The transition game: Toward a cultural economy of football in post-socialist China

Abstract

Following decades of significant economic and political reform, a once-closed China has emerged as the world’s fastest growing and arguably most interconnected political economic system. In the context of what has been termed a “post-socialist” transition, China’s sport system has similarly undergone rapid marketization (bringing in market actors and action). In this article, we examine the changing state and function of football (soccer) within this period of post-socialist transition. We provide a critical analysis of recent (c. 2010–2017) private and state-based initiatives to develop the commercial viability, international interconnectivity, and cultural significance of football (soccer). Drawing upon theories of cultural economy as developed by the globalization theorist Arjun Appadurai, we provide an historical and conceptual investigation of the strategic efforts to nationally imagine football culture as, and within, transitioning China. To do this, we examine how state actors and private intermediaries have leveraged increases in high-profile player transfers, domestic franchise valuations, investment in foreign teams, development of player academies, overall youth and adult participation, and expanded media rights agreements to simultaneously economize Chinese football culture and culturalize the logics of commercial sport and free market capitalism more generally. In so doing, we map the various “scapes” through which people, capital, images, technologies, and ideologies have been set aflow and thereby frame new imaginings of mass privatization, mediation, and consumerism for a national football consuming public.

China’s Football Dream: Sport, Citizenship, Symbolic Power, and Civic Spaces

“…Swartz, 2012), football takes several different forms: as embodied cultural capital in the form of CSL competition, live broadcasts, and highlights shows; as the men’s and women’s national team matches and other commodified football products; as objectified cultural capital in the form of stadia, football facilities, sports insurance products, sporting equipments that are used by cultural participants; and in institutionalized cultural capital through campus football initiatives, amateur leagues, and varsity competitions that are convertible to other forms of capital through credentials. This analysis echoes a key argument presented by Yu et al (2017) where football is commodified by the state as “an eminently consumable aspect of everyday (physical) cultural life” where the citizen–consumer is “called into action by the state to perform on behalf of nationalist modernization” (p. 20). In short, football is being commodified into forms of cultural capital, which are consumed, utilized, or achieved, yet which are being made available through an imposed cultural industry created via industrial policy and the mobilization of the private sector.…”

“…Studying this articulation, through the specific case of football reform, reveals the complexities of policymaking and politics in contemporary China. In their application of Appadurai’s (1996) work on cultural economy, Yu, Newman, Xue, and Pu (2017) examine how the coalescing of people, finance, images, and ideology create “football-scapes” imbued with “new systems of meaning, power, capital, and consumer identities from which the state, and sport therein, are articulated” (p. 4). Yu et al (2017) is a compelling study of the role of football in China’s engagement with cultural globalization, and seeking to extend this pioneering work, we explore a more explicitly political dimension implicated in Chinese sport, namely the relationship between football and state-building, national identity, and citizenship.…”

The Football Dream of a Sleeping Dragon: Media Framing(s), East–West Geopolitics, and the Crisis of the Chinese Men’s National Team

“…(Chinese football reform, 2015, p. 1)In an article titled “Reform Should Activate the Industrial Chain by Market, and the Policy Should Still Be Refined,” this new method was heralded as an important pathway for the commercial development of the domestic game: “The government’s function is not to enter the market to fight, but to provide services and support to enterprises entering the market" (p. 1). This is but one example of the general trend in the media narratives, which aligns closely with the postsocialist media stylings of what has been termed elsewhere as “state capitalism” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (see L. Yu, Newman, Xue, & Pu, 2017) and whereby the State is positioned as both the key actor in, and facilitator of, a market-based approach to sport development.…”

“…By many accounts, this great transformation is well underway. According to one report, 31% of China’s nearly 1 billion urban population actively follow the sport—a football fan inventory equivalent to the population of the United States (L. Yu, Newman, Xue, & Pu, 2017).…”

Chinese Football in the Era of Xi Jinping: What do Supporters Think?

“…While these activities have raised considerable media interest around the globe, the international public debate -which takes place mainly within the football-interested community of specialised news outlets -focuses on the visible surface level of spectacular business news and trends (Lee and Brownlee 2017). In academia, likewise, there has been a growing interest in Chinese football in recent years too (Tan et al 2016;Yu et al 2017;Stride and Vandenberg 2018;Sullivan 2018; Qi, Skinner, and Houlihan 2018). So far, however, there has been little discussion herein about Chinese supporters, one of football's key stakeholders.…”