anything is possible

the Jamaicans competed in Bob Sled 

Im sure there are enough Canadians in Harbin to give them a demonstration this winter

Just an idea

There's an Asian league, and mostly teams from the far north of Japan and two from South Korea, back when they used to play games on Chinese TV. Heilongjiang used to have a couple teams there, that always placed last, but they got bought by the Sharks and moved to Shanghai where they went bankrupt. :\

EDIT: I guess they've been reformed with different owners. Anyway, every game I saw back when they still played hockey in China was pretty mellow on the Japanese side, and extremely disorganized on the Chinese side.

There is a hockey team attached to the Heilongjiang Institute of Technology that has at least one expat Canadian who plays on the team.  It plays against university / institute / college teams in Harbin, but I do not know which ones.  They practice and play very regularly during the late autumn to late spring months.  There is a rink at HIT.

Well, Hockey can get pretty expensive, what with the equipment and the fees associated with maintaining a rink, so based solely on the cost associated with hockey I'd say probably Japan. beyond that, for a country to be good at a sport like hockey it probably needs to be fairly extended, meaning that their need to be a least few collegiate and youth teams to focus on developing fundamental skills. Unlike China, youth sports are actually fairly common in Japan, where students are expected to participate in one kind of club or another and many students choose a team sport. That just seems less common here. 

I have to say the Phillipines they seem sort of like the Native indians that were pretty savage like. I think they would be rough on the ice and wouldn't mind losing a tooth or two especially if some of them already have a tooth or two missing in the first place. My pick is the phillipines!

I think those from the coldest areas would be more inclined to play hockey. The Tibetans could astral project around you, a Mongolian team would send shivers up my spine just thinking of them. Attila the Hockey star.

It's all about interest or community investment.

I went to school with Paul Kariya...great player struck down early with injury issues.

He is half Japanese (father...who was also a teacher of mine) and an Anglo mom....he was an amazing player but I see it more that he grew up in Canada and less to do about his heritage.

It's all about infrastructure and interest.

Japan has the best chance in my opinion.

I helped run a hockey school in Harbin in partnership with the New York Islanders. I have played and coached my whole life but I wasn't at all prepared for what I was to encounter when I stepped on the ice some 4 years ago with my first crop of kids. No or little gear on half the kids was just the starter. No separation for age groups either.

To make a long story short...the Chinese girls will one day compete on the world stage but the guys, well, that an entirely different story. Don't hold your breath.

The question is valid but still it is rather cross-cultural.  Hockey is after all an imported flavor, so to speak, with a heavy investment in infrastructure (the rink, changing rooms, etc., etc.), gear (ice skates, padding, the like) and it would tend to appeal to a more upwardly mobile middle class group here in parts of the country where the climate could or would support such a sport (meaning the Dong Bei and perhaps Beijing and Shanghai in a highly climatised rink).  As an import, its chances of success are truly limited.

Finally, the other more important question is where does it fit in with the national Chinese sporting psyche?  Does it fit it in at all?  I don't have the answer to these questions but perhaps others do.

Only Mongolians are sturdy enough to endure and survive the sport. Chinese are so frail and most other Asians are too small - unless they started their own Inter-Asian League and competed only amongst themselves.  Not a bad idea actually.