China - 1.4 billion people. 1 sub 4 ever - what gives?

World Athletics website --> Stats --> Top Lists --> All Time Top Lists --> Countries --> PR of China --> Men --> 1500m

Air quality. lol

Thank you once more.

China has 32 of the fastest 1500m times under 4 minutes for women.

It blows my mind that people don't talk about genetics.

Everything in the world is viewed as the work of Darwin except when we get to humans and everyone acts like it's a blank slate.

No hi altitude camps. The Hi altitude camps in the himalayans don’t have hi speed train service…yet

I see genetics talked about here constantly. What's your point here? A population the size of China's is going to have more people with genetic combinations to be elite runners, whatever those are, than all of East Africa combined. Genes only do so much. The abilities they potentially could create need an environment in which they're developed. China has very little history or tradition for distance running.

Do you honestly think genetics is the main reason China has not had more sub 4 milers? I'm not saying genetics has zero impact on which countries produce the best distance runners, but you can't possibly think it's the main reason China has produced so few sub 4 milers. Do you think the reason Japan has produced much better marathon runners than China is due to genetic differences between the Chinese and Japanese?

Do you know for sure that those women weren't Chinese men?

The genetics argument has always been a loser. Japan produces tons of incredible marathoners and is getting better at track distances now too. In my 40 years of watching US distance runners I can't remember a single notable Japanese-American running a fast time, including high school. Culture is far more important.

Most people in China have never ran the mile, just the 1500m. While it isn't the most competitive nation, surely any of these top 12 athletes could have broken 4. The one guy who broke 4, Ming Gu, is #11 on the Chinese 1500m list

1 3:36.49 Zhaobo DOU
2 3:36.54 Mingyou SONG
3 3:36.97 Weize YANG
4 3:37.41 Shuai GAO
5 3:37.93 Dezhu LIU
6 3:38.03 Weizheng SONG
7 3:38.40 Han GANG
8 3:38.44 Lijun LIU
9 3:38.81 Zhili NING
10 3:39.02 Bing CHENG
11 3:39.35 Ming GU
12 3:39.82 Dongsheng XIE

This is in very poor taste.

You'd get your butt kicked by a 5 year old Chinese GIRL in a game.of Ping Pong.

I've lived in East Asia for the past 35 years, and competed internationally out here (and elsewhere) for the 8-10 of those years that corresponded to my post-university-but-working-a-day-job prime). I first competed in China in 1991, when the country was fantastically poor. It was a fantastic experience. In my events (800-5000) most of the competitive athletes came from the hardscrabble northeast and northwest. Windburned farmers who knew how to "eat bitter". Few spoke Mandarin (the linguistic diversity of China roughly corresponds to the linguistic diversity of Europe). For the most part, athletic performance tracks to economics. But also, as someone noted, they don't run imperial distances in China (or anywhere outside of the U.S. and U.K.). That said, I ran 1500 in track meets in China back in the 90s at the time the men's national record was in the low 3:40s. At that time there was 1-2 guys in the entire 1.4 billion country who could beat me. Mind-blowing. China was at the beginning of its long and astonishing emergence from the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward and other economic catastrophes, and there was no culture at all of running or exercise. If I went for a training run, locals would stop and stare at me like I had landed from another planet. Today there are hundreds of road races in China and tens of millions of "hobby joggers" who pursue and enjoy fitness activities. That said, the running/sports culture is still very new there. Chinese women's running success can be attributed to doping, as everyone knows but World Athletics refuses to acknowledge. Ma's Army athletes have admitted it, and other proof has been tabled. Doping in the 90s disproportionally benefited women, and that's the reason the Chinese women have always been better than the men. Chinese Olympic success can be attributed to a very intentional targeting of "soft" sports/medals. Olympic success is political success. Google "Project 119" to see the sports they (very successfully) identified as good opportunities. If you are looking for real-world Chinese sporting success, check the table tennis teams of the top 20 table tennis-playing nations. It's the Chinese A team, B team, C team, etc. Japan is maybe the only exception, hahaha. As for DNA and body type, as one poster noted, Chinese come in all shapes and sizes (Yao Ming the obvious example). In my view, running (and sporting) success is economics (society-wide health), then desire (and role models). As another posted noted, there are still hundreds of millions of Chinese scratching out an existence, despite the enormous leaps the country has taken over the past 40 years.

Shenzhen region has the highest high school maths level in the world, the US is 35th - what gives?

And China had the same number of golds as the US in Paris.

They have little interest in running.

China basically has health care for all of its citizens though.

USA ….

I disagree. The Japanese are great runners, and there are plenty of D1 Asian-American runners. It's cultural.

On a related side note, the road national record in Singapore a country of 6m people is only 14:44 for 5k and 4:19 for a mile. Although that's more explainable by being hot all year round.

I think it's mostly genetic and China doesn't see medal hopes in athletics so likely doesn't fund them as well. People mention Japan but Japan hasn't been a thing in running for decades since the E Africa rise. The best Japanese 5k runner is 51st on the 5k world rankings for example. They have their own internal running culture but they're not internationally competitive.