Playing the Post-Fordist Game in/to the Far East: The Footballisation of China, Japan and South...

7/29/2019 Playing the Post-Fordist Game in/to the Far East: The Footballisation of China, Japan and South Korea

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Soccer & Society

Vol. 8, No. 4, Month 2007, pp. 561577

ISSN 14660970 (print)/ISSN 17439590 (online) 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14660970701440899

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Playing the Post-Fordist Game in/to theFar East: The Footballisation of China,Japan and South Korea

Wolfram Manzenreiter and John HorneTaylor and FrancisFSAS_A_243971.sgm10.1080/14660970701440899Soccer and Society1466-0970 (print)/1743-9590(online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis840000002007Assistant Professor [email protected]

This essay explores the global dimensions, national aspirations, and local preconditions of

the rise of football in China, Japan and Korea. The burgeoning popularity of football in the

worlds mostvital growth region (in terms of production and consumption power) indi-

cates both the successful integration of the football periphery into global commodity

markets, as well as changing relations of consumption in areas where football previously

was close to non-existent. Local conditions are deeply tainted by the traditional arrange-

ment of sport and entertainment, the way these are linked to local identity and inter-city

competition. While national ambitions seem to be more to the front throughout East Asia,football as national project stands out in modernizing China and Korea.

Introduction: The future of football is Asia

Despite disappointing performances at the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany by the

two leading national teams, professional football in East Asia has shown considerable

progress in prowess, power and popularity over the past decade.[1] Prior to the turn of

the century, professional leagues were inaugurated in South Korea, Japan and China.

Renowned European club sides have begun scouting the region and hiring young

Asian professional players. FIFA even allowed the World Cup Finals to be played away

in the Far East. When Japan and South Korea hosted the first ever World Cup finals on

Asian soil in 2002, China joined these two traditional East Asian football powerhouses

for her first appearance at the worlds most important single sport event. The unprec-

edented achievements of Asian football teams in the global football arena were only

outplayed by their supporters zealous commitment and colourful display of national

loyalty. The Blue Heaven, which Japans Ultra supporters spotted in those stadiums

in which their national team advanced to the round of the last sixteen, and the Sea of

Wolfram Manzenreiter and John Horne, University of Vienna and University of Edinburgh. Correspondence to:AQ1

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562 W. Manzenreiter and J. Horne

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Red that flooded the streets of Korean cities every time the South Korean team

performed on its way to the semi-finals, demonstrated to the watching world that love

for football has become firmly rooted in East Asian societies. Talking to the Asian

Football Confederation at its 50th anniversary, FIFA president Blatter flattered the

regional representatives of football from the continent with the worlds largest popula-

tion and highest economic growth rates that the future of football is Asia. Yet given

that the modern game of football has been known to the Far East for more than a

century, a first question this essay has to answer concerns the timing: why did interest

in, and the profile of, professional football surge in East Asia at the end of the twentieth

and turn of the twenty-first century? A second set of questions concerns the sustain-

ability of the development: how likely will football turn out to remain as a cultural

property in future Japan, Korea and China?

We assert that the burgeoning popularity of football in the worlds most vital growthregion in terms of production and consumption power indicates both the successful

integration of the East Asian football periphery into global commodity markets, as

well as changing relations of consumption in areas where football previously was close

to non-existent. As a tribute to the working title of the collection, this essay explores the

global dimensions, national aspirations, and local preconditions of the rise of football

in China, Japan and Korea. We will argue that the way football is accommodated at the

different levels is best read as the outcome of a complex chain reaction triggered by the

crisis of the Fordist production system. Hence we will consider both the particularities

of local experiences and the universalism of post-industrial society. Finally we ask ques-

tions about the nature of the dream football has to offer its followers under such

conditions: does the culture of sport provide fans with an autonomous space for expe-riencing empowerment and resistance against the perceived threats of globalization, or

is the dream lived within the rituals and ceremonies of football fandom primarily a

phantasm, produced and distorted by late modernitys libidinal economy?

Football and the Global/economy: Integrating the Asian Periphery

Although the official FIFA emblem of two footballs imprinted with the map of the

world depicts the Far East close to the centre where the two balls intersect, Asia is part

of the periphery on the global football map. The Asian continent is home to a third of

the worlds population, and members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC),

UEFAs counterpart in this region, account for more than 40 per cent of football play-

ers according to FIFAs Big Count.[2] Yet in 2002 only two Asian teams were able toqualify together with the host nations, compared to 13 fixed places for European

nations with only half the number of habitual football players. In qualifying for the

2006 tournament four Asian places were available to the top two teams in each group

and a fifth was available via a play-off with a CONCACAF team. Asias minor position

is further expressed in terms of achievements at previous World Cup finals and the

relative number of football officials and professional players. South Korea, which has a

football population of 0.5 million (including 5,000 female players and 410 profession-

als), enjoyed its fifth consecutive World Cup Finals appearance in Germany in 2006,

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whilst for Japan, which has 3.3 million players (20,000 women and 1,120 profession-

als), it was only her third appearance in the Theatre of the Great. China (7.2 million

players, 40,000 women and 1,748 professionals) made her debut at the 2002 World Cup

finals but failed to qualify for 2006. While these numbers demonstrate that millions of

people nowadays are actively involved in the game China counts as many football

players as Brazil they conceal that a much higher proportion is not playing football

due to East Asias very large population.

A per capita index model that correlates the athletic production of a nation with the

population base of the country depicts a fair idea of the participation rate in East Asia.

The model used is derived from John Rooneys per capita index introduced in his

studyA Geography of American Sport.[3] The application of the general formula I =

(N/P) (A/1), where N is the number of players and P the total population of this

country, and A the number of people per athlete in the overall field, presents nationaldifferences measured against the overall output figure calculated as 1.0. Thus in terms

of continental output, in 2000 Europe produced approximately 2.5 times more foot-

ball players than the world norm, whereas Asia (0.46) spawned slightly less than half of

the norm. In global perspective, the only East Asian country that outperforms the

world norm is Japan with an index of 1.30. In contrast, all the Chinas, including the

Peoples Republic (0.28), Hong Kong (0.18), Macao (0.70), Chinese Taipei (0.19), and

Singapore (0.71), Mongolia (0.23) and the two Koreas (0.55 and 0.25 for North Korea)

are underachievers in the generation of football players. Measured against the conti-

nental average (that is, all Asia = 1.0), outperforming Japan (2.80) is joined by South

Korea (1.19), Macao (1.51) and Singapore (1.53), as the four countries in East Asia

that exceed the continental average; all others are well below it.[4]The data indicate that Asia lags behind the FIFA core areas, Europe and South

America, not only in terms of numbers of clubs and players, but in most other dimen-

sions, including the performance of national teams, and we know that attendances at

live games and the size of television audiences, and consequently economic activity

and income generated by the game, also fall below the levels seen in most of the foot-

ball centres. In our earlier writings[5] we related the peripheral position of football in

East Asia to the history of the world and its geopolitical structuration over the past

century, and here we are going to extend our argument by placing the political notion

of the spread of Western culture into the context of capitalist expansion. Members of

the military forces and commercial communities that safeguarded, administered and

financed the British Empire first introduced football to the region in the late nine-

teenth century. The formation of the first Asian football associations took place intwo of Britains colonies Singapore, where the game was a popular way of socializing

among rival business houses, and India, where the game proved a popular alternative

to cricket with the infantry regiments of the occupying forces.[6] In Japan, it was

Lieutenant Archibald L. Douglas of the Imperial British Royal Navy, who taught the

rules of the game, as well as the essentials of naval warfare, to his students at the later

naval academy in Tsukiji in 1873.[7] In the 1880s, sailors introduced the game to the

Korean cities of Incheon and Seoul.[8] In Hong Kong, the British residents organized

football matches from the 1890s.[9] The period of introduction concurred with the



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final chapter of European colonialism and the growing US American influence in the

Pacific. Missionaries and teachers from Europe and the USA were the most important

agents brokering the rules, techniques and values of modern sports to their mostly

middle and upper class students at the modernising educational institutions. The

national branches of the YMCA, particularly in Korea and China,[10] were also key

players providing infrastructure, guidance and administrative know-how to the estab-

lishment of amateur sport organizations. Hence in these countries football was in

keen competition with spectator sports of American origin, most notably baseball,

but also basketball, hockey and other team sports. Even after the Second World War,

when defeated Imperial Japan democratised, its former colony Korea was liberated,

and mainland China fell under Communist rule, football remained in the shadows of

the overwhelming popular support for baseball and other sports. Only recently has it

advanced to the position of vying for the first rank.We suggest that the rising status of football in Asia is inextricably linked to the

commercialization of the game, which itself is a consequence of the crisis of the Fordist

production system and subsequent power shifts within the global economy. Harvey

and others have cogently analysed how a crisis of over-accumulation hampered the

profitability of US manufacturers in the 1960s.[11] Similarly, Arrighi explained the

dawn of neo-liberalism in light of Marxs general observation of the alternation of

epochs of material expansion with phases of financial expansion. Overproduction

resulted in massive lay-offs and sinking demands, thereby leading to shrinking

company profits and government revenues. The squeeze of profits caused capitalist

organizations to divert their cash flow from production and trade to new investment

forms, most notably to hoarding, borrowing, lending and speculating in financialmarkets, while the dominant political actors set up the regulatory framework that

enabled cross border transactions, the integration of regional economies and the

unravelling of welfare state mechanisms.[12] The post-Fordist regime of flexible accu-

mulation is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new

ways of providing financial services, new markets, and, above all, greatly intensified

rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation.[13] Technological

change in communication infrastructures and the deregulation of national media

markets spurred the concentration of capital ownership and control over the cultural

industries, which is a central feature of the global cultural economy.

The connection between Asian football and the global consumer industry is much

older, since Japanese capital, inter-corporate networks and marketing know-how has

been at centre stage of the commercialization of world sport in the past 20 years.Japans largest advertisement agency Dentsu, holding a 49 per cent partnership in ISL

(International Sports Culture and Leisure Management Service), Horst Dasslers sport

marketing arm, and the incorporated head and heart of world sport marketing, was

chiefly involved in developing the idea of selling exclusivity of marketing rights to a

limited number of partners, and it helped FIFA and later the International Olympic

Committee in selecting their appropriate commercial partners. Japanese corporations,

JVC, Canon and Fuji Film, for example, each paid US$30 million in France in 1998 to

be FIFAs corporate partners with all rights to use the FIFA emblems. In 2002, Canon



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declined the option of renewing their contract, but with Fuji Xerox refilling the slot of

office equipment supplier, and NTT and Toshiba entering the board, five out of 15 of

the main sponsors of world footballs greatest event were Japanese. In 2002, the Korean

car maker Hyundai, part of the Hyundai chaebol, whose president has also been head

of the Korean Football Association and FIFA Vice president, entered the FIFA partner-

ship programme. Together with Coca Cola and Gillette, both JVC and Fuji Film have

been FIFAs Official Partners since corporate sponsorship entered world football two

decades ago.[14] Coca Cola also sponsored football tournaments in China as early as

1982, and its main rival Pepsi Cola followed Philip Morris Tobacco as the main sponsor

of Chinas professional football league from 1998 to 2003. Despite the troubles related

to match-fixing and corruption, foreign brands have continued to act as title sponsors

of the Chinese Super League although now coming from Europe, such as Siemens

Mobile (in 2004) and the English IP telecom vendor iPhox (in 2006).Shifting the focus from saturated football markets towards new territories and

consumer segments corresponded with the expansionary urge of capitalism. For the

consumer industry, the transnational television broadcast of football opened up access

to giant consumer markets, providing the football clubs with previously unknown

amounts of income from sponsorship revenues and television rights. Awarding the

2002 World Cup finals to Asia clearly served the strategic interest of football and the

global aspirations of its corporate associates aiming at a region that within the next five

years, [] will be home to the second and third most powerful economies in the

world.[15] Already in 1990 half of the estimated total television audience generated by

the FIFA World Cup in Italy had been watching from Asia.[16] For transnational

media corporations such as Murdochs News Corporation, the Disney sport channelESPN or the now defunct KirchMedia imperium, football has not only proven to be a

battering ram into new emerging media markets, but also to be a valuable tool for

more comprehensive commercial strategies of consolidation and horizontal integra-

tion.[17] Similarly in Japan, where SkyPerfecTV! competed with other broadcasters

seeking to be in at the launch of digital television, the broadcaster secured exclusive

coverage of the entire 2002 World Cup Finals for probably no less than 12 billion yen

(approximately 100 million Euro). The largest sum ever for a single sport event was just

an interim step in the networks attempt to enlarge its subscriber base by sport

programming: between the previous two World Cups (19982002) about 2.5 million

new subscribers joined SkyPerfecTV! which subsequently turned profitable in 2004

and passed the 4 million subscriber mark in 2005.[18]

During the 2002 World Cup, viewing rates in Asia skyrocketed due to the closegeographic proximity and the participation of all three football powerhouses from

the Far East. The interest inside of the 2002 host countries was immense: more than

14 million people, or 56 per cent of the potential audience in South Korea, tuned in to

watch the first game of their national team against Poland. In Japan, 66.1 per cent of

the television audience watched Japans 1-0 victory over Russia, thereby setting a

Japanese record for a soccer match and the second highest for any sports event.

According to a global comparison by Nielsen Media research, Thailand took the top

spot among countries with a combined total of 269 million World Cup viewers for the



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entire 2002 tournament, narrowly beating out South Korea (266 million viewers) and

China (263 million viewers) for the largest total audience for all World Cup matches in

a single country.[19]

Player and Manager Migration

Foreign capital and global media awareness were not the only external contributions to

the rising popularity of football. South American talent as well as European football

expertise and American marketing intelligence helped to inaugurate professional foot-

ball leagues in Japan and China in the 1990s. The American influence was most clearly

seen in the initial phase, the packaging strategy in marketing and the rudimentary fran-

chise system that first invited clubs to join the league and protected them from relega-

tion during the first seasons. In terms of football assistance, well known, albeitsometimes rather aged, football icons such as Gary Lineker, Zico and briefly even Paul

Gascoigne were hired to strengthen the teams and to improve the quality of the game.

Korea had experienced professionalization already a decade earlier, yet since the ban of

foreign players was lifted in 1984, the K-League also relied heavily on foreign players

and coaches. The unrivalled high salary levels of Japanese club sides attracted by far the

largest number of so-called mercenaries, mostly from South America. Quite a signif-

icant proportion of football migrants to East Asia were also employed from Eastern

Europe.[20] More recently China and Japan have allowed each club to list three

foreigners, while Korean clubs could hire up to seven foreigners. Hence, around 150

foreigners are playing for clubs in the East Asian leagues. In comparison, only a limited

number of East Asian players have made their debut in overseas leagues. Compared tothe 250 Brazilians and nearly 500 foreign players that performed in the J.League during

its first decade, only about 100 Japanese footballers in total had gone abroad since the

early 1970s.[21]

Only a minority of the East Asian players abroad have made their way into the regu-

lar line-up of European clubs. Nakata Hidetoshi, Japans superstar of the 1998 World

Cup, was not the first football migrant, but his assignment to Serie A club Perugia

signalled the start of a breakthrough into new foreign football markets for the

European football business. Generating systematic income from buying East Asian

players is nowadays a common business plan, as the European managers count on the

growing interest in the club, spurred by contracting local players, and new opportuni-

ties for club merchandise sales, television deals and sponsorships. Since interest in

television football from abroad and competition between broadcasting corporationsincreased, the Japanese television audience can enjoy the largest choice of foreign foot-

ball leagues from which to select. SkyPerfecTV! has successfully enlarged its subscriber

base by broadcasting matches from Italys Serie A since 1998. When Feyernoord

(Rotterdam) hired Ono Shinji in 2001, the broadcaster secured the Japanese broadcast-

ing rights for the Netherlands; after the World Cup 2002 the Belgian league was added

to the schedules due to Suzuki Takayuki joining Racing Genk. All Everton FC matches

were shown in China after Chinas player of the year in 2002, Lin Tie, came on loan to

the club, who also managed to secure a million-pound deal for shirt advertising with



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Chinese mobile telephone manufacturer Kejian. Similarly, Feyernoord acquired spon-

sorship from Japans leading mobile telecommunication company NTT DoCoMo,

while the Japanese industrial equipment manufacturer Nitto supported Racing Genk.

The attraction of the East Asian market has also drawn the attention of Europes big

clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid. Instead of hiring players alone, they

regularly go on promotional tours through the region and run special merchandising

shops. Real Madrid shirt sales in Japan alone were reported to have covered about

25 per cent of the transfer fee following David Beckhams move to the Spanish club and

the following promotional tour. The combined interest in clubs with players from East

Asia and those with global marketing potential has also enabled UEFA to treble its

revenues from Champions League TV revenues.

Football and the Nation: Football as National Project

Television football nowadays is both an economic commodity and a vehicle for the

diffusion of meaningful discourses about identity and the nation. Operating within the

global flow of cultural signs and meanings promoted by television, football contributes

to the reproduction and development of the contemporary trans-cultural sphere, or

mediascapes, which provide their border-crossing audiences with large and complex

repertoires of images and narratives, out of which scripts can be formed of imagined

lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places.[22] Without this

dimension of globalization, football would never have acquired the influential position

it currently occupies. The profits, however, are unevenly distributed, since the media

tend to divert attention from local football to the interregional competitions or even tothe more glamorous European leagues.

Football in Asia is still struggling with problems from the past and the demands of

adjusting to market principles. The strong role of the state is one common notion that

characterizes the recent past of professional football in East Asia, although the degree

of state intervention differs considerably. Forging football as national project has led to

three phenomena commonly observed in China, Japan and Korea: first, interest in the

national team is generally higher than in domestic club football; second, the marketi-

sation of football remains underdeveloped and strengthens the traditional importance

of corporate football; third, while womens football is much more successful than

mens football in international comparison, the mens game receives comparatively

more in terms of public support, popular interest, broadcasting time and sponsorship

income.The professionalization of football has relied upon a number of social and economic

transformations that have heightened the attraction of the sport both for investors as

well as for audiences. While the respective framework was set by the Japanese state

much earlier than the actual instalment of the J.League, Korea and China have experi-

enced their respective development of capitalist market structures, purchasing power,

consumer consciousness and inert democratization only since the 1980s. Yet even

before the first professional league was founded in Korea in 1983, football was played

at a semi-professional level throughout the entire region. As in most other Asian



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countries, club ownership was mainly executed by large corporations, regional govern-

ments or the army. These corporate teams played like professional ones, as the players,

who were all regular employees of their respective organizations, in reality played foot-

ball exclusively. More or less all of the clubs that later turned professional were

recruited from these former corporate amateur teams. In Korea and China, official

team names nowadays openly pronounce the relation to corporate sponsorship. In

China the volatility of sponsorship has constantly forced clubs to change those parts of

their names that identify corporate support. In the South Korean K-League Jeonbuk

Hyundai Motors and Suwon Samsung Blue Wings clearly express first the regional

affiliation to Jeonbuk and Suwon followed by their corporate sponsor, which is not

necessarily identical with the sponsor of the previous season or the original owner

company. The relationship with the company is even more apparent in the K2 League,

established in 2003. In the 2006 season for example Busan Transportation Corpora-tion, Goyang Kookmin Bank and Ulsan Mipo Dockyard all had to contend with a visit

from and to Daejeon Hydro and Nuclear Power.[23]

In contrast, J.League clubs in Japan were forced to suppress their main sponsors

name from the beginning in 1993. Hence Nagoya Grampus Eight or Urawa Reds

signify the home location, while the important role of their main sponsors Toyota and

Mitsubishi is a public secret. The well-established relations between football teams and

their former owner companies survived even the first slump years of the J.League.

Decreasing revenues from the turnstile, merchandising sales and other revenues were

countered by belt-tightening and bailout programmes from the mother companies,

who also continued to rent out their employees for back office administration until the

need for professional club management finally started to find a response.[24]Compared to European football, the dependence on sponsorship revenue in

East Asian football is very high, particularly due to the smaller share of TV income.

Broadcasting revenues remain underdeveloped due to the harsh competition with

other spectator sports, the foreign leagues and the centralized bargaining system of the

leagues, which inhibits the marketing power of the more successful clubs. While the

appearance of the national team on the TV screen regularly produces record audiences,

matches of the domestic leagues yield only moderate or even despairing audience

ratings. The scope of live audiences also reflects the difference in collective interest. For

example, an average K-League match attracts less than 10,000 spectators per stadium,

while hundreds of thousands of Koreans followed the national team during the World

Cup, either in the arenas or at one of about 2,000 makeshift large screens throughout

the country. Public viewing was actively promoted by national and municipal govern-ments who set up the screens and paid the broadcasting fees to FIFA. In Japan and

China especially, the economic costs of travelling and the huge geographic distances

severely limit the potential for fans travelling with their team. Live audiences differ

considerably according to the popularity of a team, ranging from records in both coun-

tries of more than 50,000 to merely a 1,000 (in China) or up to 6,000 spectators. Over

the season, match averages in the J.League come close to 20,000, as was the former

Division A standard in China. Audiences decrease the longer a season lasts. While the

Chinese downward trend may be explained on the basis of fans feeling cheated by



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bribed referees or players (the so-called black whistle incidents), the Japanese atten-

dance curve probably drops due to increasing competition with alternative sports

events at the end of the season.[25]

Prior to the inauguration of professional leagues, football in East Asia was governed

by a highly centralized and bureaucratized sport administration, notwithstanding

the political system. In democratic Japan, the Japan Football Association, formally an

independent organization, relied heavily on government subsidies and closely

followed the directives it received from the ministry in charge of sport affairs. In

communist China, football has been part of a state-organized, government-funded

and centrally controlled Soviet-type sport system, and in authoritarian Korea, the

government adopted a corporatist administrative system, where authority over foot-

ball was shared by the political, business and football elites. As governments and their

agents are likely to adopt a favourable policy towards football when there is a need forthe political elite to use it for mass support, in all instances the national team received

preferred treatment. As the results on the international level hardly corresponded with

the efforts, governmental organizations either induced or at least supported the way

towards professionalization. In 1992, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) selected

22 youth players to play in Brazil for five years, hired foreign coaches and developed a

Ten-Year-Plan to be among the top four teams in 2002.[26] The technocrats of the

J.League closely linked the development of football in Japan to three national objec-

tives: of strengthening the national team, particularly in comparison to the arch rival

Korea, improving the ability standard of Japanese football squads, and getting the

World Cup finals to Japan. As FIFA demands the close cooperation between World

Cup organizers and governments of the host countries, direct state intervention, forexample in pumping billions of dollars into the bidding campaign, facility construc-

tion and public services for the smooth operation of the games, was unavoidable in

Japan as well as in Korea. In this regard, both governments were quite successful.

Hosting half the 2002 World Cup on domestic soil enabled both of them to welcome,

and in turn be embraced by, the entire football world. In post-authoritarian Korea,

the Korean Football Association (KFA) continues to act as an agent of government in

the management of government programmes from which in exchange it receives

considerable administrative and revenue support. Therefore, the KFA is usually

headed by influential figures from the world of politics or business.[27] Furthermore,

the government subsidizes the national team by direct payments and diverse financial

incentives for the players, who, for example, each received a reported sum of

US$330,000 after finishing fourth in the 2002 finals. Football players are exemptedfrom the ordinary duty of military service, and international achievements bring in

points towards entitlement to a national pension.

A similar state of government involvement characterizes China, where football

struggled to develop even after the government followed the Soviet Unions example of

turning to the international sport arena as a key instrument for promoting national

pride and identity. Sport related investments by the Chinese state that showed a 200 per

cent increase over the 1980s, failed to leave positive marks in the field of football.

Determined to succeed, even if that meant painful reforms and compromises, the



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Chinese governments own sport commission propelled the establishment of a

professional league. The commercial knowledge was bought from the International

Marketing Group (IMG), a world leader in sport promotion, who also sourced spon-

sors for the leagues.[28] Yet after ten years of professionalization, football remains

stuck between the market forces that control the clubs, and government that controls

the game. Ongoing scandals gave the CFA few reasons to celebrate its eightieth anni-

versary in 2004. Refereeing controversies, player boycotts, walk-offs from the pitch

halfway through the game, together with rumours of match fixing and corruption have

continued to tax the most ardent supporters patience. At the outset of the 2005 season,

the previous main league sponsor Siemens withdrew its support due to fading business

appeal, caused by the Black whistle scandals and falling attendances. Defeat by Japan

in the Asian Cup final in 2004 and elimination from qualification for Germany 2006

only added insult to injury.

Same Game, Different Sex, Different Game?

Results of state intervention were more noteworthy in Chinese womens football:

seven Asian championships, a World Cup, three champion titles at the Asian Games,

FIFA vice world champion in 1996 and many more records make Chinas female

footballers Number One in the region. But international success does not easily

translate into popularity at home where the lack of national or regional football

programmes for state schools, that in general do not educate girls in football, as well as

the scarcity of football resources for female youth are major problems hampering the

progress of womens football. About ten officially recognized girls football schools donot receive public funding but have to rely on private sponsorship and parental

contributions (for example, approximately500 per year, or 40 per cent of an average

annual salary, is charged by the Shengyang football school). Hence more than 1,000

boys, but only 30 girls, are enrolled at the football school in Qinghuangdao, the

biggest of its kind.[29]

Looking at Japans junior and senior high schools where football has come to be the

most popular sport of the students, only 20 girls teams were counted in 1997, compared

with a total of 7,000 boys clubs. These numbers contrast with the fact that Japan was

the first country in the East Asian region with a womens football league. The league,

made up of company and university teams, started out with two regional divisions

(western and eastern Japan) in the mid-1970s. In the midst of the expansion of regis-

tered teams and players, the Japanese Womens Soccer League started up in 1989 withthe financial support of several large companies. Players as well as managers were

corporate amateurs. By 1994, it was renamed the L-League, with more company-based

teams joining the league. Despite the cut backs in subsidies for sport-related and other

social expenses during the recessive lost decade of the 1990s, the L-League managed

to expand further to 13 teams in 2003. As the first of its kind worldwide, the L-League

managed to draw foreign players to Japan just as the J.League did. It also exported its

own football talents, for example Sawa Homare, to the WUSA, Americas womens

soccer league. Although the L-League has not been a commercial success matches



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rarely attracted more than 1,000 spectators, with averages hovering around approxi-

mately 400 spectators per game, which were usually free of charge the womens

national team made it to all the World Cups, qualified for the Olympic Games in Atlanta

(1996), finished the Asian Games of 1990 and 1995 in second place and came third in

1998.[30]

In regional perspective, the development of womens football in South Korea has

lagged behind developments in the other two countries. College and university

students were the first teams that competed against each other in the Queens Cup

launched in 1993. Korea could even obtain respectable fourth places at the 1995 and

2001 Asian Cups. When the 1999 Womens World Cup sparked interest worldwide, the

Korean ministry in charge of sports added womens football to the programme of the

Annual National Sports Event (1999), and sponsored the foundation of new teams and

tournaments for girls high school teams, university teams and company teams. Topromote womens football, the Womens Football Association was established in 2001

as an independent organization in association with the KFA. Yet the KFA homepage

records only 1,552 female players in no more than 75 teams that cover the entire spec-

trum between elementary school (465 players/22 teams), middle (504/24) schools, high

school (339/17), university (179/7) and company teams (65/3). Despite all initiatives,

by the end of 2003 only three semi-professional womens teams, which are owned and

run by corporations, competed with student and amateur teams in the domestic Korea

Womens Football League.[31]

Womens football in East Asia has clearly shown some advances, yet in no way that

it might either be comparable to the mens game or in line with the principle of gender

equality. The apparent contradiction, arising from the low status of womens footballand the success on the international pitch, is partially explained by the observation that

football is, much more than any other sport, the game in which the nation-state

displays itself to an international audience. Yet this is primarily true for the mens

game, while the womens teams are compelled to make ends meet without balanced

media representation and adequate support from the national and international foot-

ball organizations. Although the male appropriation of football in Asia is not so deeply

rooted in history and collective memories as in Europe, it nevertheless seems that also

on East Asian fields it is not a womans place to represent the nation.

Football and the City: Local Identity and Interregional Competition

As an alternative to the mass mobilization hypothesis, strong state involvement in sporthas been explained with reference to the cultural notion of saving face, or reputation.

Additionally, a sport like football may acquire an important symbolic role in the post-

colonial relationship between formerly dominant and dominated countries. This may

be the case for the encounters between Japan and its former colonial victims, but it does

not fully explain why football on the international level receives overall preferred treat-

ment by the state. Given that the picture differs throughout the region, we argue that

these interregional variations are related to different degrees of the nation state in crisis.

Whereas the strong state in China commands resources to protect and to promote



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national interests, Japan and Korea have both seen how the devastating impact of

neoliberal globalization on their national economies dwarfed central state power. As a

consequence, city governments have started increasing competition for private invest-

ment into the local infrastructure and amenity values in order to attract business inves-

tors, jobs, and residents for the ultimate purpose of generating new streams of revenue.

Investments into sport facilities and sport events captured a central position in the

consumption-based economic development politics of late capitalist society, because a

modern sports infrastructure was considered to enhance the quality of life of the local

inhabitants. Staging sports events of a major scale, or being the hometown to a team

competing in one of the professional leagues, was expected to provide sources of

regional pride, thereby fostering local patriotism and bridging the gap between old

residents and newcomers.

This pattern has been replicated in Japan, where the introduction of professionalfootball has been utilized as a prime mover for regional development. While the

J.League demanded from its member teams the establishment of links to the local

hometown, thereby eliciting local fan support as well as public funding for the football

infrastructure, municipal governments in the Japanese peripheries were drawn into

these public-private partnerships by the prospect of economic restructuring policies

and the fostering of local identities as a counter-weapon against urban concentration

and rural migration.[32] Hence none of the ten founder clubs of the J.League were

based in the capital of Tokyo, though most have been located in the large population

centres of central Honshu, the main island of the Japanese archipelago. In 2006, the

J.League consisted of 18 teams in the first division and thirteen in the second division,

and the regional spread of hometowns covers all the major islands and some peripheralregions. Except for some minor violations Tokyo itself is nowadays hosting two first

division teams the hometown principle seems to have taken root. Yet most of the first

division clubs, including the more successful teams, are still located in the area with the

highest population density and economic power.

In Korea, too, the government has for some time been investing public money in the

construction of municipal sport facilities to provide regional cities with revenue

support.[33] Over the past 20 years, the K-League has expanded from its original five

to currently 14 teams. Because of the high dependency on main sponsors, clubs have

been traditionally associated with the effective owner company rather than with the

home city. As the K-League adopted the American franchise model, teams were occa-

sionally relocated in order to avoid over-concentration in the area around the capital

of Seoul and to maximize monopolist revenues in their own reference space. Yet sincethe late 1990s, K-League clubs have been gradually detaching from the large companies

to integrate more deeply into their cities. The construction of Koreas ten World Cup

stadiums that were largely built at government expense corresponded with the

geographical hierarchy of Korean cities as well as the future needs of the K-League.

Cities with the largest population size were equipped with the football facilities, but

since only five were already home to a professional team, the K-League oversaw the

establishment of two new teams in 2003 and the relocation of Anyang LG Cheetahs to

become the capital citys FC Seoul in 2004.[34]



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Largely due to the influence of the centralized sport system, intercity competition in

China has not featured the same promotional effects as in the liberal market economies

of Japan and Korea. Gains in autonomy from the former national sport bureaucracy

were offset by the increasing dependency from non-governmental funding and the

centralized redistribution structure of the league. Even after the recent league reform

that eliminated the former divisions A and B and brought the size of the new China

Super League to 12 (and from 2005 to 14) teams, most of the income brought in by TV

broadcast sales and league sponsorship is kept by the CFA. The remaining funds that

are channelled to the clubs according to their performance over the season cannot

cover expenses but have a negative impact enhancing the potential for bribery and

corruption. Since club revenues come mainly from selling tickets and sportswear

advertising, the 50 per cent reduction in average crowd figures over the first year of the

China Super League put club finances under additional pressure. Hence football inChina is partly subjected to market forces, but the administrative power embedded in

the CFA and its associated sport industry watchdog, does not want market forces to

dominate, as these might dampen efforts to mobilize sports resources for national

success.

Finally, the Dream: Utopia or Phantasm?

Throughout this essay we have argued that the progress of football in East Asia has been

closely interwoven with the expansionary drive of global capital, nationalist ambitions

and domestic policies. Despite some unstable preconditions, all the evidence supports

our hypothesis that football has come to stay and will actually expand throughout theregion with the worlds highest economic growth dynamics. The integration of East

Asia into the global football system enforced putting the way football is nationally orga-

nized under central control, and the outcome of the subjugation under FIFA rules

pleased the governing body of world football very much. Indicative of the paternalistic,

and even orientalistic, attitude the global centre of world football has held towards the

East Asian periphery is the way the 2002 World Cup was marked as a World Cup of

Smiles by FIFA President Blatter for the posterity of history.[35] Due to the mediati-

zation of sport and the sportification of the media, globalization provides football

supporters in East Asia with all the icons, brand names and products of the global

cultural economy. This does not necessarily mean a uniformization of culture, since

the globalisation of culture is not the same as its homogenisation, but globalisation

involves the use of a variety of instruments of homogenisation.[36] The transforma-tion of football as a non-market field into a market seems to be such an instrument, and

as we have argued in our previous work, the footballisation of East Asia is a represen-

tative case for this transformational process.

The socio-economic changes giving rise to entrepreneurial initiatives, cultural and

service markets, leisure industries and consumer capitalism, provided the foundations

on which football could be priced and sold as a commodity. The increasing demateri-

alization of the commodity form, as well as the concomitant growth of experiential

commodities, reflect a general economic move to make the various opportunities and



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moments of consumption more flexible and fluid.[37] Ultimately, the fans capability

and willingness to spend on football and those consumer products advertised through

the game have provided the economic base for professional football. Finally, we have

noted the role of the state underwriting the risks of capital moving into the fields, albeit

to very different degrees.[38] Without these pillars, professional football would not

have gone East and would not have reached the significance for many of those living in

the region. Yet the reasons why consumers are attracted by the same products world-

wide remain manifold, surpassing the political economy of football and the pure appeal

of the game. In addition, reducing the role of spectators to pure consumers would do

injustice to the complexity of motives and objectives that draw people into football

support.

Therefore we finally want to address the question whether the culture of football

provides fans with the dream, a utopian moment for experiencing empowerment andresistance against the perceived threats of globalization. Countering the cultural pessi-

mist notion of the fan as duped consumer, it has often been argued that the appeal of

football in late modernity is partly based on its ability to create communities for atom-

ised subjects living in urbanized, anonymous society, and partly on the individuals

increased desire for a sense of continuity and local roots as a response to globalization.

Certainly there is no point in denying that football is a meaningful resource for provid-

ing points of reference and identification, as well as a sense of belonging and social inte-

gration. As ethnographic research into fan culture at Japanese football matches has

revealed,[39] but also the David Beckham fad and the apparent plasticity of Japanese

loyalties during the 2002 World Cup Japanese men and women face-painted and

dressed themselves in support of virtually all of the teams competing in Japan, but espe-cially Japan, Brazil and England, as if fan identity could be acquired by the purchase of

the correct shirt the culture of sport provides people in Japan with distinctive cultural

resources for reflecting upon identity and enacting agency, and with regard to the

global festival of the World Cup, with resources for constructing a meaningful social

life in relation to a changing societal environment that has the potential to destabilise

and threaten these things.[40] Furthermore, our research on football communities in

Japan offers ample evidence of the way football is connected to community building,

either by way of bottom up expansion of local commitment or top down enlisting of

government support.[41] We expect that in each of the three societies under the spot-

light responses to the challenges of globalization have been diverse, as indigenization,

re-invention of tradition and creolisation have all taken place in football in various

forms.[42]Particularly with regard to the former kind of football communities, we support the

editors argument that the football experience carries a utopian moment that can

hardly be experienced in other societal realities. Yet given that the framework in which

football is experienced remains so heavily shaped and determined by the same

economic forces that characterize the globalized economy, we doubt that football can

be better than the society where it is embedded; certainly it is no better than the econ-

omy by which it is sustained. Given that the rise of the football commodity has been

propelled by the desire of capital for profit and desire of the consumer for pleasure, we



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conclude that the dream lived within the rituals and ceremonies of football fandom

cannot be anything other than an illusion, a self-collusive infatuation, of disassociated

individuals living in late modern society.

Notes

[1] Whilst Japan was the first team to qualify for the 2006 World Cup alongside the hosts

Germany, they only managed a goalless draw and two defeats in the group stage and finished

bottom of their group. (South) Korea won one, drew one and lost one game but still failed to

progress to the Last 16. China did not qualify, having been eliminated by Kuwait.

[2] In what is colloquially known as The Big Count, FIFA enquired among all 204 member

national associations. Results have been published online at http://access.fifa.com/infoplus/

IP-199_01E_big-count.pdf.

[3] Rooney,A Geography of American Sports.[4] Cf. Manzenreiter, Her Place in the House of Football, 199202, also regarding the

gendered nature of East Asian football participation.

[5] Manzenreiter and Horne, Global Governance in World Sport, 6.

[6] Butler,Asian Football Report 2001, 3.

[7] Horne and Bleakley, Football Development in Japan, 90.

[8] Lee, Football Development in Korea, 76.

[9] Hong and Tan, Sport in China, 196.

[10] De Ceuster, Wholesome Education and Sound Leisure; Speak, China in the Modern World,

789.

[11] Harvey, The Conditions of Postmodernity, 14172.

[12] Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, 46.

[13] Harvey, The Conditions of Postmodernity, 147.

[14] Manzenreiter and Horne, Global Governance in World Sport; Horne and Manzenreiter,

The World Cup and Television Football.[15] Guardian, 4 December 2003, 25.

[16] Miller et al., Globalization and Sport, 64.

[17] Horne and Manzenreiter, The World Cup and Television Football; Miller et al., Globalization

and Sport.

[18] SkyPerfecTV! investor relations; The Japan Times, 24 May 2002.

[19] Data according to Nielsen Media Research and FIFA Marketing (executive summaries are

available online at http://www.nielsenmedia.com/newsreleases/2002/WorldCup_Final.htm

and www.fifa.com/en/marketing/newmedia/index/0,3509,10,00.html).

[20] Butler,Asian Football Report 2001, 3.

[21] Horne and Takahashi, Japanese Football Players and the Sport Talent Migration.

[22] Appadurai, Difference and Disjuncture in the Global Cultural Economy, 299.

[23] On Korea, see Lee, Football Development in Korea; see also the K-League homepage http://

www.rokfootball.com/k2league.html.[24] Horne and Bleakley, Football development in Japan; Manzenreiter, Japanese Football and

World Sports.

[25] Attendance numbers can be checked at the websites of national football leagues and in national

newspapers. For Japan, see www.j-league.or.jp; for South Korea, see www.kleaguei.com, and

for China Super League, see www.sinosoc.com.

[26] Dong and Mangan, Football in the New China, 91.

[27] Chung, Government Involvement in Football in Korea, 127.

[28] Jones, The Emergence of Professional Sport.

[29] Hong, The Iron Roses of China, 8; see also Manzenreiter, Her Place in the House of

Football.

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[30] Manzenreiter, Her Place in the House of Football.

[31] Numbers according to the Korea Football Association; see also Manzenreiter, Her Place inthe House of Football.

[32] Manzenreiter, Japanese Football and World Sports.

[33] Chung, Government Involvement in Football in Korea, 123.

[34] Ravenel and Durand, Strategies for Locating Professional Sports Leagues, 2935.

[35] On another occasion, he generously acknowledged that China was the birthplace of the beau-

tiful game, a claim made by historians on the basis of historic accounts oftsuchu, dating back

to the Qin dynasty more than two thousands years ago.

[36] Appadurai, Difference and Disjuncture, 307.

[37] Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn, 1357.

[38] Horne and Manzenreiter, Football, Culture, Globalization, 7.

[39] Cf. Shimizu, Sapota Sono Hyosho to Kioku; Shimizu, Football, Nationalism and Celebrity

Culture.

[40] Roche,Mega Events and Modernity, 225.[41] Horne and Manzenreiter, Football,Komyuniti and the Japanese Ideological Soccer Apparatus.

[42] In the case of professional football in Japan, for example, indigenization involved the special

allowance by FIFA at the beginning of the J.League which meant that the result of matches was

resolved by golden goals, tradition (of the most popular team sport in Japan, baseball) was

re-invented by the division of the J.League season into two halves, with a play-off match to

resolve the final overall champion team, and creolisation occurred through the explicit draw-

ing upon of both North American and European models of professional sport in the construc-

tion of the organizational framework of the J.League. For some theoretical considerations of

such processes, see Horne and Manzenreiter, Football, Culture, Globalization.

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