Xinjiang cotton storm ripples Xi Jinping’s “soccer dream”?

Chinese media “Football News” reported on March 27 that the CFA internal meeting condemned Nike (NIKE) for boycotting Xinjiang cotton and reserved the right to further deal with the contract. After the news came out, many public opinions online condemned the CFA enthusiastically.

Netizens have a high degree of consensus on the main grievances of the Football Association: the statement came late, or painless internal condemnation, must be publicly condemned, immediately announced the termination of the contract, suspend cooperation. At the same Time also make a comparison between the two: artists have terminated their contracts, the most important role of the Football Association should take the lead but hide in the back, the stars can also learn from the future, do not move to immediately terminate the contract. Some people even mocked the CFA: “The mouth is all doctrine, the heart is all business”.

Although the CFA has been accused of raking in money, the Chinese football world is suffering a serious existential crisis. Public reports since this year indicate that “unpaid wages are gradually crushing professional soccer in China. According to reports, before the 2021 season has even started, the four top clubs in the Chinese Super League are facing a huge risk of quitting professional soccer in China due to the difficulty in producing a “wage confirmation form”. More than two-thirds of the teams in the Chinese League have unpaid wages, and the Chinese League B teams are also in a similar predicament. When you think about the 22 professional clubs registered with the CFA before last season, which declared bankruptcy, transfer, dissolution or complete withdrawal in just 100 days, you can say that the foundation of China’s professional soccer league has been loosened.

As we all know, Xi Jinping sees soccer as a symbol of “strong sports”, and in February 2015, he released the “Overall Plan for China’s Football Reform” and in April 2015, he set up the “Leading Group for China’s Football Reform”.

Today, as the domestic Sports Weekly published an article, soccer is still in a pseudo-professional league, clubs owe large amounts of money, players go around to collect debts, strike training and strike matches, there is no way to collect wages, and clubs live and die in a chaotic situation. The article points out that the “Football Association is in disarray”, the former is not separate from the management, now divided but not away.

In fact, China’s former soccer star Hao Haidong spoke similar words a long time ago, that is, after he retired from soccer for a period of time often in the domestic media, such as “there are two kinds of soccer in the world, soccer and Chinese soccer”, “China does not have a simple Chinese Football Association, they are only the soccer management center “, “China Football Association chairman: play pool command to play soccer” and so on the shortcomings of Chinese soccer.

And as the collective memory of a generation of Chinese fans, Hao Haidong is now “socially dead”. The reason for this is that on the eve of the 31st anniversary of the June 4 Incident in 2020, he published a declaration that “the destruction of the Chinese Communist Party is a necessity of justice”.

In an interview with overseas media after his public declaration, Hao Haidong revealed for the first time, “I became a player of the Bayi junior team at the age of 10, and officially joined the Bayi team at the age of 18, when I already had an understanding of the system. After joining the national team for more than a decade, my Perception of the Chinese Communist Party system was even more engrained in my mind. It is a system that has no humanity and is a destruction of humanity. No matter who enters this system, it is hard to escape, either they will be devoured by it or they will work for the tiger.”

Hao Haidong also gave an example: “I was the main striker in the national team, every time I went out to play in the early years, the team leader will caution everyone to stay in the hotel can not make long-distance calls, but they secretly told me: Haidong, you can call as many times as you want, and eat as many times as you want to sign the bill. These privileges are only for me, that is, as long as you can get a Gold medal, you can do whatever you want, which is most pathetic, hateful and sad. Athletes are just tools for promotion in the hands of officials.”

The Chinese Football Association (CFA) is the richest institution in the domestic sports funding chain, an open secret in the sports world, the CFA earns more than billions each year, but ignores youth training; the team clubs drink the northwest wind, the CFA must find five-star hotels for every meeting. The Football Association has led a series of reforms so far, on the one hand, the national team performance of the dramatic turmoil and the collapse of the youth training system, on the other hand, is the professional soccer league fake gambling black prevail.

In fact, the highest authority of Chinese soccer, not the CFA, but the “overall plan for the reform and development of Chinese soccer” clearly pointed out that the reform of the CFA to strengthen the “leadership of the Party”. However, up to now, Chinese soccer is not at all like a professional league, and “chaos into a pot”, worrying about Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” includes “out of Asia, go to the world “The “soccer dream”.

In short, this time the cotton storm in Xinjiang continued until now, public opinion in general did not have a double standard extended official institutions, they blasted the Football Association for Nike 3 billion on their knees, naming the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to know that public opinion is not a shield for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Communist Youth League where? While fooling the people to boycott this boycott that, on the other hand, make pressure on the entertainment industry stars to terminate the contract, when to speak out to ask the Football Association and other sports circle to release a host of international brand sponsorship contracts? This is also a development that the Chinese Communist Party did not expect in order to counter the sanctions imposed by European and American countries on the human rights issue in Xinjiang and to encourage the people to be xenophobic.