Soccer made compulsory to achieve Xi's 'Chinese Football Dream'

Want China Times, Editorial, 2015-01-08

Xi Jinping watches students show off their ball skills at an event in
Beijing in 2013. (File photo/Xinhua)

China's Ministry of Education announced in late November that soccer will become a compulsory part of the physical education program of primary and high schools and that students' skill in the sport will form part of their performance evaluation.

The decision is part of efforts to achieve the soccer dream of President Xi Jinping, who in 2011 expressed his hope that China will make it to another FIFA World Cup, will one day host the tournament and ultimately win the title.

China has qualified for the World Cup finals only once, losing all three group stage games without scoring a goal in the 2002 tournament in Japan/South Korea.

The country's professional soccer league established in 1994 has been plagued by illegal gambling and match fixing, which has led to the withdrawal of several corporate sponsors and club owners from the sport.

Parents in China are also reluctant for their kids to harbor ambitions of being professional soccer players, with only some 40,000-plus regular players of the sport among the country's more than 200-million-strong teen population. In comparison, there are over 1 million registered teen soccer players in Japan, a country with a total population of 127 million.

The latest policy to promote soccer in schools involves mandatory classes, which are expected to produce better results than the previous campaign launched in 2009.

Some businesspeople in China have also begun playing their part in achieving the "Chinese Soccer Dream." Hui Kayan, founder and chairman of the Guangzhou-based Evergrande Group, has spent US$200 million to set up the world's largest soccer academy, which trains 2,300 young players.

E-commerce giant Alibaba has also invested in Evergrande, while Dalian Wanda Group, a former owner of China's top professional team, is expected to resume its involvement in the sport.

Authorities in Beijing also hired Tom Byer, an American coach who runs over 100 soccer academies in Japan and has been credited with developing the grassroots soccer program in the country, as an adviser in promoting the sport.