You brought up a vaild point.Specifically,badminton as a professional sport in China will have to be financially attractive if not as lucrative as other sports in order to maintain its status. Good that Li Yongbo recognizes the problem and is doing his bit to resolve it.I think the better explanation is coming from one of chinese official 3 years ago that I met...he predicted that China would l have hard time to recruit the talents...it does not mean there is no talents but china wont have the luxuries they have years ago ...we can see Wang Xin was called back and now Han Li...
That official said that many competition of the sports are in china who offer better lifes and financially are the problem ( I see it as a good problem for sport, not necessary in badminton).
WTA ( Tennis) set up their office 6 years ago and now they did well by getting many tennis schools in china as well as chinese players in top 1000
NBA did the same thing..Golf did the same thing now Soccer..even official said that Table Tennis still offers 4 to 5 times higher salary than Badminton..thats why LYB tried to have Badminton league to attract more players...( we should appreciate LYB to save badminton and make the statements that you can earn the living as a badminton player)
he told me that there was a joke..if a Badminton players starts thinking buying a house, a table tennis player starts thinking what car to buy....
Also please remember that good economy has the biggest contribution and many parents prefer their children do business rather than sport..I know that some of current badminton players are thinking to quit and pursue the business...
We can see noe the trend that last 2 years not many juniors from china won the title...sometimes winning Junior championships may not guarantee that they will do better in senior level( this applies to all countries)
I'm sure CHN won't let any of their dominating sports to wane, for once that occurs it would be a downward spiral as happened in the other traditional badminton powerhouses. I trust China with her burgeoning economy and wealth of experience and depth of talents has what it takes to nip the problem in the bud as soon as they are aware of it. On this,I'm fairly optimistic.