The Great Chinese Soccer Dream is a project presented by the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping aiming to promote association football (soccer) in the country and turn the country into a footballing powerhouse capable of winning the World Cup by 2050.
History
Overview
A country of over 1.4 billion people and 200 million football fans, China has arguably struggled with football. As late as the 1970s, China joined FIFA—after a brief spell between 1954 and 1958—and AFC when the United Nation recognized Beijing as the true China at the expense of Taipei's Republic of China, which would subsequently compete under the name of Chinese Taipei. China only needed to go unbeaten in a match against Hong Kong, then a small English colony, to qualify for the 1986 FIFA World Cup. However, despite being the favorites, China lost 2–1 in a match later remembered as the May 19 incident, which sparked outrage and riots among football pundits. China eventually qualified for the 2002 World Cup but were eliminated after losing all of their three group stage matches and without scoring a goal. In 2009, Chinese football was shaken up by a corruption scandal, which Xi Jinping was committed to cleaning up. In 2011, China ranked 71st in FIFA Men's World Ranking.
Project In 2011, Xi Jinping, before being elected general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (paramount leader), announced a plan to turn China into a footballing powerhouse, which he called "The Great Chinese Soccer Dream" (). Xi pledged to reorganize the entire footballing system and to build up a new generation of players. In particular, Xi told a South Korean politicians that he had three wishes: China qualifying for a World Cup, hosting a World Cup and finally winning a World Cup by the year 2050. Football thus became a state priority in the People's Republic politics. In 2012, a plan to make football the national sport was launched, with football being included in schools curricula and the increase of football fields from 5,000 to 50,000. The PRC aimed to attract both public and private investors.
Chinese businessmen began acquiring shares of big European clubs, such as AC Milan, Manchester City and Atlético Madrid. In 2016, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) unveiled a plan to carry out such a project consisting of building 20,000 training centers and 70,000 football pitches, with one pitch per 10,000 inhabitabts. China was projected to be a major Asian national team by 2030 and a "first-class football superpower" by 2050. In that year, Chinese Super League (CSL) clubs began making exorbitant bids so as to sign world-class footballers: Brazilian Alex Texeira was purchased by Jiangsu F.C. for $54M, Hulk went to Shanghai SIPG on a $60M deal and 25-year old Oscar followed with a fee of $65M. CSL clubs spent as a whole a total of $451M, ranking among the five highest-spending leagues in 2015–16. Players were also enticed into joining Chinese clubs with huge salaries, for instance, Oscar was reportedly paid $106M a year. Ninety broadcasters, including ESPN, began broadcasting Chinese Super League fixtures.
In 2016, Italian 2006 World Cup winner coach Marcello Lippi was appointed as China national team coach. However, China failed to qualify or Russia 2018. After China failed to get better results, the country began naturalizing foreign footballers, such as Brazilian-born Elkeson in hopes to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Chinese Football Association vice-president Li Yu confirmed the ambition to make the CSL the sixth world football league.
Additionally, seven Chinese firms were among the sponsors of the 2018 World Cup.
Decline In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese clubs began to entered a state of crisis owing to a lack of revenue due to three years of lockdown which caused eleven clubs to go bankrupt including former AFC Champions League winning club Liaoning FC. Being ten of sixteen clubs owned by real estate companies, clubs like Jiangsu Suning, Guangzhou City FC and Tianjin Tianhai suffered from a real estate crisis broken out in 2021. Jiangsu Suning, bought by the Suning Group, shut down shortly after winning the 2020 Chinese Super League to focus on their retail business.
On February 1, 2022, China failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup after being defeated 3–1 by Vietnam in Hanoi. On September 6, 2024, China lost 7–0 away to rivals Japan in Saitama in the opening game of World Cup qualifiers. China also failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. In December 2024, Li Tie, who coached China between 2020 and 2021, was sentenced to 20 years of prison over bribery scandal. In January 2025, 73 people received a lifetime ban for match-fixing, including former CFA president Chen Xuyuan. On January 6, 2025, Guangzhou Evergrande, winners of the 2013 and the 2015 AFC Champions League disbanded after failing to pay off its debts, which analysts linked to Evergrande Group crisis.
Reception A government report from 2015 said that the Chinese Football Association must be independent from the General Administration of Sport of China.
Rowan Simons, author of Bamboo Goalposts: One Man's Quest to Teach the People's Republic of China to Love Football, told the BBC: "China's failure in football has become a national embarrassment and figuring out the reasons has become a national obsession, but to me, the reasons are pretty clear and they tell you a lot about how the country is run." The BBC noted that being a one-party state, China imposes decisions from the top, which was seen as the reason why football yielded poor results. The BBC stressed that despite FIFA forbidding state-football interference, the Chinese FA and the Communist Party are deeply embedded citing the fact CFA president Song Cai is also a Chinese Communist Party Deputy Committee Secretary. Mr Dreyer said: "Everything has to report upwards to Communist Party bosses. It basically means that non-football people are making football decisions, football has to be grassroots-led. You start at the bottom of the pyramid and the talent starts to funnel up to the top." Mr Simons said: "If you look at every country where football is really successful, the sport has grown organically as a grassroots activity over the past 100 years. Professional football in China has continually failed because it's supported by nothing - their pyramid is upside down." An unknown Chinese footballer told the BBC that while many players are "good", they lack the specific "football IQ". These have been analyzed as the reasons why despite the Xi Jinping–promoted and the investments, China has not been able to qualify for the World Cup.
References