ExpressIndia reports that table tennis is losing its appeal for China’s younger generation, which is increasing becoming interested in basketball.

The reasons for the shift are the usual culprits. Ping pong is an individualized, stand-in-place sport, while basketball is played with a team on a court, providing opportunities for strategy, sweaty bodies, showmanship and other things that young men hope will attract feminine attention. Basketball, too, has all the allure of something foreign–a big draw in China’s current state of social and economic xenophilia. Though the common impression among Chinese that they invented ping pong is, apparently, incorrect, the sport is still associated with China’s older generations and, because of its role in détente, the Communist Party. Being “old” or associated with government, as one might imagine, doesn’t help the sport’s image with young people.

Even Hu Jintao has lost his enthusiasm for ping pong.

Perhaps most important to basketball’s success are Yao Ming–now a national hero for his status as a first-string player in America’s NBA–and “Slam Dunk”, a Japanese manga and TV cartoon that has wildfire popularity among Chinese pre-teens.

It is, of course, sad to see the sport that helped thaw the Cold War slip past its prime, but basketball certainly has a lot of promise of its own, on this front. Basketball, after all, has all the potential to do for Sino-American diplomacy what baseball does for America’s relationship with Japan and Taiwan–provide a common cultural medium for discussion and exchange that is unlikely to be politicized and can be shared and enjoyed at all levels in both societies.

In other words, while Olympic fever may certainly be overheating Beijing at the moment, it’s good to pause and remember that the longer-brewing, less event-of-a-lifetime Chinese interest in the sport of basketball is probably likely to have the longer, and larger, effect on China’s future role in the world.

Here comes the next Chinese delegation to the U.S.