(from https://baike.baidu.com/pic/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E8%B6%B3%E7%90%83%E5%8D%8F%E4%BC%9A/2703217/0/d009b3de9c82d1585b0c662d870a19d8bd3e429b?fr=lemma&ct=single#aid=0&pic=d009b3de9c82d1585b0c662d870a19d8bd3e429b)
(Please note that all the term “football” in this article refers to “soccer”)
Chinese Football Association Super League (CSL) is the soccer league with the highest level in mainland China. Although it only has a history of 14 years, CSL is rapidly developing and gaining international reputation. By 2017, according to the ranking of IFFHS (International Federation of Football History and Statistics), CSL is the 36th soccer league in the world and the 3rd in Asia.
One of the reasons why CSL thrives a lot within years, is that more and more Chinese companies invests it by purchasing teams, copyright and players. The most famous team in CSL, Guangzhou Evergrande FC, used to be Guangzhou FC, which was just an ordinary team in China. However, after being purchased by Evergrande Group, whose owner is one of the wealthiest Chinese merchants, Guangzhou Evergrande has achieved 7 CSL Championships, 3 Chinese Football Association Super Super Cup Championships and 2 Champions of AFC Champions League in 7 years. As for the copyright, in 2017, China Sports Media Group got the copyright of CSL through biding, at the price of 8 billion RMB (roughly 1.33 billion dollars). In addition, many world-famous soccer players choose to transfer to Chinese teams. For instance, Drogba transferred to Shanghai Shenhua FC in 2012; Robinho and Paulinho played for Guangzhou Evergrande FC; Texeira and Ramirez are now playing for Jiangsu FC. To some degree, it seems that CSL is a new rival against MLS: The excellent players who should have chosen MLS, are now considering CSL.
However, something unexpected happened. In 2016, CFA (Chinese Football Association) enforced a new policy called “U23 Policy”, which said that the starting lists of all CSL teams should include at least one player aging no more than 23 years old. To cope with this policy, some teams just let U23 players play for the first a few minutes and substituted them, which was very funny. Then, in 2017, CFA enacted another policy, which triggered a larger debate. The policy regulated that, since 2018, all the player transaction involving more than 4.5 million RMB, will be levied a heavy tax called “Transaction Moderation Fee”. Which means that teams will be more and more reluctant to pay a lot of money to buy famous, extraordinary players from Europe. It’s said that, Obame Yang, who played for Dortmund, should have been transferred to Guangzhou Evergrande FC months ago, but his transaction was broken due to the “Transaction Moderation Fee”.
Many soccer fans in China criticized that CFA’s regulations are making CSL more and more “unprofessional”. People are expecting more and more superstars playing in China, but now this dream has been destroyed. Without international soccer stars, how can a league gain population? This is indeed a serious problem.
On the other hand, some others argued that the regulations are necessary. They help to provide Chinese native players a platform to practice and display their ability, which may benefit the performance of Chinese National Soccer Team in the future.
So how should CFA regulate CSL? It is still under hot debate now. In my opinion, if it really proves to be helpful for Chinese National Team, these kinds of regulations are necessary, though a little ridiculous.