# Xi Jinping Loves Soccer. Why Is China’s Team So Bad?

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 14 Jul 2026, 19 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/bc7e697f-79c7-41e6-a2a3-b48701510895/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

China’s men’s soccer team has qualified for the World Cup just once, despite millions in investment and a personal push from President Xi Jinping to turn the nation into a footballing powerhouse. On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, host Oanh Ha speaks with Eric Zhu of Bloomberg Economics and Mark Dreyer, sports writer and author of Sporting Superpower, about why the country’s top-down engineering approach fails to capture the grassroots magic of the game and how academic pressure continues to push many young players off the field. We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by Oanh Ha; Produced by Yang Yang and Naomi Ng; Edited by Patrick Hirsch, Julia Weaver; Fact-checking by Julia Press; Engineering by Taka Yasuzawa Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:03] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:15] Speaker 2: The final stage is still being set. But even before
[0:18] Speaker 2: the confetti rains down on this weekend's twenty twenty six
[0:21] Speaker 2: FIFA World Cup champions one thing is certain. This tournament
[0:26] Speaker 2: has been unforgettable and no, I'm not talking about officiating.
[0:31] Speaker 2: Twenty twenty six marked the first time that the games
[0:34] Speaker 2: were split across three host nations, the first time in
[0:38] Speaker 2: nearly twenty years that the field expanded to allow additional teams,
[0:42] Speaker 2: and the first time that nine Asian Football Confederation members
[0:46] Speaker 2: made the cut. And while all teams from Asia have
[0:49] Speaker 2: since been eliminated, their presence in the tournament was more
[0:52] Speaker 2: than a statistical milestone. It was electric for fans, history
[0:57] Speaker 2: in the making.
[1:00] Speaker 3: Japan, It's history at a very time moment does.
[1:04] Speaker 4: Becky slap as they played a World Cup for the
[1:07] Speaker 4: best sign.
[1:08] Speaker 2: In two thousand and two, just four teams from Asia
[1:11] Speaker 2: made it into the World Cup. Today that number has
[1:14] Speaker 2: more than doubled, supercharged of course, by FIFA's decision to
[1:18] Speaker 2: expand the field to forty eight teams. But even with
[1:22] Speaker 2: that expansion, there's one glaring absence from the pitch. China.
[1:26] Speaker 3: China. Every four years Chinese football fans asked the exact
[1:30] Speaker 3: same question words team China in soccer.
[1:32] Speaker 4: China's got one point four billion people, y'all couldn't find
[1:35] Speaker 4: eleven people to kick a ball.
[1:38] Speaker 2: Since the first World Cup in nineteen thirty, China's men's
[1:41] Speaker 2: team has qualified just once in two thousand and two.
[1:44] Speaker 2: It's a staggering drought, and it comes even as Beijing
[1:48] Speaker 2: has poured millions, if not billions, into growing the game,
[1:52] Speaker 2: one that holds a special place in the heart of
[1:55] Speaker 2: its leader.
[1:57] Speaker 4: I used to play football here, but that was fifty
[2:00] Speaker 4: years ago. The pitchers were all dirt back then.
[2:04] Speaker 2: That was Chinese President xi Jinping during a visit to
[2:07] Speaker 2: his former school in Beijing in twenty sixteen. She rarely
[2:11] Speaker 2: speaks publicly about his personal life, but over the years
[2:14] Speaker 2: he's made no secret of his love for football and
[2:17] Speaker 2: his hopes for its future in China.
[2:20] Speaker 5: Xijinping's three wishes for Chinese pee will go back to
[2:23] Speaker 5: twenty eleven, the year before he became the president.
[2:26] Speaker 2: Mark Dreyer is a veteran sports writer who splits his
[2:29] Speaker 2: time between Beijing and the UK.
[2:31] Speaker 5: And they were to qualify for the World Cup to
[2:34] Speaker 5: host the World Cup and to win the World Cup.
[2:36] Speaker 2: But more than a decade later, none of those goals
[2:39] Speaker 2: has been achieved. That's despite China making football a national
[2:43] Speaker 2: priority in twenty fifteen. The struggle has become so visible
[2:47] Speaker 2: that even she himself has acknowledged it. Here he's speaking
[2:51] Speaker 2: to Thailand's Prime minister in twenty twenty three, after China's
[2:55] Speaker 2: men's team beat Thailand in a World Cup qualifier.
[2:59] Speaker 4: Sure ti, oh, really China won? I think that was
[3:04] Speaker 4: mostly a fluke. I'm not too confident in the national
[3:07] Speaker 4: team's level.
[3:09] Speaker 2: Over the years, China has invested heavily to become a
[3:13] Speaker 2: sporting powerhouse. At the Olympics, it regularly tops the metal tables,
[3:18] Speaker 2: which makes it struggle on the pitch all the more striking.
[3:21] Speaker 5: There's nothing really that compares to the lack of success
[3:25] Speaker 5: that China has had there, and I think for the
[3:27] Speaker 5: people it is embarrassing because there are a lot of
[3:29] Speaker 5: football fans in China.
[3:31] Speaker 3: During china booming year the past three decades, it called
[3:34] Speaker 3: me a rising so fast that it's every opportunity outside football.
[3:38] Speaker 2: Eric Ju covers China's economy for Bloomberg Economics. He says,
[3:43] Speaker 2: China's football woes are tied to people wanting to cash
[3:46] Speaker 2: in on the country's economic boom rather than dream big
[3:50] Speaker 2: about becoming a pro athlete.
[3:52] Speaker 3: As long as you have a good education, it's very
[3:54] Speaker 3: easy to make money.
[3:56] Speaker 2: But Eric says this isn't just about individual choices. The
[4:00] Speaker 2: bigger question is why a country that's excelled through planning,
[4:04] Speaker 2: investment and state support hasn't been able to apply the
[4:08] Speaker 2: same formula to football.
[4:10] Speaker 3: You have seen China has made huge success seeing everything right,
[4:14] Speaker 3: mostly everything right, from infrastructure, high speed training you know,
[4:18] Speaker 3: to robotics to AI on the sports at least that
[4:22] Speaker 3: they have made of great success in Olympic games. So
[4:25] Speaker 3: it looked like China model is so successful in everywhere.
[4:28] Speaker 3: So it's a top down engineering approach, but it doesn't
[4:32] Speaker 3: work for football.
[4:41] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanh.
[4:45] Speaker 2: Every week we take you inside some of the world's
[4:47] Speaker 2: biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
[4:51] Speaker 2: businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today in the show,
[4:56] Speaker 2: why China struggles to crack the formula for football and
[5:00] Speaker 2: what that reveals about the limits of state power in
[5:03] Speaker 2: a game that thrives on brassroots participation. In the world
[5:13] Speaker 2: of Olympic sports, China has perfected a science identifying talent early,
[5:19] Speaker 2: controlling variables, and refining performance over years. It's a top
[5:24] Speaker 2: down system that's produced generations of champions in diving, gymnastics,
[5:29] Speaker 2: and weightlifting. But sportswriter Mark Dryer says when it comes
[5:33] Speaker 2: to football, that state engineered top down formula has fallen flat.
[5:38] Speaker 5: And I want to be very clear, they hate the
[5:40] Speaker 5: stereotype that paints some of these Olympic athletes as robots.
[5:44] Speaker 5: I think it's not helpful at all. But the reality
[5:47] Speaker 5: is that if you're talking about gymnastics, if you're talking
[5:49] Speaker 5: about diving, the training and the rigor and the discipline
[5:53] Speaker 5: is incredible, and Chinese people excel in this and they
[5:57] Speaker 5: win gold medals, and so the authorities just think we
[6:00] Speaker 5: can take this and just simply move it over to football.
[6:05] Speaker 2: Mark says one reason the Olympic approach doesn't work for
[6:08] Speaker 2: football is that it's too intense for those still learning
[6:11] Speaker 2: to love the beautiful game. The pressure knocks the fun
[6:15] Speaker 2: out and kids lose interest or coaches mother talent before
[6:18] Speaker 2: it has a chance to grow.
[6:20] Speaker 5: China has this tendency sometimes to take everything too seriously,
[6:23] Speaker 5: too quickly. There's a story that I think resonates and
[6:26] Speaker 5: shows you how difficult that is in China. It was
[6:29] Speaker 5: a Spanish coach who was playing at one of the
[6:31] Speaker 5: football academies in the south and they had some fantastic facilities,
[6:36] Speaker 5: and he mentioned that when he watched the kids, the
[6:39] Speaker 5: Chinese kids play, he wasn't struck by their technical ability
[6:43] Speaker 5: or lack of It wasn't about that. He was struck
[6:45] Speaker 5: by how quiet the sport was being played. They were
[6:48] Speaker 5: almost silent. There was no communication between the players. But
[6:51] Speaker 5: also when they scored a goal, they would just quietly
[6:54] Speaker 5: turn around and go back for the restart and play again.
[6:56] Speaker 5: And that I think for most of the rest of
[6:58] Speaker 5: the world, football and it core is fun. It's the
[7:02] Speaker 5: beautiful game for a reason. It brings so much joy
[7:05] Speaker 5: and passion to billions, literally billions of people around the world.
[7:11] Speaker 2: The Academy Mark mentioned is one of three avenues for
[7:14] Speaker 2: young players in China. It's a professional academy similar to
[7:18] Speaker 2: what you'd see in English Premier League. Top talent is
[7:22] Speaker 2: identified and funneled into boarding schools to train full time.
[7:26] Speaker 2: Beyond that, there are local associations which run training camps
[7:30] Speaker 2: and thousands of public schools where football is incorporated into
[7:34] Speaker 2: the school curriculum with the goal of getting kids to
[7:37] Speaker 2: play regularly. But Mark says those efforts won't do enough
[7:41] Speaker 2: to capture the grassroots magic needed for the game to thrive,
[7:45] Speaker 2: especially when culturally, sports are often seen as a distraction
[7:49] Speaker 2: from the main priority for many Chinese families.
[7:52] Speaker 5: I think what's fundamentally missing is the huge base which
[7:56] Speaker 5: is the foundation for everything else, and that's participation, but
[8:00] Speaker 5: that's amateur enthusiastic people playing because they want to play,
[8:05] Speaker 5: and unfortunately much of that has been squeezed out in
[8:09] Speaker 5: China because there's no space in the system when academics
[8:11] Speaker 5: are prioritized so early.
[8:14] Speaker 2: China's education system is considered one of the most competitive
[8:18] Speaker 2: in the world, and that race for academic survival begins
[8:22] Speaker 2: almost at birth. From toddler prep schools to high school
[8:25] Speaker 2: boot camps, millions of students are funneled into a single track,
[8:29] Speaker 2: all leading up to one life defining college entrance exam,
[8:34] Speaker 2: the GAUCOW.
[8:35] Speaker 3: Traditionally, every parent was seen going to college, going to
[8:39] Speaker 3: through the GAUC college or entrance exam. That's a most
[8:42] Speaker 3: typical way you know, to get sucsett in China, they
[8:45] Speaker 3: don't believe they're not playing football. Being very good at
[8:48] Speaker 3: sports is a very successful career. I think the key
[8:51] Speaker 3: issue is not that they don't have Messi or now
[8:54] Speaker 3: that the key issue is probably in China. If Messi
[8:58] Speaker 3: was boring China, I guess he would probably end up
[9:01] Speaker 3: like the school team in Chinhua instead of a national
[9:05] Speaker 3: Chinese team. So I think because most of the kids,
[9:08] Speaker 3: eventually they have to go to the education track, even
[9:11] Speaker 3: if you're very gifted in football, I guess very few
[9:15] Speaker 3: of them will stick to the end.
[9:18] Speaker 2: Eric says part of that mentality can be traced to
[9:20] Speaker 2: China's modern history. For much of the twentieth century, China
[9:24] Speaker 2: was simply too poor and too focused on survival to
[9:28] Speaker 2: invest in sports. Then, not long after the country opened
[9:31] Speaker 2: its economy in the late nineteen seventies, the one child
[9:34] Speaker 2: policy was introduced that limited most families to a single
[9:39] Speaker 2: child and made it unlikely that you'd bank your child's
[9:42] Speaker 2: future on pro sports.
[9:44] Speaker 3: If you have two children, three children, so you have
[9:47] Speaker 3: more diversity rights. So now they cannot risk putting their
[9:52] Speaker 3: only child on a very uncertain and very risky career. Path,
[9:56] Speaker 3: so education going through the entrance exam, that's the most
[10:01] Speaker 3: desired way to move off to social lander.
[10:09] Speaker 2: After the break weather, Beijing's latest efforts to move the
[10:12] Speaker 2: needle might finally bring the change in World Cup success
[10:16] Speaker 2: that's eluded China and President She for so long. Since
[10:33] Speaker 2: reaching the high point of qualifying for the World Cup
[10:36] Speaker 2: in two thousand and two, it's been largely downhill for
[10:39] Speaker 2: China's men's football team. China's women's side has qualified for
[10:43] Speaker 2: nine World Cups and was even a runner up in
[10:46] Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine. That's when they lost a heartbreaking final
[10:50] Speaker 2: to the US team and Brandy Chastain's famous penalty kick.
[11:00] Speaker 2: They too, have struggled to find consistent success, and so
[11:04] Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, two years after taking office, present She
[11:08] Speaker 2: made it his mission to change the narrative around Chinese football.
[11:12] Speaker 2: He announced that his government would make football a national priority.
[11:17] Speaker 5: That was a key time in the development of the
[11:20] Speaker 5: sports industry because China looked towards the US and I
[11:23] Speaker 5: think it realized that about three percent of the US
[11:26] Speaker 5: GDP was coming from sports. China had it was the
[11:30] Speaker 5: equivalent was a fraction of one percent. So they thought, wow,
[11:32] Speaker 5: if we can recreate something similar or even bigger than
[11:36] Speaker 5: the US has. We can have this new driver, a
[11:38] Speaker 5: new genuine driver of economic growth. So in twenty fourteen
[11:42] Speaker 5: they put out a big policy document which was to
[11:45] Speaker 5: develop the sports industry as a whole. Now, the first
[11:49] Speaker 5: area that they looked at was football, and in twenty
[11:52] Speaker 5: fifteen there was a fifty point plan that was released
[11:56] Speaker 5: to overhaul and oversee the redevelopment of Chinese football. Now
[12:00] Speaker 5: with one or two exceptions, perhaps on points of ideology
[12:03] Speaker 5: here and there, it was a very very sensible plan.
[12:06] Speaker 5: If you took all the top international football consultants and
[12:09] Speaker 5: said what does China need to do? All the points
[12:12] Speaker 5: were in there. The problem has been implementation.
[12:16] Speaker 2: On paper, China seemed to have a clear roadmap. The
[12:20] Speaker 2: fifty point plan listed out ways to revive the sport,
[12:24] Speaker 2: from expanding football programs in schools and building thousands of
[12:27] Speaker 2: new pitches to overhauling the way professional football was governed
[12:31] Speaker 2: and run, but turning that vision into reality has proven difficult.
[12:37] Speaker 2: China's top professional football league, the Super League, has been
[12:40] Speaker 2: plagued by corruption for decades, from scandals involving bribery to
[12:45] Speaker 2: match fixing and financial misconduct that stretches back to the
[12:48] Speaker 2: nineteen nineties. Its most famous players have also been swept
[12:52] Speaker 2: up in corruption scandals, like Lee Tia, China's former national
[12:56] Speaker 2: team coach. Lee, who once played in the English Mirror
[13:00] Speaker 2: League for Everton, was sentenced to twenty years in prison
[13:03] Speaker 2: for corruption in twenty twenty four. Beijing has launched repeated
[13:07] Speaker 2: anti corruption campaigns to clean up the sport, but Mark
[13:11] Speaker 2: says the same problems keep resurfacing and they still plague
[13:15] Speaker 2: China's domestic league today.
[13:17] Speaker 5: Well, I think it's been a series of false starts,
[13:19] Speaker 5: to be honest, and a lot of that has stemmed
[13:21] Speaker 5: from some of the corruption and the match fixing. And
[13:24] Speaker 5: every few years we've had investigations into this and people
[13:28] Speaker 5: get penalized, and officials and players and referees as well
[13:32] Speaker 5: get banned from the game or get sent to jail.
[13:36] Speaker 5: At the moment, we have the Chinese Super League in
[13:38] Speaker 5: this fascical situation where more than half of the teams,
[13:42] Speaker 5: Nine of the sixteen teams started the season on minus
[13:47] Speaker 5: points because of various penalties they'd been given. This is
[13:50] Speaker 5: unheard of in any other country in the world, and
[13:53] Speaker 5: it makes it in my opinion, a bit of a
[13:55] Speaker 5: mockery of this year. It's not about who's the best
[13:57] Speaker 5: on the on the pitch, it's about who can no
[14:00] Speaker 5: gate the point differential better than the others. I'm not
[14:02] Speaker 5: saying they shouldn't have given the penalties. You have to
[14:04] Speaker 5: crack down and trying to stamp this stuff out, but
[14:07] Speaker 5: the fact that we've seen yet another cycle, I think
[14:10] Speaker 5: that is probably the one of the largest underlying issues
[14:14] Speaker 5: that they still haven't been able to truly get out
[14:17] Speaker 5: of the sports in China.
[14:19] Speaker 2: For Mark, one of the biggest obstacles is how the
[14:22] Speaker 2: sport is governed. While China has taken steps to give
[14:26] Speaker 2: its professional leagues more independence, the roder football system remains
[14:30] Speaker 2: closely tied to the state through the Chinese Football Association
[14:35] Speaker 2: that's an arm of the Chinese government, and that means
[14:38] Speaker 2: football is often shaped by political priorities in ways that
[14:42] Speaker 2: would be unusual in the rest of the world.
[14:45] Speaker 5: The whole Chinese FA is de facto part of the
[14:49] Speaker 5: sports ministry. I mean, if that isn't government interference, I
[14:51] Speaker 5: don't know what is. But China gets a free pass
[14:53] Speaker 5: from FIFA on this, and so you have political people
[14:57] Speaker 5: making football decisions and that fundamentally is not going to
[15:01] Speaker 5: work long term.
[15:04] Speaker 2: Ultimately, Mark says developing football in China requires a cultural shift.
[15:09] Speaker 2: More people need to embrace the everyday lifestyle of the sport,
[15:14] Speaker 2: not just chase conventional markers of success like money or status.
[15:18] Speaker 2: He says, without a grassroots base of casual players, there's
[15:22] Speaker 2: no foundation to build talent upward. In countries like the UK,
[15:26] Speaker 2: even pub and village teams are part of a connected
[15:29] Speaker 2: system that allows players to rise or fall naturally. China,
[15:34] Speaker 2: on the other hand, lacks that structure, leaving too few
[15:38] Speaker 2: pathways for players to progress from the bottom up.
[15:41] Speaker 5: What we need is that huge base at the bottom
[15:43] Speaker 5: of the pyramid, which is just grassroots, organic people playing
[15:48] Speaker 5: because they want to play. In China, certainly, historically people
[15:52] Speaker 5: were selected from that base and put into a much
[15:54] Speaker 5: more serious track far too early and really focused on
[15:59] Speaker 5: just the top lead professional things, which is the tiny
[16:02] Speaker 5: little triangle at the top of this larger pyramid.
[16:06] Speaker 2: And to get that bigger base of players, China needs
[16:08] Speaker 2: to change incentives for parents, convince them to buy in.
[16:12] Speaker 2: Here's Eric Juwe again.
[16:14] Speaker 3: In the near term, I think that some good fixes
[16:17] Speaker 3: from the social background, you know, improve the social safety
[16:20] Speaker 3: in net, give more protection to parents who want invest
[16:24] Speaker 3: in football even if their children cannot make in Golka
[16:27] Speaker 3: cannot you know, make into good call it it. That
[16:29] Speaker 3: can still get something. But in the longer term, I
[16:32] Speaker 3: think it has to be something about parents need to
[16:36] Speaker 3: you know, focus less on education and want to encourage
[16:40] Speaker 3: their children to play football right or other sports. But
[16:43] Speaker 3: this should be market based instead of you know, from
[16:46] Speaker 3: the government intervention gumpan direction to give them more incentives
[16:50] Speaker 3: and change the system.
[16:52] Speaker 5: Now, the problem is China system is such that you
[16:55] Speaker 5: just can't really operate outside of state control, and so
[16:59] Speaker 5: it's not a realistic solution for China without changing the system,
[17:03] Speaker 5: and they're not going to do that. What they could
[17:06] Speaker 5: do is perhaps perhaps to make football, for example, part
[17:11] Speaker 5: of gauco achievement, so you know, maybe ten percent is
[17:16] Speaker 5: your performance in football or in sports or in something
[17:19] Speaker 5: non specifically academic. It would prevent, for example, this cliff
[17:24] Speaker 5: that we talk about the age of twelve or thirteen
[17:26] Speaker 5: where the youth sports just see a massive drop in
[17:29] Speaker 5: participation as these outside distractions are dropped, so that people
[17:34] Speaker 5: can focus on the academics, and that would just create
[17:37] Speaker 5: that larger base, and then naturally you have more people
[17:40] Speaker 5: just float to the top, and you have more people
[17:42] Speaker 5: achieving at the top, top levels.
[17:45] Speaker 2: Do you, guys, either, you guys see any signs or
[17:48] Speaker 2: data points that suggest China can change, that China can
[17:51] Speaker 2: improve When it comes to football, you know, what's one
[17:54] Speaker 2: hopeful sign and maybe a caveat that you see there there?
[17:58] Speaker 3: I guess one couple signed for football. But it looks
[18:01] Speaker 3: like a best sign for they call me not a
[18:03] Speaker 3: very good sign for youth people because the ecal me
[18:07] Speaker 3: is slowing down and actually the job prospects, the career
[18:11] Speaker 3: prospects for fresh college graduates, it's actually looking not very
[18:15] Speaker 3: good right now, especially given you know the AI year
[18:19] Speaker 3: right But from football perspective, that could be a good
[18:22] Speaker 3: thing because now parents will realize, okay, the education is
[18:26] Speaker 3: not necessarily so important in the longer run career, so
[18:30] Speaker 3: they might rethink, if I tried a very good football player,
[18:34] Speaker 3: why not let him or her try football.
[18:43] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
[18:45] Speaker 2: one huh. To get more from the Big Take and
[18:48] Speaker 2: unlimited access to all of Bloomberg dot com, subscribe today
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[18:57] Speaker 2: Take Asia wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps
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