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On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key scholar in the sociology of sport in Taiwan, Tien-Chin Tan, considers the field's concerns with globalisation and how they transact with and inform the study of sport policy. In considering the trajectories of what seem to be two distinct areas of inquiry, Tan notes that much common ground exists between the sociology of sport and sport policy studies in areas such as those focused on global sport organisations, sport mega-events, athlete migration, sport for development, right to play initiatives and exploitation of child labour. Because sociologists of sport and researchers on sport policy often view sport from distinct theoretical lenses and wield different methodological tactics, a key challenge will be for researchers in each area to abandon their insistence on exclusivity and on the superiority of their respective approaches. In the future, researchers from each camp should work to learn from each other and advance cross-disciplinary cooperation that can contribute greatly to the acquisition of a more comprehensive and insightful understanding of sport, globalisation and the role of nation states and nations in relation to different socio-political contexts. The essay closes by illustrating how such a merger of approaches has advanced understanding about the relationship of social scientific work with changes in sport policy in the People's Republic of China.

The article examines the extent to which, and the manner in which, the Chinese government managed its relationship with the Olympic movement following its re-engagement with international elite sport competition in the mid 1970s. Locating the analysis in the literature on globalisation, the article notes the limited research exploring the role of the state in managing the relationship between domestic and global sport. Based on extensive document analysis and interviews, the article provides an analysis of the governmental strategy to increase Chinese influence in the Olympic movement, produce a strong national Olympic squad of athletes and ensure success at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. It is argued that the Chinese state was not only effective in organising and concentrating resources to support its policy objectives, but was also able to incorporate aspects of market capitalism into its elite development system and, so far at least, generally manage effectively the tensions that arose from an increasingly wealthy, mobile and individualistic cohort of elite athletes and coaches.

AbstractThe aim of this article is to analyse China's engagement in global sport through an examination of the case of elite football. Although many studies exhibit a quite proper concern with the extent to which the deep structure of culture is affected by sports globalization, they generally fail to give significant consideration to the role of the state, because of excessive emphasis on other aspects of globalization such as commercialization, commodification and cultural homogenization. We attempt, therefore, to refocus on the role of the state and to investigate its relationship with global sport by adopting the theoretical framework of Heldet al.(1999) as the main analytical tool for this study. By taking strategic approaches in the economic and cultural/ideological fields, the Chinese government has demonstrated, to some degree, its capacity to find effective ways to manage its relationship with global football. This was demonstrated particularly by the setting up of new governmental commercial agencies, updating sport and football regulations, and strengthening Chinese communist ideological education.

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690217730679. ; This article explores a non-Western nation's responses to globalisation through an in-depth analysis of elite artistic gymnastics in China over a lengthy time span. The concept of globalisation and patterns of 'reach' and 'response' act as the heuristic devices underpinning the analysis. Data were collected from a range of documents and fromand six semi-structured interviews. The trajectory of Chinese elite artistic gymnastics' responses to globalisation can be characterised as a passive response in the 1950s, a participative response in the first half of the 1960s, a conflictual response from 1966 to the early 1970s, a participative response from the early 1970s to the 2012 Olympic Games, and a passive response, once again, during the Rio Olympiad (post-London 2012). In this way, a nation's responses to globalisation are seen as dynamic rather than rigid or static. The ever-expanding reach of the international federation-led global system fundamentally demarcates the activities of member states. However, any nation-state has a degree of autonomy when responding to globalisation and in deciding the detailed pathways whereby to pursue success within this system, although in extreme cases, a nation-state can choose to resist this globalising context, largely depending on a government's attitude towards globalisation and the value the government attaches to it.

The article examines the engagement of the People's Republic of China with global sport using basketball as an example. Following a discussion of the priority given to national elite team sport success in contemporary China, the article explores the range of mechanisms that facilitate sport globalization and focuses particularly on evaluating the utility of the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing. The examination of the concepts is achieved through the exploration of a series of questions relating to recent developments in basketball in China, including how the need for reform of the domestic system was recognized and articulated, who was instrumental in transferring policy, which countries were identified as suitable exemplars, and which policies were transferred. The article draws on data collected from a number of sources, including official government documents, news media, and a series of interviews with Chinese officials from key governmental organizations. The article concludes that the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing provide significant insight into the process of China's engagement in basketball, and identifies a series of tensions arising from the process that affect contemporary sport policy.

This article was published in the serial, Journal of Sport and Social Issues [© Sage Publications on behalf of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0193723509358971 ; The article examines the engagement of the People's Republic of China with global sport using basketball as an example. Following a discussion of the priority given to national elite team sport success in contemporary China, the article explores the range of mechanisms that facilitate sport globalization and focuses particularly on evaluating the utility of the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing. The examination of the concepts is achieved through the exploration of a series of questions relating to recent developments in basketball in China, including how the need for reform of the domestic system was recognized and articulated, who was instrumental in transferring policy, which countries were identified as suitable exemplars, and which policies were transferred. The article draws on data collected from a number of sources, including official government documents, news media, and a series of interviews with Chinese officials from key governmental organizations. The article concludes that the concepts of policy transfer and lesson drawing provide significant insight into the process of China's engagement in basketball, and identifies a series of tensions arising from the process that affect contemporary sport policy.

This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994 , 2016 ) and Held et al. (1999) . Our particular focus is on the 'nation-state', notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a responder to or a promoter of global sporting culture. Data was collected from both documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews involving a total of twenty key stakeholders. Findings reveal that some of China's strategies prove that it is a responder to the Olympic Movement. Other strategies demonstrate that China, as the promoter of the GWM, has its own agenda to influence the international sporting realm. More specifically, the state is indeed affected by globalization which can also be managed by the state. This is because, to some extent, while China accepted the Olympic value, it has also transformed a part of its own traditional culture (wushu) and exported it via the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) as the façade. Conceptually, the duality of China's strategies in the case of GWM implies the emergence of reverse globalization.

With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of athletes. To understand China's strategies for managing compliance with the Code and also the implications behind those strategies, this study borrows ideas from theories of compliance. China's high levels of performance in sport, judged by medal success, have undoubtedly placed the country near the top of the global sports field. Therefore, how China acts in relation to international organizations, and especially how it responds to the World Anti-Doping Agency, is highly significant for the future of elite sport and for the world anti-doping regime. Through painstaking efforts, the researchers visited Beijing to conduct field research four times and interviewed a total of 22 key sports personnel, including officials at the General Administration of Sports of China, the China Anti-Doping Agency, and individual sport associations, as well as sport scholars and leading officials of China's professional sports leagues. In response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, China developed strategies related to seven institutional factors: 'monitoring', 'verification', 'horizontal linkages', 'nesting', 'capacity building', 'national concern' and 'institutional profile'. As for the implications, the Chinese government is willing and able to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. In other words, the Chinese government is willing to pay a high price in terms of money, manpower and material resources so that it can recover from the disgrace suffered as a result of doping scandals in the 1990s. The government wants to ensure that China's prospects as a participant, bidder and host of mega sporting events are not compromised, especially as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

This paper was published in the journal International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690218805402. ; With the problems of doping in sport becoming more serious, the World Anti-Doping Code was drafted by the World Anti-Doping Agency in 2003 and became effective one year later. Since its passage, the Code has been renewed four times, with the fourth and latest version promulgated in January 2015. The Code was intended to tackle the problems of doping in sports through cooperation with governments to ensure fair competition as well as the health of athletes. To understand China's strategies for managing compliance with the Code and also the implications behind those strategies, this study borrows ideas from theories of compliance. China's high levels of performance in sport, judged by medal success, have undoubtedly placed the country near the top of the global sports field. Therefore, how China acts in relation to international organizations, and especially how it responds to the World Anti-Doping Agency, is highly significant for the future of elite sport and for the world anti-doping regime. Through painstaking efforts, the researchers visited Beijing to conduct field research four times and interviewed a total of 22 key sports personnel, including officials at the General Administration of Sports of China, the China Anti-Doping Agency, and individual sport associations, as well as sport scholars and leading officials of China's professional sports leagues. In response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, China developed strategies related to seven institutional factors: 'monitoring', 'verification', 'horizontal linkages', 'nesting', 'capacity building', 'national concern' and 'institutional profile'. As for the implications, the Chinese government is willing and able to comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency Code. In other words, the Chinese government is willing to pay a high price in terms of money, manpower and material resources so that it can recover from the disgrace suffered as a result of doping scandals in the 1990s. The government wants to ensure that China's prospects as a participant, bidder and host of mega sporting events are not compromised, especially as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.