Student v. athlete makes you wonder what the future holds after having seen a recent news piece that there are more and more unemployed living in the larger cities and that the agrarian part of the Chinese culture is on a steep decline…there are literally billions to feed so…it may not matter if you ARE a good student, if there is no work.
Not wanting children to be athletes unless they are at a very high level becomes a “back handed” way of culling…unless they show promise early on the parents will clamp down meaning that only the “best” will get into the system past teenage age so it shifts the that idea away from the “state” being heavy handed. But it also means, ‘You better produce’ from an earlier age.