Liu Cuiqing (R) of China running with her guide Xu Donglin competes during the women's T11 class 400m final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 27, 2021. Photo: Xinhua

Team China won its 500th Summer Paralympic gold medal on Wednesday. The milestone shows the capable team's continuing Paralympics spirit, however "the number of medals means nothing if we do not respect the Games' symbolic meaning," sports observer Wang Dazhao told the Global Times. 

China has been leading the medal count at the Tokyo Paralympic Games, with 154 medals in total, of which 73 are gold, as of Wednesday. Four golds were won by the Team China, bring its historic total of golds from 496 to 502. 

The team gave a great showing on Wednesday. For instance, at the men's 50m Freestyle-S5, Chinese athletes Zheng Tao, Yuan Weiyi and Wang Lichao respectively grabbed the gold, silver and bronze, while Zhu Dening, a Chinese track and field athlete making his Paralympic debut, broke the world record in men's Long Jump-T38 final. 

Despite the shared happiness about breaking the 500-gold-medal mark, many people emphasized that the Paralympic spirit behind these medals is far more important than the number itself. 

"I feel like we focus too much on the medals. Aren't the stories behind them much more significant?" one netizen posted on Sina Weibo. 

"Not every country sees the Paralympic Games as a pure competition. Also, not every Paralympian has a medal as a goal, many of them just want to take the stage to prove what they are capable of doing in something they love," Wang Dazhao, a sports expert, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

"The nature of the Paralympics is different from the Olympics. It's not that the athletes are different; it is just that the Paralympics have a symbolic meaning that reflects humanitarian concepts such as human capabilities and equal rights for disabled groups. Also, it reflects the host country's social responsibility," Zhang Pingting, a sport insider, told the Global Times. 

The Paralympics has a special purpose in that it calls attention to disabled groups and urges societies to better provide for them, he added. 

"Through the Games, more attention is paid to improving the everyday lives of disabled people. The addition of accessible facilities for the disabled people at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics is a good example of this," added Wang. 

While many netizens recognized the important role of the Games, they still noted that they were proud of the China's Paralympians for crossing the 500 medal mark. 

"The achievement shows a continuing journey, looking back at the first gold we got in 1984, it has been a long time and there has been a lot of effort and sweat put forth," Wang Qiuming, a fan of the Paralympic Games, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

At the 1984 Summer Paralympics in New York, Chinese women track and field athlete Ping Yalin won China's first gold medal in the Games.