Is Our Love–Hate Relationship with China’s Football Team Based on the Wrong Assumptions?

Geoffrey Chen

Is Our Love–Hate Relationship with China’s Football Team Based on the Wrong Assumptions?

# Is Our Love–Hate Relationship with China’s Football Team Based on the Wrong Assumptions?

On 2 October 2026, China’s men’s national football team lost 5–0 to Palestine in an international invitational tournament in Chongqing. After a result like that, anger, ridicule and even abuse from supporters are almost inevitable. Familiar complaints soon return: “They spend so much of the country’s money”, “They earn such enormous salaries”, and “Taxpayers pay for all this — how can they play so badly?”

But if we want to criticise the national team, I think we should first understand how the money actually works. Otherwise, we may criticise fiercely while mixing together different kinds of funding, and perhaps even holding the wrong people responsible.

There are at least three separate accounts here — what individual players earn, what it costs to run the national team, and who pays for a particular international match. Public discussion frequently treats them as one.

Let us begin with a basic point. China’s men’s national team is not a public-sector work unit whose players receive their regular salaries directly from the state budget.

The 2015 Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football and the Plan for the Adjustment and Reform of the Chinese Football Association set out the separation of the Chinese Football Association (CFA) from the General Administration of Sport. The association was to operate as a social organisation, with autonomy over finances, remuneration and personnel. The reform plan further stipulated that the CFA would cease to be a central government budget unit, adopt the accounting system for non-governmental non-profit organisations, and maintain its own independent accounts. At the same time, it is not an ordinary commercial company. It is an organisation with a public-interest character and public functions, representing China in international football bodies and managing its national football teams.

The CFA therefore has a distinctive hybrid structure. Calling it a government department is inaccurate. Calling it a wholly private, fully market-driven institution with no connection to public finances is equally inaccurate.

National policy explicitly allows, and indeed calls for, public financial support for football development, including facilities, youth development, women’s football and national teams. Support can also reach the CFA through government purchases of services. Meanwhile, the association carries out substantial commercial activities involving sponsorship, media rights, event commercial rights and licensed merchandise.

Historical figures illustrate this structure. According to the CFA’s publicly reported financial statements for 2017 and 2018, total revenue in 2017 was RMB760 million. Licensing, sponsorship and partnership revenue contributed RMB590 million, or 77.6%, while services purchased by the General Administration of Sport contributed RMB120 million, or 15.8%. In 2018, total revenue was RMB840 million, with licensing, sponsorship and partnerships contributing RMB660 million, or 78.6%, and services purchased by the sports administration contributing RMB130 million, or 15.5%. Expenditure on national teams at all levels was approximately RMB209 million and RMB255 million respectively.

These figures are historical reference points. They cannot be used to calculate the situation in 2026. In January 2026, the CFA Congress approved the association’s 2024 financial report. However, the public announcement tells us only that the report was approved; it does not provide an itemised breakdown of revenue and expenditure that readers can check. If someone now claims to know precisely what percentage of the national team’s 2026 funding comes from public finances and what percentage comes from commercial activity, the publicly available official material does not provide a basis for that certainty.

What can be confirmed is that commercial revenue still exists and is pursued on a substantial scale. The CFA’s wholly owned company, China Futebao Football Industry Development Company, holds commercial development rights for Team China and other football events. Official documents issued in 2026 indicate that at least 40 Team China matches are expected annually, with commercial opportunities encompassing sponsorship, media exposure, event intellectual property and licensed products.

FIFA also provides development funding to its member associations. But this should not simply be understood as “FIFA pays to keep China’s national team running”. FIFA’s public Forward programme page for the CFA currently lists committed project funding mainly under “Competitions” and “Other Projects”, while “National Team Support” is shown as US$0. Money from international organisations does enter the Chinese football system, but it cannot automatically be equated with the senior men’s team’s salaries or day-to-day expenses.

Now consider the most frequently misunderstood account — who actually pays national team players their high salaries?

National team players are, first and foremost, players at professional clubs. If a player represents Shanghai Shenhua, Beijing Guoan, Shandong Taishan or another club, the legal and contractual payer of his professional salary and club bonuses is that club. It is not the men’s national team, and the CFA does not pay him a separate year-round salary simply for being an international player.

The CFA’s own earlier remuneration rules distinguish these payments clearly. Clubs pay their players’ remuneration. When players attend national team training camps and matches, the CFA can separately pay national team allowances and bonuses. Those payments were expressly excluded from the calculation of the club player salary cap.

When we say, “This international earns millions a year and still plays like that”, we have already shifted between two different concepts. Those millions are principally his contractual earnings in the professional club market, rather than a salary the national team pays him to represent China. Of course, a club’s own funding may have a complicated background involving private capital, state-owned shareholders or local resources. That is a further question, but it does not turn all club wages into government-funded national team salaries.

The arrangements change once a player is called up.

The CFA’s notice of 8 September 2026 for the senior men’s team’s fourth training camp states clearly that the association bears the relevant costs of accommodation, meals, transport and insurance during training and competition.

In other words, players generally earn their living at their clubs. When they join the national team, the CFA takes responsibility for the normal expenses of national team activities, with allowances and match bonuses also possible under the relevant arrangements. As for the exact allowance per match or win bonus paid to the senior men’s team in 2026, I have not found specific figures in current publicly available CFA documents. Online rumours should not be treated as facts.

Coaches are in a different position. The national team’s head coach is appointed by the CFA itself. In November 2025, the CFA formally announced Shao Jiayi’s appointment as head coach of China’s men’s national team. When Branko Ivanković left earlier, the association’s announcement explicitly referred to the termination of the head coach’s and coaching team’s contracts under their agreed terms. This establishes a formal employment or contractual relationship between the CFA and the senior national team’s coaching staff. Their coaching remuneration forms part of the cost of running the national team. Shao Jiayi’s precise annual salary, however, has not been officially disclosed.

The account does not end there. Even when a CFA notice says that the association bears accommodation and transport expenses during national team matches, that does not necessarily mean every yuan ultimately comes out of the CFA’s own account for every match.

This is where the allocation of costs across different competitions matters.

For official home-and-away competitions such as the Asian World Cup qualifiers, the CFA is the participating association when China plays at home, but a particular city must also host the match. In its 2023 call for host cities for China’s home matches in the joint qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup and 2027 Asian Cup, the CFA stipulated that the host city would be primarily responsible for security, venue hire, facility inspections, infrastructure upgrades, medical services and local organising committee personnel costs. Commercial rights belonged to the CFA, while ticketing rights were to be negotiated between the parties.

A single national team home match therefore already involves at least three levels of organisation — the CFA, the host city and a competition governing body such as the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Money is not simply flowing out of one national team bank account.

Away matches work differently. Under the AFC’s current 2026 Competition Operations Manual, participating teams generally bear their international and domestic long-distance travel costs to the match location, while the host must provide the prescribed local transport vehicles. If the host city lacks a suitable international airport, the host also bears certain domestic transport costs between the nearest international airport and the match city. Where a competition has specific regulations, those take precedence.

The Asian Cup qualifiers set out the arrangements even more specifically. Under the current regulations for the 2027 Asian Cup, visiting teams in the qualifying stage pay their international travel, accommodation, meals and incidental expenses. The host association must at least provide the prescribed local transport and arrange liaison personnel.

At the Asian Cup finals, the structure changes because the competition becomes a centralised tournament. Participating teams bear the costs of travelling to their first venue and departing from their last, along with their own incidental expenses. Other tournament logistics are mainly provided by the AFC and the host association under the relevant tournament agreements. “China playing in the Asian Cup” therefore refers to different cost structures depending on whether we mean the qualifiers or the finals.

Now consider international invitationals and friendlies such as the match in which China lost 5–0 to Palestine.

These differ fundamentally from World Cup qualifiers. FIFA’s rules allow member associations to arrange friendlies within the international match calendar and the applicable regulations, including through licensed match agents. There is no single worldwide commercial template requiring every visiting team to pay its own way or every host to pay a fixed appearance fee. The associations can negotiate who pays for flights and hotels, whether an appearance fee is payable, and how commercial revenue is shared. The terms can vary with each event and contract.

The CFA’s own documents from this year offer a particularly clear example.

In its June 2026 invitation for cities to host senior men’s international invitational matches, the CFA required the host city to bear venue hire, security, medical services, accommodation, meals and transport for participating teams within the host area, and necessary event organisation costs. Television broadcasting, commercial and ticketing rights were to be negotiated jointly by the CFA and the host. Bids also required letters of support from the city government and the provincial sports bureau.

This document matters. When we see China playing an invitational match in Chongqing, Chengdu, Dalian or another city, we cannot simply assume that the CFA invited a foreign team and paid for everything. The actual arrangement may involve the host city providing venues, hotels, transport, security and organisational resources, the CFA contributing the event brand and national team resources, and its commercial company developing rights, with revenue generated through sponsorship, broadcasting and ticket sales.

But this does not justify the opposite claim that no public money was used. To establish how much came from government budgets, state-owned enterprises, market sponsorship or event revenue, we would need the particular hosting contract and local financial disclosures. The CFA document tells us who is responsible for the costs; it does not identify the ultimate source of every payment made by the host city. Translating “the host city pays” directly into “taxpayers pay for everything” is equally imprecise.

Having separated these accounts, we can return to the original question — is our love–hate relationship with the national team based on the wrong assumptions?

I do not think the answer is, “Since the team is not entirely funded by the state, we should stop criticising it.” That simply moves to the opposite extreme.

Supporters are certainly entitled to criticise a 5–0 defeat to Palestine. A national team is not an ordinary commercial club. It represents the competitive standard of Chinese football and draws on decades of institutions, youth development, facilities, sponsorship, public attention and public resources. The CFA explicitly has a public-interest character and public functions, and national policy does direct resources towards national team development. There is a factual basis for demanding professional standards, more effective governance, greater financial transparency and more transparent selection and appointment processes.

What needs correcting is another popular but questionable narrative: “The state supports all these players with taxpayers’ money, pays each of them millions in salary, and therefore poor football means they have wasted the wages we paid them.”

That is not how the arrangements work. Players’ high professional earnings principally come from their club contracts. While they represent the national team, the CFA bears training and competition expenses and can pay allowances and bonuses. The head coach and national team staff sit within the association’s appointment and national team operating arrangements. The CFA itself is not a central government budget unit. It receives commercial revenue, government purchases of services and public policy support, as well as project funding from international football organisations such as FIFA. For each particular match, costs and rights are allocated among the CFA, host cities, host associations, the AFC, FIFA and commercial partners according to the different rules governing World Cup qualifiers, Asian Cup qualifiers, Asian Cup finals, friendlies and invitationals.

The question is therefore more complicated than whether the national team has used state money. There is undoubtedly public investment in the wider Chinese football system, and national team development is itself a target of public policy support. But that is a different proposition from saying that 22 players are playing on government salaries.

Precisely for this reason, I think clarifying the finances makes criticism stronger.

The more useful questions are not, “You took my taxes, so how dare you lose?” They are more specific. Have Chinese football’s commercial, social and public resources been effectively converted into youth development, coaching, talent identification, training quality and national team competitiveness? Is the relationship between national team expenditure and results reasonable? Are the CFA’s finances transparent enough? What does hosting an international invitational actually cost, and how much revenue does it generate? Why has sustained investment still failed to produce consistent competitive ability?

These may be the questions most worth asking after a 5–0 defeat.

Our anger may not be misplaced, but sometimes its justification is. Understanding where the national team’s money comes from does not require us to become more forgiving. On the contrary, only when we understand where the money comes from, who spends it and what it is spent on can we identify who should be held responsible, and for what.

This article draws on publicly verifiable material available as at 3 October 2026 from the CFA, the General Administration of Sport of China, the AFC, FIFA and Xinhua. It does not use media rumours to infer the CFA’s unpublished detailed 2024 financial figures, current national team player allowances or bonus rates, the present coaching staff’s precise remuneration, or the commercial terms of particular friendly matches.

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