Top-tier athletics, figure skating and an X Games event have been moved or cancelled in recent months, leaving China’s once busy international calendar looking threadbare.
The Zhuhai Open tennis tournament has been cancelled the last two years but remains scheduled for late-September along with three other ATP events in China. China’s withdrawal from hosting events jars with its ambitions to turn sport into a 5 trillion yuan industry by 2025, a 70% increase on 2019 levels.
China showed it could host big events safely during the pandemic at the “closed loop” Beijing Winter Games, which kept athletes and Games personnel sealed off from the public.Johnston said it was “potentially feasible” to hold his tournament in a closed loop but the enforcement of mandatory quarantine for people who test positive for COVID-19 would be difficult for some players to accept.