Chinese leader Xi Jinping visits Croke Park in Dublin, Ireland, in 2012.

Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images/File

Xi Jinping wanted China to be a global

soccer power. What went wrong?
By Andrew McNicol and Andrew Raine, CNN
Updated 8:24 PM EDT, Fri April 7, 2023
Hong KongCNN —
It was a Chinese dream driven by the same sort of ambition that
has seen this country rise from poverty to the world’s second-
largest economy in the space of just a few decades.

In 2011, around a year before becoming the country’s leader, Xi

Jinping outlined a vision to turn China from a footballing minnow
to a soccer superpower. He set his sights on the sport’s highest
prize of all and outlined a three stage plan for the men’s national
team: to qualify for another World Cup, to host a World Cup and to
win a World Cup.

For a country who at the time ranked outside the top 70 in the
world and had qualified for soccer’s biggest competition only once
since its first attempt in 1957, the scale of that task was
immense.

Yet few could have doubted Xi’s determination when the Chinese
Football Association in 2016 unveiled a plan to make the country a
“world football superpower” by 2050.

Backing up those words was a surge in spending that turned the

heads of players and fans around the world. State-affiliated
conglomerates and developers flush from a property boom flooded
the country’s premier domestic competition with cash.

The Chinese Super League (CSL) became a hotbed for foreign

superstars seeking lucrative pay days, every big-name signing
more eyecatching than the last. Brazilian Alex Teixeira signed to
Jiangsu Suning for $54 million; his compatriot Hulk to Shanghai
SIPG for $60 million; Oscar, also to Shanghai, for $65 million.

Soon the CSL was rivaling the biggest leagues of Europe in terms
of money spent. In the boom year of 2015-16, US$451 million was
spent on transfers, taking it into the top five spending leagues in
the world.
But more than a decade on from when Xi first outlined his dream,
China’s soccer fortunes have fallen as quickly as they once rose.
Poor financial decisions and alleged high-level corruption coupled
with a three-year pandemic have left the sport in tatters.

When Covid hit the economy and the property market stalled, the
funds from state-affiliated firms and developers dried up. Strict
pandemic rules meant fewer fans watching live games, and in turn
fewer sponsors. Clubs struggled to pay wages; many of the foreign
players and coaches brought in to raise the standard of the
domestic game upped sticks and quit, many of them citing the
government’s onerous zero-Covid stance that had made seeing
their families all but impossible.

With the CSL’s 2023-24 season kicking off on April 15 (in a sign of
the chaos, the official start date was announced just one week in
advance), most teams are still frantically finding replacements.
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Many believe that, in truth, the rot had set in long before Covid
arrived on the scene, and that the virus “exacerbated the Chinese
Super League’s whole financial scenario, accelerating its downfall
and making it almost impossible to gain revenue from league
sponsors and broadcasters,” according to William Bi, a Beijing-
based sports consultant.
But while, like any good game of soccer, the reasons behind the
apparent demise of Xi’s dream remain a matter for debate, few
could argue with a scoreline that shows the vast majority of the
foreign talent brought in to build that vision have voted with their
feet.

Here, the stats say it all: Of the league’s all-time top 100 transfer
deals, according to the Transfermarkt database, at least 75 were
foreigners. Only three of them remain in China.

The gold rush

Few things illustrate Chinese soccer’s trials and tribulations as
neatly as the influx of star players, born and raised overseas, who
came to the CSL and acquired Chinese citizenship to become
eligible for the men’s national team.
Ricardo Goulart of Guangzhou Evergrande, left, with teammates before the AFC Champions League match between
Guangzhou Evergrande and Kashima Antlers at Tianhe Sports Center on May 23, 2017 in Guangzhou, China.
Zhong Zhi/Getty Images
The fast-track naturalization of overseas players with family ties
to China was seen as a quick way of elevating standards. The ex-
Arsenal prospect Nico Yennaris (now known as Li Ke) and ex-
Everton player Tyias Browning (Jiang Guangtai), both of whom
have Chinese heritage, were among the first to take the step.

More controversial were the naturalizations of five Brazilians –

Fernando (who became Fei Nanduo), Aloisio (Luo Guofu), Elkeson
(Ai Kesen), Ricardo Goulart (Gao Late) and Alan Carvalho (A Lan) –
none of whom had Chinese heritage.

But skeptics will point out that all these naturalizations came
during the boom years, when times were good and the money was
flowing. During the pandemic every one of those five Brazilians left
China – only two have returned. Goulart, who left in 2021 after
claiming his team Guangzhou had failed to pay his wages, has
even renounced his Chinese nationality.

He is not alone in doing so. Roberto Siucho, who was born and
raised in Peru, is another who has had second thoughts. Siucho
renounced his Peruvian citizenship to pursue naturalization
through his late Chinese grandfather after he transferred to CSL
giants Guangzhou Evergrande in 2019.

“It was a really difficult decision, because I knew that once I

became a Chinese national, I would lose my chance to be called
up for the Peru senior team,” said Siucho, who formally changed
his name to Xiao Taotao.

“But I felt it was a good option. I think if my grandfather was alive,

he’d have been overjoyed.”

Fast forward a few years and Siucho has renaturalized as a

Peruvian and is back with his old club Universitario. He has
ambitions of playing for the Peruvian national team.

No one thing led to the decision, he says, rather “a bit of

everything.” Even so, there was a clear turning point.

“2019 was a marvelous year in China. My family was able to visit

and experience it. Then Covid happened,” Siucho said. “(At one
point) I hadn’t seen my family for a year and the rules were you
couldn’t bring them in while the borders were closed. A lot of
footballers left because of that.”

Covid, a turning point in the game

World Cup winner Fabio Cannavarro – Siucho’s first coach at
Guangzhou – expressed a similar sentiment when he gave up $28
million in salary and bonuses to leave his role in 2021, telling state
media that “Covid changed everything.”
Guangzhou's coach Fabio Cannavaro throws away his jacket during the AFC Champions League group G football
match between China's Guangzhou Evergrande and Korea's Suwon Samsung Bluewings on December 1, 2020.
Stringer/AFP/Getty Images/File
Other foreign names synonymous with the CSL’s golden years,
such as the Brazilian trio of Hulk, Paulinho and Alex Teixeira – who
together cost more than $150 million to bring in – also left via free
transfers or mutual termination. Texeira gave up his naturalization
application and Paulinho, widely seen as one of the greatest ever
CSL players, explicitly cited Covid in his decision to leave.

China’s strict “zero-Covid” policy had meant clubs were required to

train and compete in “bio-secure” venues that players were unable
to leave for months at a time.

“It was difficult mentally, not being able to leave or do anything.

But it was the only way we could continue,” Siucho said.

Amid all the outbreaks and lockdowns, fixtures were often

postponed, leading to further frustration. When games were
played, they took place in front of empty stadiums devoid of
atmosphere. Homesickness set in for many players.

“For three years, I hadn’t enjoyed being a husband or father. I got

to see my family after nine, 10 months sometimes. That’s not the
life I want,” said John Mary Honi Uzuegbunam, a Cameroonian
international who played for the CSL team Shenzhen FC and
second tier Meizhou Hakka from 2018 to 2022. He missed the birth
of his first child, his twins, and their first two birthdays.

“That feeling was so awful, coming back home from training all
alone. You look at pictures of your family on your phone and think,
‘goddamn, I’m a married man, I have kids, what the hell is going
on?’”

Mary now plays for Caykur Rizespor in Turkey.

The money dries up

While Covid restrictions were making life a misery for many of the
players, the pandemic was creating havoc for the firms bankrolling
their salaries.

The Evergrande Group, whose collapse in 2021 sparked the

country’s worst property market crisis on record , spiraled from
the Chinese government’s crackdown on the sector. Its affiliated
men’s soccer team, Guangzhou Evergrande, was unable to fully
pay player wages and in 2022, the two-time Asian champions were
relegated from the Chinese Super League.
Ricardo Goulart, left, and Elkeson of Guangzhou Evergrande at an airport as they depart for Doha to attend the AFC
Champions League on November 17, 2020 in Guangzhou, China.
VCG/Getty Images
“Chinese football changed, a lot of the teams were in financial
crises. Even Guangzhou, one of the best teams in China, was
encountering difficult situations. It was complicated,” Siucho said.

Empty stadiums not only hit gate receipts, but sponsorship deals
too. And with the country’s economy having taken a hammering,
conglomerates and property developers simply had less cash to
splash around.

Not all the problems were down to Covid; some were simply bad
business decisions. In a bid to foster local talent, the Chinese
Football Association (CFA) in 2017 raised taxation on overseas
signings – any club that spent more than US$7 million would have
to pay an equal amount to the CFA. Clubs responded by drastically
tightening their wallets, which in turn hit fan turn-out and
sponsorship interest.

The consequences of all these forces combined are hard to

overstate. Club after club was forced to shut down as they
struggled to balance the books or keep up with their superstar
wages.

Among the most high profile failures was Jiangsu Suning, which
folded in 2021, citing financial problems just months after being
crowned league champions. The following year Chongqing
Liangjiang head coach Chang Woe-ryong made an emotional
apology that the club was unable to pay staff. In January, Wuhan
Yangtze became the first team in 2023 to withdraw from the
league, the sixth since the beginning of the pandemic and one of
more than 35 across all divisions. In February, seven ex-Shenzhen
players and coaches filed appeals to FIFA regarding unpaid wages.

And in March, Guangzhou City failed to meet the financial

requirements to play in the new CSL season. Hebei FC, meanwhile,
has even conceded it struggled to pay water and electricity bills,
let alone wages.
Players of the Wuhan Zall football team arrive at Wuhan railway station on April 18, 2020 in Hubei, China.
Stringer/Getty Images

‘A complete embarrassment for China’

Bringing foreign talent into the CSL wasn’t just about naturalizing
foreign born stars, but raising the level of soccer local players
were exposed to in the hope this would in turn filter through to the
national team.

The slide through the rankings of the men’s national team shows
that hasn’t happened, even if a new head coach in Serbian
Aleksandar Jankovic has been appointed in an effort to turn things
round.

Meanwhile, the comparatively underfunded women’s team is

perhaps Chinese soccer’s only silver lining; the world No. 14 team
won last year’s Asian Cup and is considered a dark horse for the
Women’s World Cup in July.
The Guangzhou Evergrande football field on March 18, 2022.
Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images/FILE
Likewise, China’s chances of hosting the World Cup seem similarly
far-fetched for the moment, given the various alleged corruption
scandals to have emerged in Chinese soccer.

The Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog is currently

investigating a host of CFA figures, including former president
Chen Xuyuan, former vice-president Yu Hongchen, former head
coach Li Tie, former secretary-general Liu Yi, former CSL general
manager Dong Zheng, former CFA disciplinary committee head
Wang Xiaoping, and others.

As if that weren’t enough to give FIFA pause for thought when

considering any future bid by China, the country’s sole FIFA
representative Du Zhaocai recently lost his seat. In April, Du
became the latest to be pulled up for investigation for “suspected
violations of discipline and law”, with the government assigning a
seven-member taskforce to lead the CFA in the meantime.

In a sign that even the fans may have made up their minds, a
segment featuring a popular actor lambasting the men’s team on
the Chinese social media platform Weibo last year received
hundreds of millions of views.

The footage followed a string of losses by the men’s team,

including a 3-1 defeat to Vietnam that ended their hopes of
qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, and featured Gong Hanlin railing
against overpaid entertainers in a rant directed toward China’s
rubber stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress.

“A football team with an annual income of 3 million, 5 million or

even tens of millions, and they barely see a goal on the pitch,”
Gong rants in the clip. “This is a complete embarrassment for
Chinese people.”