The Spatio-temporal Pattern and Influencing Mechanism of Chinese Table Tennis Athletes Playing Overseas

As the “national sport”, table tennis has cultivated a large number of outstanding athletes for China. Under the situation of personnel saturation and fierce competition, many athletes choose to play overseas, whose spatial and temporal distribution characteristics and influence mechanism need to be revealed. Taking Chinese table tennis players and coaches overseas who have served other countries or regions in international table tennis games during 1986-2016 as the research object, this paper explores their spatial and temporal evolution from the perspective of sports geography, and analyzes the influencing mechanism from different aspects based on the international population migration theory. The methods of mathematical statistics and spatial analysis, used in this research, are implemented with ArcGIS and SPSS. Some conclusions can be drawn as follows: 1) The time curve shows overall growth, partial fluctuations and single falls; 2) The spatial pattern shows their plane-shaped distribution in Europe and North America while point-shaped distribution in Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania; 3) The origins are Hebei, Liaoning, Sichuan, Anhui, Beijing, Shanghai and other areas with more developed sports especially table tennis. The destinations are usually developed countries or regions; 4) Their global spatial pattern has been formed basically experiencing initial emergence period, rapid expansion period and stable development period; 5) The athletes playing overseas mainly have impact on themselves, areas of origin and destination, and the future of the world table tennis sports. Finally, the mechanism of its formation and change is also revealed.