President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has reached the football offices. The former president of the Chinese Federation, Chen Xuyuan, was sentenced to life imprisonment this Tuesday for accepting bribes. The others sentenced, with sentences ranging from 13 to 21 years in prison, are a former head of the Chinese Super League, two directors of the Federation and another of Wuhan FC.
The Huangshi People’s Court, in the central province of Hubei, determined that Chen took advantage of his various positions between 2010 and 2023 – since 2019, at the head of the Federation – to help third parties in contracting projects, executing investments and organizing sports events. But also to fix matches by buying referees and manipulating team promotions. In exchange, Chen accepted cash and gifts worth more than 81 million yuan (more than ten million euros), although 5% was still pending collection.
Chen’s actions resulted in unfair competition and tremendous damage to the football cause in the country, according to the court ruling. Football is also the king of sport in China, which – like Turkey – experiences with frustration the very discreet role of its national team in the international arena. It is in 88th place in the FIFA ranking – between Zambia and Syria – despite successive efforts to improve the level of its Super League, the first division of the four existing ones, in which sixteen teams compete.
To improve the performance of their squads, four of these squads have turned to Spanish coaches – and another, a Portuguese – among them the former Barcelona B coach, Jordi Vinyals, who coaches Zhejiang FC. Likewise, in 2019, with the support of the Kunming city council, a LaLiga International Football School was opened.
The court has deprived Chen Xuyuan – a member of the Communist Party of China since 1979 – of his political rights and ordered the confiscation of all his assets. The magistrates have considered Chen’s confession of guilt and the restitution of the illicitly obtained money as mitigating factors. Part of her confession, in fact, was broadcast a few days ago in the fourth part of a television documentary about corruption in sports. Before the camera, Chen recalled how, on the eve of his election as president of the Chinese Football Federation, the representatives of certain clubs left several backpacks with cash on the sofa in his room, telling him that this was the habit.
Whoever would be his number two, also convicted, has confessed that another club gave him a card with the equivalent of 127,000 euros in credit. When he rejected it, indignant, they returned with the same amount, in cash, that he accepted.
The accusations date back to 2010, when Chen Xuyuan was still president of Shanghai Port FC, winner of the last league championship. In his youth, Chen, who is now 67 years old, had worked on the docks of that port city.
Among the football personalities still awaiting sentencing are former national team coach Li Tie and federation vice president Du Zhaocai. Cleansing, with its disinfecting and uplifting properties and scapegoats, is not entirely new. In 2012, two former senior officials of the Chinese Football Federation were already sentenced to 101 years in prison for soliciting or accepting bribes.
In any case, the current anti-corruption campaign is the largest in the sports field in Chinese history. Needless to say, the punishment of this type of behavior has the applause of the majority of the population.
Not even the leadership of the Central Committee is immune from these investigations. Although according to some voices they could hide purges of a political nature, the truth is that some of the most prominent defenestrated people are not exactly opponents of Xi Jinping, but quite the opposite: Cadres personally promoted by the current president, in the case of the former Minister of Defense, General Li Shangfu, or former Foreign Minister Qin Gang. The current whereabouts of either of them have not been made public, although the mystery is expected to be cleared up this spring.
The full-speed growth of the Chinese economy over the last twenty-five years has eliminated extreme poverty and improved the living conditions of the entire population, but it has also multiplied inequality, in a nominally communist state. Hence, the Chinese Communist Party, in order not to lose its legitimacy among the majority of the population, has decided to stop this type of behavior, with mixed success. The Communist Party of Vietnam also seems to have taken note of the risk of loss of legitimacy, to the point of defenestrating, last week, the head of state himself. And there are two, in two years.
(Below, Chen listening to his sentence, this Tuesday)
