President Xi kicks off 'beautiful game'

Chinese President Xi Jinping is confronting a challenge no less daunting than the anti-corruption campaign he spearheads in his party - to boost the nation's soccer competence on the world stage.

China's central reform group, chaired by Xi, approved a plan on Friday to boost the level of Chinese soccer, which has been for years a source of embarrassment.

"We must develop and revitalize soccer to ensure we are a strong nation of sports," according to a statement issued after a meeting of the central reform leading group.

"It is the desperate desire of the people as well."

In stark contrast to its huge success in many other sports, China has been struggling in soccer for decades and only ever qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, when the team was eliminated at the group stage without scoring a single goal. Since then, the Chinese team fared poorly despite efforts to bring in world-class coaches like Bobby Houghton and ex-Real Madrid manager Jose Antonio Camacho. Its most recent humiliating performance was a 5-1 loss to Thailand's Under-23 side in 2013.

Xi, an avid soccer fan, is apparently unpleased with the national team's play. Stating his personal ambitions for China in 2011, he listed three, all about soccer: To qualify for the World Cup again, to host the event and finally, to win it someday.

The president also took time during his first state visit to Germany last year to watch a match in Berlin between Chinese and German teenage players and told Chinese youngsters that he hoped to see a star would emerge from them in the future.

A question often asked is: with a huge population of roughly 1.4 billion, why can't China pick 11 people to form a strong team. Some say it's the size of soccer population to blame, as China has only 30,000 registered players, against 6.8 million in Germany and over 1.5 million in Brazil.

"Success in soccer is much related to the population of regular players," said Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, the owner of a former Chinese top-flight soccer club. "Maybe one out of every 10 kids involved in soccer has the caliber to become a professional player."

Now, the top Chinese leadership is determined to do something about it.

"More efforts should be made at the grassroots level to nurture young talents and to ensure the integration of professional clubs, school teams and amateur teams," said the statement by the central reform leading group.

China must overcome its "defective system", which has impeded its progress in soccer, and provide better "institutional guarantees" for its development, added the statement.

Action has been taken already. In November 2014, the Ministry of Education declared soccer a compulsory part of the national curriculum and announced an ambitious plan that includes the installation of pitches and training facilities at 20,000 schools by 2017 with the goal of getting more than 100,000 kids engaged in the game.

And, there are already signs of recovery. Last month, China won three straight group games at the Asian Cup, for the first time in their 11 appearances in the continent's premier event, before going down 2-0 to hosts and eventual champions Australia in the quarter-finals.

China's Internet has been abuzz over the government's enthusiasm and determination to raise the standard of Chinese soccer

"Spring is coming for Chines soccer," said a blogger named "Cloud in the sky". "It may not be long until China qualifies for the World Cup again."

"As the government takes soccer seriously and starts to put in efforts, China will be a world power in the game," wrote one poster on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.