China had put its Olympic hockey hopes on a team composed of mostly foreign-born players. But reality hit hard on their debut. On Thursday night before 1,000 spectators, the Chinese hockey squad, packed with foreign-born recruits from the United States and Canada, was beaten 8-0 by a fresh-faced U.S. team. For some, the outcome was not surprising. Ice hockey is not a popular sport in China. When Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Games seven years ago which gave it automatic qualification for the sport, the country had never competed in a men’s Olympic hockey match and was the lowest-scoring team to ever qualify for such an event. Beijing’s solution was to source talent from all around the world. Of the 25 players in the men’s hockey squad, 15 were born or raised in the United States and Canada. The women’s team, facing the same problem, recruited 13 …