By Clifton Evers (with assistance from Tong Xing)

Surfing competitions whether you love them or hate them – or love them and hate them – aren’t going away anytime soon. In China they form the frontline of a salivating surf industrial complex as it attempts to enter the large Chinese consumer market and supplement what continues to be a lacklustre market in the West. Surfing boardrooms oh-so-badly want the Chinese to surf or simply understand the mythology of surfing and consequently buy into the lifestyle.

The International Surfing Association (ISA) and Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) arrange international competitions in China hoping the events will dazzle retailers and consumers so a substantial new marketplace will kick in, company stocks will soar, and a new batch of directors will get to cash out. Mind you, I don’t think you will find their approach in any of the innumerable “how to do business in China” books.

When it comes to business smarts many Chinese have it in spades and quickly learn, adapt, and then sell their own version of surfing consumer goods en masse. In China it’s called “Shanzhai.” This refers to pirated, counterfeit, imitation, or fake products, adapted from existing Western products and sold domestically (Shanzai literally means a bandit’s “mountain stronghold”). This approach makes business sense because it involves creatively adapting the product to local tastes and needs. I also feel like Shanzhai is Capitalism 101: You want a really free market? Well, here, try this...

The various levels of government are equally savvy, often taking the money and efforts of enthusiastic foreign businesses looking to cash in on China and using them to accomplish their own profit-driven aims. There’s always someone else lining up after these ones have been bled out.

The people don’t mind the act of surfing but they’ll take it up on their terms and time. There are cultural, social, and environmental obstacles to participation still in place. A surfing community is forming in China but the emphasis is on local-engagement and any hard sell is viewed with suspicion. The problem for the surf industrial complex is that the effects of all this equals slow growth. Bummer…dude.

The competition schedule on Hainan Island is a microcosm of what’s going on in China.

Hainan Island is in the South China Sea. It receives seasonal swells from typhoons. However, it's the smaller but more consistent swells from winter north-east trade winds blowing across the South China Sea and down the Taiwan Strait that's the predominant swell source. These winds create the waves at the main break of Riyuewan Bay, the most popular of a number of waves – known and lesser-known – on the island. The waves at Riyuewan are soft, real soft. They’re good to learn to surf on and playful for longboards. It’s a good place to kick off surfing in China.

In early November the 7th O'Neill Hainan Open ran at Riyuewan Bay. The Hainan Open first ran in 2008 and in 2010 O'Neill stepped in as the main sponsor. The competition is aligned with the Riyuewan Bay Surf Club. Da Shan, Li Jing and Zinthe Wang from the Surf Club work with Brendan Sheridan of Surfing Hainan Tours and a group of volunteers to run the competition. It's run on a shoestring budget.

This year the waves were 1 to 2 feet. For a few hours each day the waves peeled uniformly and gently across the reef for the competitors. Crew from throughout China came to the Bay, particularly from other places where surf clubs have formed, such as Fuzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Some competed alongside visiting and expatriate international surfers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Taiwan. Twenty-eight of the fifty competitors this year were from China, up from just two in 2008. The event has a small surf festival feel about it. It’s turned into the gathering of the wider Chinese surfing community. And it’s the event for those living on Hainan.

O'Neill representative Rob Bain and current O'Neill sponsored surfer Mark Matthews attended the competition this year, as they did in 2010. O’Neill are expanding into the China market, opening stores in Shanghai and Beijing. Rob said O'Neill wants “to give back” by supporting the local surf team.

The local “surf team”, which was formed in 2012, is made up of young people aged 8 to 12-years-old. They are coached by a French surfer by the name of Christoph–one of the pioneers of surfing on Hainan–and supported by O'Neill and the Surf Club. The youth surfing program runs mostly on goodwill. The Government has been approached for money to support the program but they haven’t been interested.

A way to get the government interested is to work the local-engagement angle more and avoid any sales pitch of aspirational surf stardom. Focus on the fun. And surfing is fun. Too much emphasis on competition can become a burden.

A "Sport Plus" version of the program would work better in such a place that is underserved by further opportunities. Sport Plus programs teach sport skills but tie these into other life skills through homework classes, environmental workshops, and community-driven projects. The sport aspect is used to help make learning fun and engaging. Eminent youth and sport scholar Jay Coakley has shown that youth sport programs are not beneficial unless they also teach skills that are sustainable across a wider array of life areas. Also, a Sport Plus approach may appeal more to the Government and so equate to money being forthcoming to keep the program going.

It could also help allay the concerns of parents, typified by one local who said children “should not end up as dolls played with by surfing businesses." Locals are happy with the Hainan Open because it is locally-engaged. However, I was told by some people that they view the following contests with a degree of skepticism or that they are simply disinterested.

The events that follow the Hainan Open are the ISA's Hainan Wanning Riyue Bay International Surfing Festival in late November; the GoPro Women's Longboard Championship in early December; and possibly a Women's World Tour short-board event. China's first surf team has been entered into the ISA competition.

These events are predominantly attended by government dignitaries and invited media, and for officials they serve the primary purpose of promoting the island as the “Hawai’i of China'.

For the Wanning Government, the ASP and ISA-sanctioned international competitions are thought to be useful tools to appeal to private financiers and developers. They’ve been proven correct. Around Riyuewan Bay has grown an array of five-star resorts, such as the Meridian, the Sheraton, and a new resort under construction to the south of the bay.

The benefit for the ISA and ASP is that they get close to one local said is the “big cake.” However, they might want to think carefully what’s actually in the cake they are being served.

While I was speaking to a local Riyuewan Bay surfer he swept his hand outward to gesture at the changed environment of his home. A huge concrete structure is under construction for the new resort. He says the bay has been starved of sand, diminishing the quality of the main beach break. The developers have also taken vast amounts of sand from the back-beach, courtesy of a blind eye turned by government officials, and in so doing destroyed the beach break there.

The Surf Club, the Surf Team, and Surfing Hainan regularly have beach clean-ups. Their locally-engaged event is low-impact. The ISA and ASP could learn from them. That is, to insist upon and put into action a similarly transparent plan that ensures their own events are at least also low impact.

Also, that cake may look big but perhaps isn’t quite as big as they may think it is.

Despite promotional talk telling us surfing is growing quickly in China it isn't, really. Surfing is growing slowly in China. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At a rough estimate – given what I was told by various surfers from around China and the approximate numbers of people they said surfed in their respective areas – I came up with approximately 1,000 regular (meaning a few times a week) Chinese surfers in this nation of 1,354,040,000 people.

The reasons for the slow growth are varied. Most of the coastline of China is not like Hainan. The tropical atmosphere – palm trees, warm water, white sand – are simply not there to make it postcard perfect. This puts off a lot of people who only really know surfing through such iconography. Much of the Chinese coast is heavily developed and polluted. The temperature along the northern coasts during winter is cold thus requiring thick wetsuits and a steely determination to put up with the temperature, which only a few hardy souls do. This all makes it difficult to sell the classic surfing iconography when most people feel utterly disconnected from it.

Then there’s the issue of the affordability of surfing and surfing-related products. There is a huge middle-class cohort of consumers now. However, they are predominantly located away from the coast in big inland cities. Surfing may be cool to see in passing on TV or in a magazine or newspaper but that is unlikely going to translate into spending money on it. When they do spend money any “surfing” iconography on any brand will do.

That said, some of the actual surfers who live in the cities near where surfing happens do prefer the surfing brands as they told me they are better quality. However, we are talking tiny numbers of such consumers.

In the smaller coastal communities that run the entire length of that 356,000 km coastline, the sea is there to work in – for example, to support the fishing industry – and not to play in. While some in these communities choose to play in the sea such expressions of individuality continue to be far from the norm. There also isn’t the middle-class consumer base in these places.

What about holiday crowds at the beach? Surely there is a market there? Well, for many people in China the sea is considered dangerous. Swimming skills are not widespread. With many families having only one child it can be perceived to be risky to allow their child to participate in such an activity.

They may take a photo of surfing and at a stretch they may take a surf lesson. However, more than this would have to happen for a surfing marketplace of any significance to emerge. Too much affiliation with surfing – indeed, with any sport – may also be viewed suspiciously by parents and grandparents because it diverts the child's attention away from education, which is highly prized because the family's future may depend on the child's future career success which is believed to be predicated on such. And rebelling against parents is still culturally taboo.

Participation by women is tricky. There is the obstacle which is a cultural beauty-ideal that favours pale skin and not being muscular. According to some women surfers at the competition these gendered expectations are changing. However, they were speaking from well-travelled, well-educated middle-class positions. Interviewed spectators disagreed and said that those opinions are the exception rather than the rule.

Powerful familial and societal expectations are currently slowing surfing’s growth in China. And they’ve been around for a long time so I don’t see them changing any time soon to cash out those surf industry directors in the short term. Maybe they are playing a much longer game?

Despite all this, a dedicated community of actual surfers is forming. And it’s very cool to watch it in its early days as it grows locally and organically. The people have their own way of doing things and they're savvy. The Hainan Open has shown that they have their own intentions and that locally-engaged is what they favour. Slow growth can help ensure that local benefits are maximised.

So, there aren’t going to be masses of Chinese surfers hitting the line-ups around the world too soon. Although, don’t be surprised to see a few in Bali and the Philippines. I’ve seen Zhao Yuan Hong absolutely charge sizable Padang Padang and he now has a taste for it. If you see China's new surfers, then welcome them to the line-ups. You’re going to get along just fine.

Postscript: I approached both the International Surfing Association and Association of Surfing Professionals to ask what they feel the benefit their competitions bring to the community and area of Riyuewan Bay. At the time of publication I haven't received a response. Also, I have no affiliation with any of the surf businesses or organisations.