The injury that cost Liu Xiang his chance to defend his Olympic gold in Beijing is likely to cost the Chinese hurdle star financially as well. It is unclear how much the athlete will lose in terms of endorsements and ad revenue, but what is clear is that his earnings show just how much China has changed over the years. Olympic stars who once could not have expected to make a living from their sports are now finding that there is money to be made from their prowess--but that bureaucracy often takes a cut, too. NEWSWEEK’s Chinese-language partner, Newsweek Select, takes a look at how fame has brought fortune to some of the nation’s stars.

By Diao Ying
NEWSWEEK SELECT IN CHINA

Xu Haifeng was the first Chinese to win an Olympic gold medal. That was in the 1984 free pistol shot competition in Los Angeles, and it earned Xu the first national prize money for an Olympic champion--9,000 RMB (about $1,312) and a salary increase from 51.5 RMB ($7.50) to 98 RMB ($14) per month. "At that time, that was already considered a lot of money," says Xu, now the deputy director of China’s Cycling and Fencing Sports Administrative Center.

No longer. While Xu Haifeng might have been one of the first athletes to make any money out of his sport, China’s top-earning athlete is now NBA star Yao Ming, whose estimated income for 2007 was 380 million RMB ($55.4 million). The country’s second biggest earner is Shanghai’s Liu Xiang, whose 2004 Olympic gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles earned him 160 million RMB (about $23 million) last year. Both are beneficiaries of China’s changing economic system. Wei Jizhong, a consultant to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee, and former national sports official who led the women's volleyball team to five consecutive championships, points out that during Xu Haifeng's era, people around the country were still discussing whether or not China should adopt a free-market economic system, not the commercialization of sports.  "Xu Haifeng won in 1984, but the formal decision to adopt a market economy was made after [former Communist Party leader] Deng Xiaoping's 1992 southern tour," says Wei.

The changing stakes have led to changing attitudes too. While older athletes saw their sports as more about the glory of themselves and their nation, the new generation has learned the value of packaging itself. One example of an athlete ‘on message’ is Liu Xiang as spokesman for Amway’s nutrition supplement Nutrilite. At one press conference for the brand, Liu Xiang’s first comment was a plug for the brand. "It's been my dream to represent Amway,” he said as he took his seat. “From a young age, I used Amway products my father's work unit gave to him and felt they were great." When a journalist asked about Liu's dreams for the future, the athlete did not speak about hurdles or life, but instead resolutely said, "I hope everyone will use Nutrilite."

Financial journalist Fergus Naughton reports on predictions for China's post-Games economy: 

In some ways, Beijing’s Olympic hangover started even before the opening ceremony, as multinational corporations wined and dined clients and “friends from the media”. To a cacophony of popping champagne corks and public addresses from CEO’s and their newly acquired local government chums, Olympic corporate sponsors have been buttering up clients and head office suits, introducing them to celebrities and government officials, constantly reminding them that China is the place to be – and that they should keep those money taps flowing.

     Official Olympic sponsor Adidas hosted an elaborate ceremony in a five-star downtown hotel with several headline sporting celebs including former gymnast Nadia Comaneci, swimmer Ian Thorpe,

The Great Mall: Shopping at the historic site

I went to the Great Wall today and the Atlanta Olympics broke out.

Okay, maybe it wasn't quite as tacky as Atlanta '96 where almost every inch of the downtown sidewalks was filled with folks hawking shoddy merchandise and souvenirs. But after driving some 50 kilometers northeast from the Beijing Olympic site to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, I was hoping to escape the cacophony of commerce. Instead, we—me and my Beijing hosts Melinda and Alick—had to run a gauntlet of stalls manned by hyper-aggressive merchants who shrieked cold water, beer, bananas, postcards in order to get to the lifts that would get us up the hills and onto the Wall. And we also had to take a pass on the Great Wall Restaurant, where a large Coca-Cola billboard promised that Coke went swell with noodles, dumplings and fried rice. And by the way, did we want our picture taken with some costumed ancient Chinese warriors?

We Olympic reporters are extraordinarily diligent. OK, not all of them, but definitely me. I haven't taken a day off from Olympic competition since the '98 Games in Nagano, where I went to the mountains to see the snow monkeys and followed that with a session in a traditional Japanese bathhouse. I never got to the Acropolis in Athens. But I was damned if I was going to come all the way to China for the first and possibly last time and not see its colossus. After two weeks submerged in the Olympic cocoon, the Wall beckoned with at least as much power as a two-star restaurant did at my very first Olympics in Albertville. And I lucked into the kind of day that gives lie to the canards about polluted and eternally hazy, gray skies here.
 
Hailing from Boston, I know a thing or two about great walls. And I've had the thrill of being atop the Green Monster, the famous left-field wall at Fenway Park. But even I have to admit that my home-town wall, not yet a century old and big only by baseball standards, doesn't quite measure up to this Great one. The current Wall dates back to the Ming Dynasty, which lasted more than two centuries beginning in 1368, and stretches some 4,000 miles. From our perch we could look to Beijing in the south and to what was once Outer Mongolia in the north, the great heathen threat that the Wall was built to keep out. (While the wall was largely a defensive military endeavor, Great Walls are also great place to collect taxes and assorted duties from less threatening travelers.)
 
Signs at the lift, a ski slope T-bar, warned that the Wall was no place for "weak elderly persons", but I decided to venture forth anyway. I was armed with a disposable camera, a novelty item for me since I haven't taken a picture in about a decade. So the snapshots will fit neatly into our album after my daughter's 10th birthday party. I'm a words and memories kind of guy, but I wanted a fallback in case words failed me.

Despite the warning below, I was prepared all the climbing—I think I did the equivalent of at least two Eiffel towers—to get from one watchtower to another. More-over, despite a major restoration effort by the Chinese government, the steps—narrow, broken, uneven--are more treacherous than driving in Boston. So the going is very slow. Even the young can find it daunting. One young lady from New Orleans was seated clinging to the rail, trying to shake a dizzy spell from the heat and heights. (One thing the Wall was lacking was those drive-thru or walk-thru frozen daiquiri places that New Orleans has; they would do very well.)

The classic view

Once you made it up the steps and out of the sun inside the towers, you enjoyed cool breezes and spectacular views. And my blackberry worked too, which admittedly is so not 14th century. I called my wife back home anyway. "Honey, I am on the Great Wall!" I am the embodiment of the Ugly American. Of course, the vendors were there too so the place wasn't exactly holy or remotely pristine. They were trying to hawk drinks at extortionate prices of $4 for a soda that you probably could have negotiated for 25 cents down below. Of course, they had carried them up, which demands a slightly higher price. Nobody expects you to pay asking price, but some Westerners aren't familiar or comfortable with the art/science of haggling.

Finally, we'd had our fill of beauty and breezes and breakneck risks on the staircases so we queued up for the ride down. The preferred way is a toboggan ride, with one lever controlling both speed—no more than about 19 mph—and braking, inside a metal chute that curves down the slope. There were more warnings about drinking, drugs and driving and, on top of the price of the ticket, they even offered insurance for 1 yuan extra, or about 15 cents. But I declined, confident that my auto policy back home covered all risks. Besides, I had bigger worries. As I watched the folks mount the little motorized vehicles, I noticed that, on occasion, they would whisk away the normal toboggan and offer oversized drivers an extra large one.

Fortunately, I was spared that indignity and managed to get to the bottom without rear-ending Alick in front of me. We celebrated with a lunch—beef stroganoff Beijing style—that will assure that if there is a next time at the Wall, I'm destined for the extra large toboggan.