Few days ago, I voiced my displeasure against using foreign talent to represent a foreign country in a sports event. ALL paddlers representing Singapore in this year's Olympics are from China. This trend is being seen in many other countries e.g. United States, Germany, Australia, e.t.c. It is an interesting phenomenon.
From Red Sports, 25% of all table tennis players at Beijing Olympics are from China but are representing their new country. Some like Gao Jun, who won silver for China in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics, emigrated to the USA and am now playing for USA.
Currently, all table tennis players who got into the women's semi finals at Beijing Olympics are born in China (3 representing China and 1 for Singapore). One thing I am certain is no matter what, all of these medalists (gold, silver or bronze) will be able to understand the China's national anthem should China win eventually.
Women (29 China-born athletes out of 78 singles players or 37%)
Australia
Lay Jian Fang
Miao Miao
Sang Stephanie Xu
Austria
Liu Jia
Li Qiangbing
Canada
Zhang Mo
Judy Long
Congo
Yang Fen
Dominican Republic
Qian Lian
Wu Xue
France
Xian Yi Fang
Germany
Wu Jiaduo
Italy
Tan Monfardini Wenling
Korea
Dang Ye Seo
Luxembourg
Ni Xia Lian
Netherlands
Li Jie
Li Jiao
Poland
Li Qian
Xu Jie
Singapore
Feng Tianwei
Li Jia Wei
Wang Yue Gu
Spain
Shen Yanfei
Zhu Fang
Turkey
Hu Melek
United States
Wang Chen
Gao Jun
Jacqueline Lee
Crystal Wang
Men (11 China-born athletes out of 77 singles players or 14%)
Argentina
Liu Song
Austria
Chen Weixing
Canada
Zhang Peng
Croatia
Tan Ruiwu
Dominican Republic
Lin Ju
Singapore
Gao Ning
Yang Zi
Spain
He Zhi Wen
Turkey
Zeng Cem
Ukraine
Kou Lei
United States
David Zhuang
The Chinese sporting diaspora: one-quarter of all table tennis players at Beijing Olympics are from China
http://redsports.sg/2008/08/16/china-diaspora-table-tennis/
