When Chinese President Xi Jinping appeared at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia—the first time a Chinese head of state had attended a major sporting event abroad—he announced his intention to get 300 million Chinese citizens to participate in winter sports. The next year, after China had won the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the government launched a nationwide push to hit that target. China added winter sports into school curriculums, invested billions of dollars in