page_title: Sport in China
section_title: Football
hierarchical_section_title: Sport in China / Types of sports / Football
caption_attribution_description: English: Lin Dan Bân-lâm-gú: Lîm Tan. 林丹
context_page_description: Sport in China has been long associated to the Martial Arts. Today China consists of a variety of competitive sports. Traditional Chinese culture regards physical fitness as an important characteristic. China has its own national quadrennial multi-sport event similar to the Olympic Games called the National Games.
  The largest audience for a single sporting event within the boundaries of mainland China was a football match in the Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou.
  Football is a popular sport. The average attendance of the Chinese Super League games in 2017 was 23,766 spectators. Badminton and table tennis are also popular sports in China. Prior to the 1990s, sports were entirely funded by the government. Top athletes have quit at the height of their careers due to uncertainty about their livelihoods after retirement, but this situation began to change in 1994 when Chinese football was professionalized, followed by basketball, volleyball, ping pong, and weiqi. Professionalization led to commercialization; this meant that sports associations became profit-making entities and that a club system and professional sports leagues were formed.
context_section_description: Football earns the highest television ratings of any sport in the country and has been one of the most well supported sports in China ever since it was introduced in the 1900s. There is also written evidence that a game similar to football, Cuju, was first played in China around 50 BC. The current Chinese Football Association (CFA) was founded in the PRC after 1949. Its headquarters is located in Beijing, and the current chairman is Cai Zhenhua. From 1994 to 2004, the CFA established the first professional football league, which was "Jia A". The Chinese Super League (CSL) is the premier football league in China, which was changed from "Jia A" in 2004, as the top of a league hierarchy that extends to four leagues. Jia in Chinese also means "First" or "Best". Since its foundation the Super League has been relatively unstable, and has struggled to maintain popularity. In 2016, the average attendance of the CSL was 24,159 making it one of the highest attending professional football league around the world.
  At the international level, Chinese football has enjoyed little success despite the amount of support it receives from fans. Although the national team qualified for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, they failed to score a single goal and lost three group matches. Conversely, the women's national team has finished second at both the World Championships and the Olympic Games. Despite the Chinese women's team's success at international competitions, however, women's football in China does not receive nearly as much attention as their counterparts in Canada and the United States, therefore China's good trend in women's football may well come to an end in the near future. In 1991, China hosted the inaugural Women's World Cup in Guangzhou; in 2004, it hosted AFC Asian Cup.
  Football has always been among the more popular amateur team sports for recreation in China. High schools often have football facilities, some of which are rented on weekends to local amateur teams to organize matches. It is also the most popular sport to watch on television, with large international tournaments such as the World Cup and the European Championships, as well as major European leagues receiving widespread coverage.
caption: Lin Dan is the only player in badminton history to have won three consecutive titles at the World Championships (2006, 2007 and 2009).[7]
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-W55", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:08:30 12:09:36", "Image ExifOffset": "244", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/400", "EXIF FNumber": "71/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:08:30 08:04:58", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:08:30 08:04:58", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "63/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "651", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "728", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}