Chinese parents state that their children (usually one child, although the law in China now allows parents to have two kids) have 'no time' to train for athletics or sports in general, because from Middle school on, they focus 100% of their time to studies, to prepare for the all important 'GAOKAO' the school leaving exam, which determines which university they can then go to - for example, they have very strict benchmarks - 650 points - Beijing University, 649 points - Beijing University not possible, and so on.
But the question is - how come the Japanese are able to study AND perform to a very high level in High School in Japan, while also studying hard, although one interesting stat from Japan is that the number of English speakers there is just barely 3% of the population - which I think has a lot to do with the culture there and their own Japanese type of ethnocentrism, which in effect means that they are (in Japan) 'closed' to the rest of the world, and don't really care. Interestingly, though, there are quite a number of elite high school distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia in some schools there. Thanks to their distance running, they integrate quite well, because without that sense of team - they - foreigners - would feel very isolated in Japan.
Ghost in China