'Friendship first, competition second' was a popular slogan in China in Maoist times, when sport was a tool of foreign policy. The mesmerising performances of the Chinese ping pong team in the 1970s did much to gloss over the nation's serious internal problems and to present it to the outside world as a prosperous socialist nation.
The climax of ping pong diplomacy saw the American team visiting Beijing in 1971. The tour did much to prepare the Chinese and American public for a thawing of Sino-American relations that culminated in the historic summit between US president Richard Nixon and China's great helmsman Mao Zedong the following year.
Over the past 20 years, Chinese athletes have excelled in many more sports. Individually or as a team, many have become world or Olympic champions, notably in such sports as badminton, gymnastics, women's long-distance running, shooting, swimming and diving.
As China's standing in the international community grows in line with its economic development, the diplomatic significance of Chinese athletic prowess has declined. But the performances of Chinese sportsmen still matter a great deal as a measure of the country's increasing strength. Had it not been for their achievements, China could not have won the bid to host the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
Although China already shines in many sports, the significance of the national soccer team's advance to the World Cup finals next year cannot be underestimated. As the world's most popular spectator sport, soccer holds a unique position in China's national psyche, as it does in many other countries.
China made its first real steps in the game 44 years ago, but has never made it through the World Cup preliminaries until now. For a country that now has 1.4 billion people, China's failure to produce a national team good enough to rank among the world's best has been considered a disgrace.
When Hong Kong beat China 2-1 in the preliminaries in Beijing in May 1985, riots broke out in the capital, with angry crowds stopping and attacking foreigners. That the fans vented their xenophobic feelings towards a Hong Kong team made up of entirely ethnic Chinese players showed how strong the pent-up emotions were. Perhaps, the fact that the best players from a tiny part of China under British colonial rule could beat the cream of the crop from the whole country was just too hard to swallow for ordinary Chinese.