THE recruitment of Chinese basketball star Yao Ming into the NBA competition in the US and all the attendant publicity - particularly his astonishing salary - has convinced many Chinese that a career in sport is an enviable and highly lucrative occupation.

Some sports stars also appear frequently in TV commercials and are paid large sums of money. They include Fu Mingxia, the former queen of the diving board (for a soft drink company) and Liu Xuan, a world champion gymnast (for a liquor company). Liu is also pursuing roles in movies and other forms of popular entertainment.

Their dazzling success has placed them at the top of a "pyramid" made up of millions of athletes in China and their rise to fame has concealed the hard life that the rest of China's sports playing population has to endure. This development is worrying the country's sport administrators and commentators.

Salary gaps

The successful comeback of China's Women's Volleyball Team after 17 years of struggle to win the World Championships late last year raised public interest in the issue of athletes' salaries to an unprecedented level. The members of the volleyball team who stood high on the victory dais to receive their awards were not wealthy sporting superstars. For their efforts to become world champions, they were paid only comparatively tiny amounts of money, ranging between 1,000 and 5,000 yuan (US$120 to 600) a month.

And volleyball is one of the sports that the government has said it attaches great importance to. For athletes engaged in other, less well-regarded sports, the salary is much lower and can also vary from province to province.

"I received only several hundred yuan a month and that was hardly enough for me to live on. It was less than an ordinary factory worker," said one member of a women's provincial kickboxing team.

The salary grades were framed according to different sports and the importance of each athlete to their team. They would also receive a bonus if they won awards at local or international level. As a result, salary gaps between different sports and between individual players can be quite large. It has led to complaints and ill-feeling among athletes and has blocked the development of some sports, according to one observer.

Players in the Chinese men's soccer leagues seem to receive the most public attention in China today as well as the highest incomes.

It has been reported that some key players, such as Shanghai's Qi Hong, earn at least 2 million yuan (US$240,000) a year, more than 50 times the yearly income of ordinary athletes in other sports who also have to work hard at their sport for their money.

Inequalities in income in China's sport sector have existed since Liberation in 1949.

Image build-up

"The level of sports in a country is closely connected to its level of economic development," said Zhang Lin, a professor at the Shanghai Institute of Physical Education. "However, if this rule had been applied to China, the country would not be seeing the level of sports we see today."

From the very beginning of the foundation of the People's Republic of China, the government has been anxious to gain favourable international attention.

In 1949, the country was poverty-stricken and had nothing else to show the world on the international "stage" except sport, as had its ally at the time, the Soviet Union.

However, the government didn't have enough money to fund all sports so it concentrated on developing only a few, such as table tennis.

Chinese athletes were recruited into city or provincial teams from an early age. In some sports, such as gymnastics, the recruitment began as young as three or four years old. The children trained for long hours day each day with the aim of standing out in world competitions.

"The long hours of training and exercising were actually unscientific," Zhang said.

The children lost their best years for obtaining a good education and for developing other skills and also had a difficult time when, eventually, they had to retire from their sport.

"That's why ever fewer parents have wanted to allow their children to become athletes," he said.

Sports were not taken up as an image-building project by the Central Government alone. It was also adopted by lower levels of government across the country.

To the head of a province, winning at the National Games every four years was much more important than doing well at the Asian Games or the Olympic Games. The performance of athletes from a province at the National Games would determine the image of the provincial leadership in the eyes of their superiors.

So, every province began developing one or two sports in which they thought they could win awards at the National Games to "gain face". Of the remainder, some were dropped and others had to carry on under financial difficultly.

"With a foundation like that, how could the country have a balanced sports sector?" Zhang asked.

In order to concentrate China's former limited resources to advance sports that could win it international fame, the administrators of the National Games allowed competitors to contest only those sports that were recognized by the Olympic Games.