The Moment

The cliché that sport imitates life is a stretch. But sport does reveal what makes a winner. Above everything else — talent, training, luck — it’s tenacity, like that shown at the Australian Open by tennis players Li Na and Zheng Jie. They made history by being the first Chinese, indeed the first Asians, to take half the semifinal places in a Grand Slam singles event. It was irrelevant whether the two would progress further in the tournament — their feat was already a huge achievement in a game long dominated by the West. Now the smart money is on China displaying the same relentlessness to evolve into a women’s-tennis power (Chinese men, by contrast, have hit the proverbial net), just as the country has in being the largest exporting nation, the biggest holder of foreign reserves and almost the world’s No. 2 economy, among myriad superlatives. In more ways than we can count, and whether one likes it or not, China is winning the global game. Heck, maybe sport does imitate life after all.

See pictures of Wimbledon 2008.

See TIME’s Pictures of the Week.