Re: China's football status in the world

As the blog's resident excuse for a China scholar (something akin to Napoleon being a Russian climatology expert), I concur with Zamundinho’s general assessment of China’s prospects as a football power. However, my own forecast for Sino podiatric-spherical dominance are even more skeptical.

To be sure, the estimate that there are 26 million Chinese playing football would be impressive, but I’m not sure how accurate that number is. Per capita considerations aside, the related questions are those of underreporting and overestimating. The actual number may be far higher, considering there are many parts of China where contemporary methods of census taking are impractical. The actual number may also be far lower. Demography questions aside, the CCP has a checkered history of manipulating facts to convey an impression of Chinese dominance in a given field (Exhibit A: Yao Ming. Exhibit B: Chun Li in Street Fighter 2). In comparison, China’s official estimate of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the country is 400,000, but the real number is believed to be at least three times that.

Also, the “26 million” figure belies the number of Chinese who are playing quality football, or are at least being trained properly. The number of medals won by China in the Beijing Olympics is, in part, the result of a concerted effort by Chinese authorities to devote time, resources, and personnel to certain sports: gymnastics, swimming, etc. The short amount of time it took for Chinese dominance in those sports is actually quite astonishing. If anything, football is probably even more popular than those other sports in China. Some Chinese even claim that football was invented there, sometime before the Song dynasty. Without active government involvement in developing the quality of the sport (which may come from China’s 2018-2022 World Cup bid), we likely won’t see such an exponential rise in dominance.

This is another way of saying that, just as with sex and hand grenades (or sex with hand grenades), proximity matters. China is currently ranked 84th in FIFA rankings, but it is bracketed by South Africa (83rd) to the north and Mozambique (85th) and Malawi (86th) to the south. This is good company to keep if you want your child to be adopted by Madonna, but it doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of the Englands, Frances, or even USAs of the world (actually, there’s only one USA. USA! USA! WOOOO!).

I guess I can’t get off this topic without disclaiming that all of this is a gender-specific analysis. The international track record of Chinese women’s soccer is actually quite impressive. They’re currently ranked 12th in the world, with their highest ranking having been at number 4. Maybe a small part is that this practice has become less prevalent (caution: slideshow only for the strong of stomach).