More than better sports performance, money and individualism will bring political reform. If individualism is indeed increasing as a result freer flowing capital markets and industrialization, it is a very, very encouraging sign of things to come. This would result in, among other things, increased respect for human and communicative rights, responsible and transparent government, and laws which begin to limit state intervention in private affairs.

(From an integral perspective, individualism is the expected and healthy result of moving into the “rational-industrial” structure of consciousness.

But I tend to take the positive view of this situation. While it may be possible to go overboard with money and its related activities, most likely the Chinese, like people in other industrialized countries, will adjust. Tiger Woods, for example, has been endorsing everything under the sun from cars to LASIK eye surgery, and his performance hasn’t suffered at all.

that probably has something to do with the Chinese having training schedules that are some of the most grueling in sports. I was doing some research on Gymnastics, one of my favorite olympic events, and it’s an understatement to say that they train ‘hard’. Just to give you an idea, they train about 8 hours a day 6 and a half days a week. I think they had half of Sunday off to do whatever they wanted. But they get plucked out of junior school and sent to these training academies away from their parents and friends and just focus on training.

So ’slacking’ in Chinese athletics might not mean the same as slacking in Ameriican Athletics because the two levels are so far apart.