Craned his neck: Prince William (a perfectly impressive 6ft 3in) appeared positively ornamental as he shook basketball star Yao Ming’s gigantic paw

When retired Chinese basketball star Yao Ming strode around London as part of the official Chinese delegation this week, trees shook, paving stones quaked and everything around him looked shrunken and Lilliputian.

Prince William (a perfectly impressive 6ft 3in) appeared positively ornamental as he shook Yao’s gigantic paw, craned his neck to say ‘hello’ and tried to ignore the fact that the top of his head barely reached the knot in Yao’s tie.

Bear Grylls (6ft and not even approaching 35-year-old Yao’s vast slab-like shoulders) looked less hardcore explorer, more Boy Scout.

Sir David Attenborough, poised to plead with the Chinese delegation about the immoral ivory trade, was a silver-haired dwarf in comparison.

All the other Chinese delegates looked like they would fit in a row in Yao Ming’s top pocket — because Yao is massive, gigantic, fee-fi-fo-fum ogre-sized.

Just over 7ft 6in and weighing more than 22st, he has hands like shovels, his feet (size 22) are small boats, his ears giant fleshy saucers.

Neither his fairytale size, his arrival in London nor, it seems, the rather humiliating image of him towering over Prince William on pretty much every newspaper’s front pages yesterday were remotely accidental.

Indeed, one could say that Yao’s entire life has been dedicated (often against his will) to showing just how well China can compete in the Western world.

He was deliberately bred to be large, to stand out, to shock and to conquer the world (or at least the American NBA basketball scene) and, while he’s at it, to show us all that the Chinese are not all 5ft and under, thank you very much.

Height matters: Yao Ming - pictured celebrating China's 69-62 win against New Zealand at the 2004 Athens Olympics - stands at just over 7ft 6in and weighs more than 22st

Height matters to the Chinese. Enormously. For more than a century, thanks in part to poor diet — too much rice, barely any protein — and endless famines, they have suffered the indignity of being one of the shortest races in the world, dressed in toy-sized suits, the butt of endless jokes and towered over by lofty Westerners. And it bothers them.

One of the reasons it smarts so much is because they were not always so weeny. Think of the Chinese giants of the past; Shan Shichai, or ‘Chang the Giant’ was more than 8ft tall and toured the world in the 19th century as a freak (before marrying a nice Liverpudlian and retiring to Bournemouth).

Mummified remains from 1,000 BC found in western China included a 6ft 6in corpse. The world’s tallest woman (8ft 1¾in) was Chinese, for goodness’ sake.

Yao’s parents were also both unusually tall. And both were professional basketball players.

Fang Fengdi, his 6ft 3in mother, was China’s women’s basketball captain (and also a Maoist and an extremely vocal and loyal leader of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution). His father, Yao Zhiyuan, was 6ft 7in.

Their marriage was based on neither love, nor romantic spontaneity. Chinese officials, intent on creating a generation of super athletes, had been tracking their respective families for several generations (Yao’s grandfather was one of Shanghai’s tallest men, but discovered by officials too late for basketball).

Once they were satisfied that neither were just freakish generational blips, the officials encouraged them to marry (a friend was apparently given the task of convincing them they could ‘make do’ with each other) and breed.

Runs in the family: Yao’s parents were also both unusually tall, and both were professional basketball players - but they were not keen on him following them, as both were bruised from years of extreme training themselves

When Yao was born at 11lb, twice the size of an average Chinese baby, everybody in the Shanghai sports community knew he was special and officials started mapping out his future as the international basketball star who would conquer America and bring glory to his motherland.

It was not the life Yao would have chosen.

He didn’t even like basketball, and for a long time wasn’t any good at it, he was just tall. He wanted to be an architect.

Standing tall: A Houston Rockets trainer works on Yao's left foot before an NBA match in 2010

His parents were not keen either, as both were bruised from years of extreme training themselves. Loyal to the last, however, they put their country first and sent the young Yao off to a sports boot camp.

It was harsh and it was antiquated and it was miserable. The training was intense and repetitive and the coaches were strict disciplinarians who believed in neither encouragement nor variety.

But he grew and grew. Aged eight, he was 5ft 6in, the height of an average Chinese man, and he was also fed endless mysterious and experimental potions designed to make him even taller.

Though there is no proof he was given hormone treatment, this was the Nineties, when Chinese authorities seemed to be trying anything to enhance their athletes’ stamina and strength.

Whatever the case, American NBA officials were staggered to discover more than 20 ‘over seven footers’ when they visited northern China on a scouting trip.

Yao wasn’t the only Chinese athlete to be hot-housed before even conception. For decades, communist officials had been tracking potential athletes through the generations, and ‘encouraging’ favourable marriages.

Brook Larmer, who wrote Operation Yao Ming, a 2005 biography of Yao, insists it was not quite a national breeding programme but, equally, it was not far off one, with undertones of eugenics — the system of gene pool manipulation used by the Nazis.

As part of an alarming Soviet-style sports system, babies were monitored obsessively and children were pored over by doctors brandishing growth-predicting manuals.

Strength: Yao drives past Antonio Davis of the USA at the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis

They measured their bones, their skulls and even, when, as teenagers, they grew it, their pubic hair.

Divers had to have tiny hips to minimise splash as they entered the water; weightlifters had to be squat with strong torsos; basketball players needed simply to be very, very tall.

Holding the ball: Yao didn’t even like basketball, and for a long time wasn’t any good at it, he was just tall

By the time Yao reached the age of 12, he was 6ft 2in and regularly endured the indignity of having his testicles cupped and measured by ‘growth’ doctors in the ‘Talent Selection Office’.

The point, apparently, was to calculate how quickly an athlete was passing through puberty, and how many years of puberty remained. This was in order to work out when he would stop growing. The doctors predicted he would grow to 7ft 3in. A year later, he was pulled out of sports school to join the Shanghai Sharks professional team where he trained for up to ten hours a day.

Then, in 2002, to the utter joy of the government officials, he was drafted by America’s National Basketball Association.

While Yao is abnormally, untouchably tall, his compatriots are also growing bigger thanks to an improved diet, (meat consumption in China has increased fourfold since 1980) and a better standard of living.

Or at least the more affluent are: young adults from the richer northern cities are some three inches taller than those from the poorer, rural south.

Middle-aged men in China are, at 5ft 6in, around two inches taller than they were 30 years ago.

Children are now so much bigger that in 2010 the government decided to raise the height under which children in China can travel free on trains.

Even Chinese tourists to the UK don’t look quite so small these days. Nevertheless, height remains an obsession.

It is a sign of status, desirability and attractiveness. Chinese women look for it in a potential husband and frequently rate height above looks, prospects or love.

Media interest: Yao - pictured with journalists during the 2008 Beijing Olympics - was deliberately bred to be large, to stand out, to shock and to conquer the world (or at least the American NBA basketball scene)

Everyone in the country wants to be taller. Employers actively seek taller employees and then pay them more.

This is true for both sexes. According to a study from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, for every centimetre above the average height a woman adds between 1.5 per cent and 2.2 per cent to her salary, particularly among middle and higher wage earners.

Lucrative career: For the past six years, Yao has topped Forbes’ Chinese celebrities list in income

When two security guards in Dalian, North-East China opened their first pay packet last year and queried why they were paid different amounts, the company explained that one man was two inches taller than the other and that security guards over 6ft are worth more because they make people feel safer.

Which is (sort of) understandable. But cleaning jobs are advertised to women ‘of at least 162cm’ (about 5ft 2in).

And a tourism and hotel management course at Huaqiao Univeristy in Fujian province wants men over 170cm (about 5ft 6in) and women over 158cm. Happily for Yao, all that unwanted training paid off. He went on to great things.

Despite recurrent foot injuries, his nine years in the NBA were legendary; between 2002 and 2009, no centre scored more points.

And they were highly lucrative.

For the past six years, he has topped Forbes’ Chinese celebrities list in income, thanks mainly to sponsorship deals with American brands such as Pepsi, McDonald’s, Apple, Reebok and Nike. In 2008 alone, he earned more than £30 million.

Having conquered America, in 2011 he moved back to Shanghai with wife Ye Li (herself a 6ft 3in Chinese basketball player) and their five-year-old daughter.

Today he is a national hero. Partly because he could not be taller. Or richer. Or have done more in his relatively short but very arduous life to put China smack bang in the middle of the international sporting stage.