This is why China is so bad at football.

Despite decades of investment, China’s professional football scene is still mired in scandal and terrible performances. But there’s still a chance for them to turn it around.

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As an Englishwoman, I’m more than used to the deeply rooted football culture that grips my home nation. Growing up, every weekend the TV would be locked on Match of the Day or BBC match highlights, and the radio would be permanently set to 5 Live. Despite not being a football fan myself, in the 00s I could easily name the top clubs, players, and commentators –  I could even tell you who was up for relegation, and what the offside rule is. In England, Cup finals are religious ceremonies and the World Cup is sacrosanct (it’s coming home soon guys, I promise). 

Pretty much the opposite can be said for China. The creation of China’s football culture was belated, top-down, and, overall, uninspiring:

“China was isolated during the post-revolution era and especially the Cultural Revolution (1966– 76), and until 1990, China’s sport system was part of a stultifying state-organised bureaucracy. Withdrawal from the Olympic movement between 1958 and 1979 emphasised isolation... Although China affiliated with FIFA in 1931, it never got beyond preliminary qualifying rounds of the World Cup until 2002... Despite subsequent expansion of the final rounds from 24 to 32 countries, China has never again reached this stage… Football had no national priority.

The first professional league was established in 1994… The new professional football clubs were created hierarchically, as part of an elitist and ‘cosy government-big business agenda’, but with no real links to local communities, specifically to junior football from where future skilled players might emerge. 

Early in his presidency, Xi instigated a purge of corrupt football officials and stated in 2011 that he had three dreams for Chinese football: to qualify for, to host, and to win a World Cup. That was initially directed at making the CSL one of the best five leagues in the world and so produce the players that would make such objectives possible. The CSL was expected to guide and stimulate new successes, but the failure of China to reach the finals of the World Cup in 2014, alongside its worst ever FIFA global ranking of 109th and an embarrassing 8–0 loss to Brazil, brought new interventionist national action. At the end of 2016, China globally ranked 81st, between St Kitts and the Faroe Islands.”

– “Globalisation, soft power, and the rise of football in China,” John Connell, 2017

Unsurprisingly, China’s local and national teams have failed to make much of a splash on the international stage. This is something the Chinese state has been actively seeking to rectify. A 2016 blueprint for the development of football in China promised to build 20,000 football schools, 70,000 football pitches, train over 50 million players and get 30 million kids involved in the sport. Football was even added to the national curriculum. The aim is for China to become a football superpower by 2050, but so far this dream has not panned out. A series of financial fiascos and political scandals have brought the sport to its knees. The national team has suffered one humiliation after another, the most recent coming just this week when they suffered a 0 - 7 defeat at the hands of rivals Japan. Even the staunchly nationalist paper Global Times had nothing redeeming to say:

This defeat reportedly set three unfortunate records for [the] Chinese soccer team: their biggest-ever loss to Japan, the most goals conceded in a single World Cup qualifying match, and their biggest defeat in World Cup qualifying history.

The players were underprepared, the coaches had not analysed the Japanese line effectively, etc etc. But all this analysis belies the fact that the true problem lies at the heart of Chinese football: there is no homemade recipe, just artificial flavouring.

China did not come to football with pure intentions and a love of the game, but rather as a means to improve its soft power, boost cultural prominence, and attract foreign direct investment. These things are not necessarily mutually exclusive; having popular clubs and leagues does confer a good dose of international clout on nations for whom football is often a national pastime. And the potential for profit is very real – you don’t need me to tell you that football today is plagued with commercialisation, profiteering, corruption, and the list goes on.

But market capitalism is a symptom of football’s global success, not the reason behind it, something the CCP has seemingly failed to understand:

“China recently and belatedly has sought to acquire international recognition in sport and participate in global development by linking soft power, national status, and football. Market principles have been adopted, football clubs are owned by wealthy corporations, partly directed by government, and expensive coaches and players have been transferred from Europe. State plans are oriented to success in the World Cup and the adoption of the ‘world game’ throughout the nation, but cannot easily be implemented from above in a team sport with weak ‘grassroots’. Successfully developing the ‘people’s game’ in the People’s Republic has proved difficult. In this sporting arena, soft power has been limited because of domestic and international failings.”

– “Globalisation, soft power, and the rise of football in China,” John Connell, 2017

But this isn’t to say that there’s no hope for Chinese football. A proper understanding of the weaknesses in the industry, coupled with the identification of areas for potential investment, shows that Chinese football can be just as successful as football anywhere in the world. It will also require the party-state to abandon its determination to force-start a successful national team with money and pressure, and instead focus on how it can support local communities and foster their talent and passion.

Fever pitch

Like many aspects of China’s political economy, the national sports program is a top-down strategy that is dictated by numerous policies and objectives. Each rung of the administrative ladder is responsible for hitting certain targets, investing certain amounts of money, and putting specific amounts of hours into nurturing top talent and creating an industry around them. This is famously how China is able to produce some of the best talents in certain international sports like diving and gymnastics. But the cracks in these once indomitable fields are now starting to show, and the reason why is becoming increasingly obvious.

For some, videos of hundreds of Chinese children kicking or throwing balls in perfect unison may seem intimidating, another sign of China’s plans to dominate yet another global industry. But in reality, these videos show the true problem of China’s national football program. Without a natural culture around football, the government is forced to create one from scratch. This doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t succeed if done properly, but the problem is in the approach. Instead of creating small, local bodies that have autonomy over how to engage communities, the party-state has created a system which forces participants to march in lockstep, removing any joy or creativity from the endeavour, and making it impossible to identify ‘natural’ talent and winning formulas:

“Financial ability to buy some of the world’s best players is not enough. Football requires both individual creativity and teamwork and cannot be as easily established as the individual sports that have enabled Olympic success or as easily imposed as physical infrastructure at home and abroad. Grandiose reform plans need skilled human resources to implement. The USA is an analogous case of a large nation with a population not greatly interested in football but with resources to develop it; there it was discovered that seeking to develop a sport from above has no guarantee of success. Cultural change cannot be forced. 

Sports take time to grow and mature, and local and national efforts must evolve together. Soft power must also be focused inwards in the interests of national unity, stability, and acceptance, while allowing ‘ordinary people’ to participate and support the nation detached from the political system.”

In the UK, there is also a strong brand around the prestige of football, and because of that some of our biggest celebrities are footballers. David Beckham is a household name around the world, but you’d be hard pressed to find a Brit who doesn’t know Gary Lineker, Wayne Rooney or Harry Kane, even if they hate football. They start off playing for the youth leagues of their local teams, then are scouted or audition for their favourite clubs, who have robust youth leagues that compete internationally. Talents like Frank Lampard are picked up at a young age and passed down a meticulously crafted system that not only trains footballers, but also creates star players. 

Even those who don’t go on to be megastars still have decent career paths laid out for them – even players in the National League earn around £1,000 a week. But in China, there’s no clear path even to moderate success for young enthusiasts, despite the almost half a billion USD spent on Chinese players and clubs per year at its peak in 2017. At the time, Chinese football was riding high, with several teams making big splashes internationally. But after covid and the real estate crash of 2021, many of the clubs faced severe financial difficulty finding their main source of funding cut off. One of China’s top teams simply closed. With no grassroots base to support them, the clubs floundered, and the young talent they may have been nurturing evaporated along with the funding. The lack of stability in the industry only serves to push away those who come from humble backgrounds, and may be their family’s only source of financial support.

And we haven’t even touched on the rampant corruption problems plaguing China’s top football body. Match-fixing and bribery are rampant, and the culprits are often those trusted as custodians of the sport. Just this year, former vice president of the Chinese Football Association has been sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined 1 million yuan, former director of the competition department at the Chinese Football Association Huang Song has been jailed for seven years, and former chief of China’s national football association Chen Xuyuan has been sentenced to life in prison, all for accepting bribes. Because of their actions, players who were not qualified and teams that were not supposed to win often got much further than they should have nationally, tainting the country’s potential on the international stage. How could any fan be expected to support such a train wreck?

Turning it around

I don’t have a national plan for China’s great football regeneration. It will be tough to turn it around from where it stands, mired in scandal and a lacklustre culture. All I can do is speak from my own experience, as someone who doesn't even like football but regardless lives surrounded by its ubiquitous culture, good and bad.

In England, football isn’t just a hobby, it’s part of the national mindset. I personally know people who have tried out for both elite clubs and local teams, hoping to one day become professionals. It’s not because they took football lessons in school, but usually because football was an escape from school, even if that escape happened on the playground during lunchtime. In China’s rigid academic system where many see the only route to success through good grades, a laid back approach to a fun extracurricular activity just isn't an option. If you’re not going to be the next Lang Lang, then it’s better to drop the piano now and focus on getting into medical school. A change in this mindset would require a change in the whole system, something that may well be happening, but not fast enough for football to become the next overnight sensation.

In England, football is also a matter of fact. It’s like a corner shop or an All Day Breakfast, it’s just there. It’s taken seriously, religiously: there’s tears, fighting, screaming, laughing, singing, praying. But if anything, China is taking football too seriously. Football should be more accessible to watch and play, yes. But don’t make it a top down, imposed activity that children are forced to do. Don’t rank or eliminate people purely based on their ability at the age of 7 – any supporter of their local team will tell you it’s not talent that makes the grade, it’s the willingness to show up every week and represent your local community. Football is fundamentally grassroots, you don’t get to make a Manchester United or Real Madrid in a factory overnight. You have to start with the local teams, the local talent, find the local boys who always wanted to play and would do anything to play every day. And don’t sanitise it. In South America, children play football on the streets in bare feet; they grow up to be the best players in the world. You don’t need facilities, top coaches, or national plans to make a national sport. All you really need is two jumpers, 5 kids and a ball.

Talent can be trained, but love and passion cannot be manufactured. It is nurtured, sometimes painfully, and sometimes via incredibly boring means. It’s local teams printing off match day programs, standing in town centres promoting games, selling team shirts and tickets in local stores. Local businesses sponsoring the pitch or club, members and parents of trainees funding the club through membership fees. Charity events and grants supporting maintenance and matches. Football is a community endeavour, it gives people something to look forward to, something to root for, someone to admire. This is something the CCP once relied on themselves, but have since seemingly forgotten. Wealth and power can only get you so far. Football isn’t economic reforms or political suppression. Football is a game, and people only want to play games if they’re having fun.

Ground up

There is hope to be found, though, and it comes from an unexpected place. Not the well-funded city centres of China’s richest provinces, but rather from a small community in rural China. A small village in Guizhou named Cun Chao holds the most popular football league in the country, attracting over 30 billion views on social media, visits from international football stars such as Kaka, and praise from veterans such as Michael Owen. A single match can attract over 50,000 live visitors, basically the same as a Premier League semi-final, with an atmosphere to match:

“This kind of football game is natural and with 'pureness,' and it's very similar to the soccer culture in Europe and Latin America, which is driven by the enthusiasm of the ordinary people not the economic benefits. When people participated in the game, not only the players, but also audiences and cheerleaders as well as the small retailers who sell snakes and drinks… the game is providing not only values of sports, but also social with low costs”

These matches are not plagued by big sponsors, and the teams are made up of local working men of various backgrounds. The games are not just an attention-seeking, money-making scheme, they’re a chance to meet up with friends, relax, and have some fun. Here, again, football is an escape from the grind of exams and gruelling hard work. It is transformed once again into its purest form – a game.

Cun Chao provides an important lesson for the Chinese authorities. If football can be embedded into the local community, something at least a portion of the Chinese people can get behind naturally and wholeheartedly, then it will stand a chance. If the CCP and the government can accept that football isn’t just international glory, but a weekly grind of muddy boots, scraped knees, freezing fans, and obscene chants, then they may one day live to see the game become beautiful.