COVID-19 Complicates China’s ‘Football Dream’

Markers of China’s rise are ubiquitous these days, but one form of international prowess has remained stubbornly out of reach: success at football, and specifically the FIFA World Cup, the premier international football competition.

It may seem silly to focus on a sports competition as a marker of international prestige, but China’s top leader himself has made no secret of harboring just such ambitions. An avid football fan himself, Xi Jinping unveiled a “Great Football Dream” in 2016, a niche subset of his broader “China Dream,” but motivated by the same impulse: a strong desire to see China respected and admired on the world stage. As Kerry Brown and Layne Vandenberg put it in the 2018 article for The Diplomat, “A victory at soccer for China would be symbolic of their battles over the last century and a half: to modernize, to be equal, and perhaps even superior, to the world powers that once looked down on them.”

Xi’s high hopes for Chinese football encouraged a raft of investments – including a $1.7 billion football stadium under construction in Guangzhou. At the height of the boom, the Chinese Super League famously spent over $400 million signing foreign players in the 2016-17 transfer window. The influx of cash was designed to support the Chinese Football Association’s stated goals for China to host the World Cup, win the World Cup, and become a global “football superpower” by 2050.

There has been progress behind the scenes, with a focus on developing young, homegrown talent. China has seen a massive surge in the number of schools offering “special football education,” up from 5,000 in 2016 to 27,000 in 2019. By 2025, up to 50 million Chinese students are expected to be receiving football training as part of that effort.

Yet so far, the political and financial backing has not translated to results.