China's Paralympic success fails to hit home

As the Paris Paralympics entered the final day of competition on Sept 8, China's athletes have been revelling in rampant success but few in the country appear to be paying attention.

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The Olympics were watched widely, with victorious Chinese athletes lauded as national heroes, and the nail-biting medal table rivalry with the United States closely followed.

But this past week, under a news post announcing that China had more gold medals than the United States and Britain combined, many users on social media platform Weibo complained that too few people cared.

"Not enough people pay attention to this. It feels like there has been very little coverage (of the Paralympics) on TV," read one comment.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, which holds the rights to the Paralympics, has aired events live on its two free sports channels. But wider coverage has been modest compared to the Olympics.

"There's more media coverage than there used to be," Mark Dreyer, a Beijing-based sports analyst, told AFP.

"But when you look at Chinese news websites these days, Paralympic sports are sort of buried.