In the Name of National Glory: The Yangtze River and Yellow River Rafting Expeditions in China in the 1980s

The 1986 Yangtze River and 1987 Yellow River rafting expeditions demonstrate how a Western-origin sport was appropriated and transformed into a vehicle for sports nationalism during China’s reform and opening-up era. While whitewater rafting developed in the United States as a commercial rafting industry, its introduction to China by American adventurer Ken Warren was widely perceived as a symbolic foreign challenge to the nation’s ‘mother rivers’. In response, Chinese youths launched competing expeditions that reframed rafting as a patriotic mission and a performance of national glory. Despite multiple fatalities, the journeys were celebrated as demonstrations of collective resolve. However, fatalities during the Yellow River expeditions triggered public controversy and state intervention, resulting in the suspension of organized rafting for nearly a decade. Media reports, personal narratives, and official documents illuminate how athletics, territorial symbolism, and nationalism intersected in 1980s China.