The long report published by China Youth Daily on March 13, Shougang’s Road of Sports Reform - From ‘Steel to Serve the Country’ to ‘Sports to Serve the Country’， is reprinted without missing a word today.

“This is a triumph for the team basketball. Everyone is very important. They all did their part. Congratulations to my team members.” In last season’s CBA playoff to select the final eight from ten, Beijing Shougang men’s basketball team defeated Shanghai Bili Bili team with a total score of 2-1 and advanced into the final four. For Yannis, who is the coach of the team, the success proved the effectiveness of the team basketball system he built with strenuous efforts.  For Beijing fans, they saw hope in the team which regained its vitality from its rebuilding.

In the 2016-2017 CBA season, Shougang men’s basketball team missed the playoffs, which indicated that reconstruction and reform were imperative. In response to the trend of China’s sports reform, Shougang Group implemented a pilot program for professional managers and invited Qin Xiaowen, a sports manager living in the United States, back to China to serve as the president of Shougang Sports and the chairman of the Shougang Basketball Club to form a professional team.

In this year, Shougang Sports made many “big pioneering moves”. For instance, it invited Yannis, who was well aware of the ills of Chinese basketball, to take the leadership of Shougang men’s basketball team for reconstruction; it promoted Shougang Group and the General Administration of Sport of China to jointly build a national sports industry demonstration zone; it launched “Dancing with Wolves” and “Young Eagle Project” brands to conduct a series of interactive programs with international high-level professional sports resources on softball, basketball and ice hockey...

In 2017, Shougang became the only pilot state-owned enterprise in Beijing to deepen the reform. This was significant to Shougang which was undergoing transformation in pursuit of further development. It has become a new mission of the times to explore new ways for the reform of state-owned enterprises in the new era.

“The process ‘from steel to serve the country’ to ‘sports to serve the country’ conforms to the requirements of the times.” According to Liang Zongping, the Chairman of the Labor Union of Shougang Group and the Chairman of Shougang Sports, Beijing basketball team was built with Beijing municipal government in 1998, the factory was relocated unprecedentedly to facilitate the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, and now the sports industry is deeply integrated. Sports were originally only part of the social mission of the state-owned enterprises, but after 30 years of continuous investment, in the series reform of Shougang Sports, they have been upgraded to become the core components of Shougang non-steel industry.

Shougang’s Sports Gene

From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, the development of football, basketball and other costly events was landed in a difficult situation, partly because local governments concentrated their resources on the sports events where they put much hope for gold medals in the Olympics. According to Liang Zongping’s recollection, in 1988, to cooperate with the government’s reform of the sports industry, Shougang and Beijing jointly built the Beijing basketball team. The Beijing men’s and women’s basketball teams were formally renamed the Beijing Shougang men’s and women’s basketball teams. This practice where the state-owned enterprise took the lead in teambuilding spread throughout the country and retained a group of teams that were about to be dissolved that year. “We hope that the enterprise-like cultivation and operation will allow the team to flourish.” This move was more of a social responsibility for Shougang as a state-owned enterprise at that time. The establishment of the Beijing Shougang Basketball Club in 1996, and the three championships of the men’s and women’s basketball teams in the CBA and WCBA leagues were surprising back then.

With the basketball as an example, Sports grow to be part of Shougang’s DNA.  Later, there was the table tennis team built by Shougang and Beijing. Ding Ning, the Olympic champion, and many other brilliant also came from that team. Table tennis has also become a flag of Beijing sports. According to Qin Xiaowen, at that time, the table tennis team in Beijing was once transferred to Weishan Lake in Shandong Province，then Shougang jointly but it was brought back to Beijing. Ding Ning once told her: “I felt like going home and at ease from then on.”

However, in Liang Zongping’s view, the Olympic Games has drawn sports to Shougang closer. “Shougang’s relocation and adjustment has everything to do with sports.” He explained that in 2003, to support the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Shougang started its relocation and adjustment as never before. As a result, the staff of over 100 thousand moved across mountains and waters and finally settled in Hebei. The relocation not only contributed to the success of the Olympics but also pioneered the distribution of China’s steel industry as well as the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. “As far as I see it now, the relocation has instead increased the steel production. At the same time, with continuing investment in sports, it has also contributed to the enthusiasm of Shougang’s workforce for sports and prompted us to make bold explorations of sports in the reform.”

“The plant will cause pollution and thus cannot maintain its sustainable development if it stays, regardless of the air purifier.” While other workers were still a little bit reluctant to leave, Duan Xiaoxin were ready to go to Caofeidian to set foot there. On April 13, 2008, as the backbone he packed two short-sleeved shirts, said goodbye to the old factory site where he had been working for 20 years and went to Caofeidian in Tangshan, which was more than 200 kilometers away from Beijing.

“It was like on an isolated island.” Duan Xiaoxin recalled. There was still some time before they started production It was 50 kilometers away from the factory to the nearest county, Tanghai. Without his families around, it’s hard to see people other than his colleagues, who could only resort to drinking during the long night. But for Duan Xiaoxin, the chess game was good enough to please a sports lover like him.“ The life without culture is incomplete.” Duan Xiaoxin spent his free time in the simple house built on the asphalt road in the factory site. There was a ping-pong table inside, but the sandy wind would hurt his face and hence the ping-pong game. However, it had been great happiness for a table tennis fan. “I won’t feel lonely as long as I can play table tennis.” Finally, in 2009, the building of the gymnasium in the factory was completed. Duan Xiaoxin led his workmates to play table tennis. He, with coaching experience, organized training and competitions. In 2013, the Jingtang Table Tennis Association had even become his daily work. There were 40 to 50 members. “We played in the whole Tangshan region basically, and we played well in the competitions of the head office and the metallurgical system.”

Duan Xiaoxin never underestimates the enthusiasm of employees for sports. He remembers that when he joined Shougang at the age of 22, there was a ping-pong table beside the dormitory in the factory. “One table for dozens of people can keep them waiting in line. Worse still, one can hardly touch the table in case a good player never loses and won’t leave the table.” In Caofeidian, there were rare occasions where team members needed to be dressed in their casual suits. “We dressed ourselves in sportswear and uniforms alternatively.” Duan Xiaoxin notices that with the development of the Caofeidian Industrial Zone in recent years, employees at the factory already have good sports facilities. “Three open-air basketball courts, one indoor basketball court, swimming pool, 12 ping-pong tables, tennis courts etc. From 5 to 6 a.m., there are workers walking on the standard plastic track.”

When Shougang table tennis team goes to the grassroots unit to play with employees, Duan Xiaoxin is the happiest. Prior to the Rio Olympic Games, Ding Ning and Ma Long went to Caofeidian to communicate with employees. “I said to Ma Long that he would win the champion of men’s singles definitely in the Rio Olympic Games. He said it was hard to say. It turned out that I was right.” Duan Xiaoxin appears to be “proud” of his own “professionalism” and even a few high-level sports teams of Shougang. “My son is a Shougang fan. Not to mention myself.”

Sports, Benchmark of Reform and Innovation in the New Era

“Understand it or not, it’s really hard to say. Sports and production, apples and oranges.” Liang Zongping, who has been working for more than 30 years, talks about the initial cross-border between steel and sports. “They are similar because we must make accurate judgments about the market. If we take actions slower, the advantages will be lost.”

Sports used to be merely regarded as a social responsibility that needs to be fulfilled by SOEs rather than an important chain of the non-steel industry. As China undertook its sports reform in full swing, the leaders of Shougang realized that the realization of the transition requires abandonment of the sports management by the trade union and establishment of a more professional team. Therefore, Shougang Group establishes Shougang Sports Culture Co., Ltd. Since 2017, Shougang Sports has achieved a leap-forward development in the industrial layout.

After careful selection all over the world, Qin Xiaowen, who had spent years in the United States, became the president of Shougang Sports. She graduated from Beijing Sports University and served in the International Liaison Department of the General Administration of Sport of China. She worked in China for 9 years then. After going to the United States, she still engaged in sports work, used a lot of high-quality sports resources in her hands to greatly help China’s men’s and women’s basketball teams to go to the United States, contributed to the fourth and eighth places of China’s men’s and women’s basketball teams in the Beijing Olympic Games, and linked the professional sports in China and the United States.

However, after receiving the invitation from Shougang Sports, Qin Xiaowen heard a joke from her friend: “Think it over. It smells in the Shougang Basketball Center.” She kept such a detail in mind. Before she served in Shougang, she was determined to start with this detail and launch a “toilet revolution” in the Shougang Basketball Center. Now, the toilets in the stadium have long been renovated to provide a better environment for the fans.

“Never wait for a perfect moment to start doing something.” Seeing the team’s execution force, Qin Xiaowen has confidence in the pace of reform of Shougang Sports. She tells the reporter of China Youth Daily - China Youth Online that.

This is an important principle that contributes to the successful layout of Shougang that year.

The trickiest thing that lay before Qin Xiaowen was the reform of the men’s basketball team. A team that had won three CBA championships had to get rid of the traditional dependence on foreign players and allow foreign players to change their role from score winners to possibility explorers. This would train Chinese players more extensively. Resettlement made the reality a ball of string with countless fast knots. Conflicts and contradictions needed to be resolved from the details. Professional management ideas and details were the key to unfastening fast knots - inviting Yannis who has the idea of team basketball to be the coach, specifically recruiting from the Philippines an expert at lapping bandages around players’ ankles, introducing famous domestic video analysts, having nutrition menus developed by the American physical doctor, and strategically collaborating with the Sports Institute of the General Administration of Sport of China... Yannis told the reporter of China Youth Daily - China Youth Online: “It can be said that our team is advancing on the correct track towards the right goal set by the managers. To be exact, this team’s resilience is an extension of Qin Xiaowen’s chairmanship. She makes us closely united and lets everyone know how to play 110% of the strength. No matter what difficulties we encounter, we can get support and find a way out.”

After determining the general direction, Shougang men’s basketball team indeed took on a brand-new look. Qin Xiaowen said in the speech at the release ceremony of Shougang’s new logo at the beginning of this year that the team had achieved the goal set before by entering the playoffs in the first year after the major reform, and the goal in the next year was to enter the semi-finals, and it aimed at the championship in the year after next.

“We have also built a development age group to accelerate the growth of young players. This is the foundation of Beijing Shougang’s team basketball philosophy and a kind of sustainable ecology. I often received WeChat messages and telephone calls. Many people told me that Shougang showed the spirit of Beijing this year and the basketball game became more impressive.” Qin Xiaowen said that women’s basketball team was also reformed. After winning the championship in the last season, Shougang women’s basketball team underwent many staff adjustments. Coach Xu Limin joined the national team as the head coach, Shao Ting was selected by the WNBA, and Fowles also suffered renewal issues. The club paid a lot of effort to convince Zhang Yunsong to switch from the men’s line to the women’s line and build a coaching team for him. Michelle, who had experience in the national team, was invited as an assistant coach. “It can be said that in 2017, the Shougang Basketball Club rebuilt two teams at the same time.”

Despite the initial success, Qin Xiaowen is still looking for the gap with the U.S. professional club. In the process of professionalization, she emphasizes “no short-sightedness, no speculation, and no hurry for short-cut”, but she will also lend a helping hand when she is supposed to. In her view, competitive sports and professional sports are the contests of comprehensive strength and the all-round competitions for capital, culture, ideas, talents, mechanisms, and integration capabilities. Therefore, after integrating resources and channels, “Dancing with Wolves” and “Young Eagle Project” came into being.

The national team club is the main way to achieve “Dancing with Wolves”. It sends Chinese players to the world’s top tournaments to hone their skills and compete with the world’s top players, thus promoting their skills and team level to rise rapidly. At present, this mode is being practiced by Beijing Shougang Eagles women’s softball team jointly built by Shougang and the Chinese Softball Association, and Beijing Shougang Eagle ice hockey team jointly built by Shougang and Beijing. According to Qin Xiaowen, baseball will become the third event of “Dancing with Wolves”.

According to Yang Xu, the Deputy Director of the Handball, Ice Hockey, Baseball and Softball Center of the General Administration of Sport of China, Shougang Sports provides a great degree of freedom to the association and the coaching staff during the cooperation, and doesn’t involve in the details of the players’ selection and tactics while providing comprehensive protection. “Great professionalism has been demonstrated well for other companies that will cooperate with the association.”

While expanding the layout of the sports industry, Shougang Sports also focuses on the development of youth sports and launches the “Young Eagle Project” with a combination of sports and education. In June 2017, Shougang basketball first began “Young Eagle Project”. The players will have a nine-month preparatory study at the United States Basketball Academy and then apply to enter U.S. high schools to join the school teams and participate in the U.S. High School Basketball League. After they graduate from high school, the project will assist them in applying for U.S. colleges, and they will have the opportunity to participate in the NCAA competitions, finally enter the professional basketball field to practice and eventually return home.

In September, the Young Eagle Project of Beijing Shougang Ice Hockey National Team Club was formally launched. The first batch of players will leave for the United States in August 2018. In 5 years or so, China will reap a considerable number of high-level professional ice hockey players.

“The biggest challenge during the preparation for ice hockey at the 2022 Winter Olympics is the weak foundation of China’s ice hockey, and the number of excellent players at the right age is seriously insufficient.” According to Cao Weidong, the Chairman of the Chinese Ice Hockey Association, the mode of the Young Eagle Project will enable youth training to be more international and effective. “Shougang Sports’ reform is consistent with China’s sports reform, and we hope we can explore more good ways to lead the industry.”

It is understood that Qin Xiaowen, who is appointed as the Deputy Director of the Olympics Preparation Office of the General Administration of Sport of China, is studying and negotiating in the United States to help expand overseas training bases for more sports. The mode of “Dancing with Wolves” and “Young Eagle Project” will also be continuously enriched and promoted.

Qin Xiaowen stated: “We will use our overseas advantages to explore and establish Chinese ice hockey, basketball and football academies in the United States because the U.S. sports have the best overall strength in the world in terms of capital, science and technology, training venues, personnel, and competition systems.” However, she disclosed that the United States was also worried that it would be solicited. Therefore, she will stress: “Our players will come here to study, train, and integrate Chinese and Western cultures. In the future, they will become the messengers of sports and cultures. Integrate global resources. Do not ask for everything, but use it. Once the large-scale operation is carried out, China’s sports industry will be comprehensively promoted in sports and humanities, which will also benefit the further exchange of sports and cultures in the world.” The internationalized sports training team with Chinese characteristics driven by reform and innovation is conceived according to the vision of the world, international standards, high points, and Chinese characteristics. “As long as the road is correct, we will not be afraid of the far distance.”

Two times of a factory building

“It seems like a city in the sky.” Every time passing through the viaduct of Shougang’s old factory site in Shijingshan, looking at the cylindrical warehouses standing under the evening lights, Duan Xiaoxin will recall the high temperature and stuffiness of more than 50 degrees’ Celsius underground. The basketball court on the third floor of the warehouse built and painted by him and his co-workers has been transformed into the office area of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee now. And it’s planned to bear more competitive sports and mass sports functions. Duan Xiaoxin cannot help but sigh with emotion: “We free up so many places to let more people enjoy the joy of winter sports, which is very meaningful.”

With the opportunity of the Winter Olympics, this old factory site reacts with winter sports. Qin Xiaowen led the Shougang sports team in drafting plans to promote Shougang Group and the General Administration of Sport of China to sign the “Framework Agreement on Preparing for the 2022 Winter Olympics and Establishing a National Sports Industry Demonstration Zone” in February 2017. “The two sides will work together to build a high-level core area for the Winter Olympics in western Beijing, establish a demonstration area for sports industry, build a sports headquarters base, set up a fund for the joint development of Beijing and Hebei in sports industry, strive for a special policy for the sports industry free trade area, and combine the organization of the Winter Olympics with the property operation after the Winter Olympics, thus striving to create a model for the development of the Olympics in Beijing.” At the inauguration ceremony of the Beijing Shougang Ice Hockey National Team Club in September 2017, Jin Wei, the then secretary of the party committee and chairman of Shougang Group and the current representative of the National People’s Congress and the secretary-general of Beijing Municipal Government, said: “The industrial relic of the ‘iron-colored memories’ left behind after the relocation will be revived under the Winter Olympics.” - The single board platform, an official event at the Winter Olympics, will be launched in the park. Cooperate with the General Administration of Sport of China in building the national team winter sports training center…

In August 2017, IOC President Bach visited Beijing. At the 131st meeting of IOC, he said: “Beijing has transformed a former steel factory into a training venue for the Winter Olympics, which is incredible. They turn the old factory site into the office, leisure area, training venue and the office of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee. I hope that if you have time, you must go to Beijing to visit it.”

Some transfer employees are also vibrant. After joining the trade union of Shougang in 2008, Zheng Honglu formally “crossed the border” and later served as the head of the venue for the Shougang Basketball Center. He said that as a green hand, due to fewer staff and the lack of experience, he often couldn’t sleep. “I tried to protect the floor of the stadium.” However, with the establishment of Shougang Sports Culture Co., Ltd., the Company received many transfer workers who didn’t move to the new factory and invited professional leadership. “Our scale has grown larger and larger. Especially with the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee entering Shougang, the atmosphere of the entire sports industry is ‘very full’.” As the president of the Beijing Shougang Basketball Fans Association, he has noticed the changes: “A few years ago, the tickets were free, and we had to invite others to watch the game, but now, fans are recruited via a lottery system.” In his opinion, the brand of Shougang also goes deep into the hearts of the people with the development in sports.

“The direction of Shougang Sports’ reform is to create the sports culture that belongs to Beijing and even China.” Qin Xiaowen once proposed to make Shougang Sports Building the sports industry gathering place and create “Chinese Lausanne”. “Building Beijing into the best sports city” has become the slogan of Shougang Sports, but this needs to be based on the cultivation of sports culture. In her view, China’s sports are still competitive sports, and no real sports culture has yet been formed. The public’s understanding of sports still lies in winning and losing. “As soon as sports culture is formed, it will become a vehicle for popular entertainment and enjoyment of life, and will form the basis for the sustainable development of the sports industry. I often see in the United States that fathers and children play baseball harmoniously in the park. On weekends, they will drive a few dozens of kilometers to the baseball stadium to cheer, dine and shop for half a day. That’s what I particularly expect to see in Beijing.”