Coming out of the surf the other day I ran into a mate, Pete, who’d just returned from Indo and had been roaming Bali’s west coast in search of respite from the Uluwatu crowds. Pete explained that he’d stumbled across the Chinese surf team. “There were at least a dozen of them,” he continued, conveying an impression of general chaos. “They had organised a couple of local Balinese surfers from Medewi to help out with coaching.” The breaks in this region are generally known for being a little more forgiving than many of Bali’s better-known reefs, but Pete was still shaking his head and chuckling as he related the story. “A couple looked ok once they were up on a wave, but their ocean knowledge and general awareness was obviously really poor.”

While the average member of the Chinese surf team may not yet be getting the call up for CT wildcard slots, they do have a representative at the upcoming Olympics. Yang Siqi was just 14 when she qualified for the Paris Olympics at the ISA world surfing games in Puerto Rico earlier this year by winning the Repecharge Round 6. Hardly sounds like a major victory but Yang did defeat CT standout, Brisa Hennessy, en route to her qualification for the five-ringed stage. After taking up surfing in 2018, there is no questioning Yang’s ability to progress quickly and become a competitive force – at least in scrappy conditions.

However, Yang will certainly not go into the Olympics as any kind of favourite and she will perhaps feel the weight of her country on her shoulders a little more than most when it comes to hauling herself over the ledge at Teahupo’o. The thought of 1.4 billion people cheering her on may push Yang to go beyond expectations; it could also prompt ambition to exceed ability at one of the world’s most dangerous breaks. Riding the wave of national emotion can be a mixed blessing for any Olympic competitor, let alone a fifteen-year-old paddling out at Teahupo’o. Whatever role is played by national sentiment, Yang will need guts, self-awareness and a sharp learning curve just to put on a respectable showing at Teahupo’o. And before you start making criticisms and throwaway comments, first ask yourself – are you willing to spin and go when a genuine eight-foot, west swell flexes on the reef at Chopes? 

While the Chinese will pin their hopes on Yang as she is thrust into the spotlight at Teahupo’o, her ascension to the global stage comes on the back of major investment in surfing by the Chinese government. Indeed, if they are willing to fly the whole squad to Bali (and a host of other locations including USA, Japan and Europe ) then we should take this as an indication of how serious they are about advancing the prospects of their elite surfers. Many reports suggest millions have been spent by the Chinese government to make sure their top surfers have their snaps and cut-backs dialled in.

Meanwhile, the following blurb about a documentary titled ‘Surf Nation’ on the Chinese surf team recently hit the Tracks inbox. The tone and the somewhat boastful movie title (‘Surf Nation’) points directly to a country hell-bent on expanding their surfing arsenal.

“In Hainan, China’s southernmost province, hundreds of athletes train as part of the Chinese National Surf team. The young recruits, some as young as 9-years-old, have left their families and are paid to become surfers with Olympic aspirations.

Shot in a tropical paradise with miles of empty beaches, aspiring athletes and their coaches live in an old hotel that has become the hub of surfing in China. When the kids aren’t surfing six days a week, they take classes all with the pressure of failure looming over them as a weak performance means a dismissal. The Australian coaches teach technique and surfing’s central attribute: individuality, in a culture that demands conformity…”

Sounds like a regular surfer factory, helped along by experienced Australian coaches. But can rigid, fast-track programs replicate the surfing results produced by countries featuring robust surf cultures that have been evolving for the last century? Keeping in mind most of the Chinese surfers in the national team rode their first wave within the last decade.       

Communist countries take their sport seriously, particularly in the Olympic arena. During the Cold War The USSR saw the Olympics as a platform for the display of Soviet power. They invested heavily in sporting programs and dominated a number of Olympic sports including ice hockey, gymnastics, track and field, wrestling and weightlifting. 

Recent Olympics suggest China is taking a similar approach. In addition to its regular spheres of dominance in shooting, diving, badminton, gymnastics, and weight lifting it has also made massive leaps in sports like swimming and snowboarding.

Perhaps the Chinese surf programs will manufacture surfing champions in record time, but is there still something totally at odds between a western surf culture and the Chinese political system? Another friend of mine grew up behind the Berlin wall, in communist East Germany. When the wall came down, the first thing he and his mates did was watch ‘Endless Summer’ on loop. It was the only surf film they could initially get their hands on and surfing to them was the ultimate symbol of the freedoms they had been denied behind the wall.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s cult classic, ‘Apocalypse Now’ surfing is again used as a symbol of a western liberty. Fighting against the Chinese-backed, communist North Vietnamese, Colonel Kilgore charges into battle with a flight of choppers while Wagner’s Ride of the Valkire’s plays at full blast. In the famously absurd scene the fighting is almost secondary to Kilgore’s plan to go surfing at the Point Break located in the heart of the battle zone. Earlier Kilgore had tried to talk a freaked out, young Californian surfer, Lance B. Johnson, into coming with him by proclaiming, ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’. By Charlie he means the communist, Vietcong. It’s still one of the most famous lines in movie history.     

The blonde-haired Californian surfer, was (like surf culture itself) being used as a symbol of the west and everything communist Indo-China was not. Incidentally, the ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’ scene, and many others from the film, was written by John Milius, who also co-wrote and directed surf classic ‘Big Wednesday’.

But perhaps casting surf culture as a source of political or ideological division is the wrong way to go. Instead, maybe surfing has role to play in maintaining the peace and the balance of power. The mainstream Australian press is regularly filled with pages of copy discussing the impending military threat posed by China; it’s a complex dichotomy, which sees them also being our largest two-way trading partner, in a relationship worth around $327 billion dollars.

Back to ‘The Point’ about surfing deescalating military tensions. As the hilarious draft-dodging scene from ‘Big Wednesday’ illustrates, the last thing surfers really care about is fighting wars – the only gun they want is something in the 7’0” plus-range for when the swell gets up. Following this slightly flimsy logic, the more Chinese surfers the better.

Currently Hainan Island is the epicentre of Chinese surfing, but there is 14500km of largely untapped coast. An Italian punk, Nik Zanells, has done some exploration and wrote a book about it.

The Chinese National surf team are currently a strictly professional outfit, run like any other highly disciplined Chinese Olympic Sports team. However, if surf culture, as we know it in the west, is embraced by the 600 million odd Chinese who live near the coast then there’s a chance they’ll all be too worried about their next wave to fight wars. As for the land-locked Chinese population – well, that’s where the wave pools come in. The Chinese have had a go at imitating Slater’s pool but didn’t have huge success. However, there’s no doubt that an operation like Urbnsurf in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) is designed to meet the demands of big surfing populations – perfect for China. We should be exporting the knowledge and pushing to see one built in every Chinese town, getting the populous hooked on barrels instead of expansionist ambitions. China has its ‘belt and road’ initiative, where it funds development in struggling nations to get them on side. We could use the ‘pool and barrel’ initiative as a way of influencing Chinese culture and values.

It’s easy to get carried away with hypotheticals (the potential expansion of the surf industry into China is a whole other conversation – how about $1.4 billion new customers) but for now, one thing seems certain. The Chinese are waxing up and paddling out, rapidly developing a demand for a new resource alongside iron ore and wheat – ‘waves’ and the knowledge of how to ride them .