 13.9 percent from the previous year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Yet revelations of rampant match-fixing, illegal betting, and corruption involving several high-profile athletes, coaches, and officials are tarnishing China’s winning streak.
This week, The Wire highlights a few of China’s most recent sporting scandals: who is involved, how much was at stake, and what is being done to clamp down on this unsports
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