A former head of China’s sports administration told China.org.cn on Thursday in Beijing that the whole current Chinese soccer system is problematic and that pure marketization of the industry alone can't revive the sport.

Duan Shijie, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, answers questions during a panel discussion intermission in Beijing on March 6, 2015. [China.org.cn]

Duan Shijie, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the former deputy director of the General Administration of Sport, said there are three major problems in the Chinese soccer industry.

"Cannikin’s Law tells us that the amount of water a bucket can contain is determined by the length of its shortest board rather than its tallest board," Duan said, "and the shortest board for China's soccer industry is its system management. The second shortest is the players' work ethic. The third is education - we have 300 million teenagers, but how many children are there who happily play soccer once or twice a week? They have so much studying to do at their desks, and many schools don't even have soccer fields."

Duan is attending the third session of the 12th National Committee of the CPPCC, the country's top political advisory body. A total of 2,153 members of the CPPCC National Committee will discuss major issues concerning the country's development during the annual session, which runs through March 13.

China's central reform group, chaired by President Xi Jinping, who is a big soccer fan, passed a plan on Feb. 27 to revive soccer, a sport that has for years been a source of national embarrassment. According to a statement issued after a meeting of the central reform leading group, China must overcome the "defective system" that has impeded the development of the game by providing better "institutional guarantees" for its progress.

"In 1992, China's soccer industry was reformed for the first time and went the professional road, building up the China Football Association and setting up professional soccer clubs, which meant totally pushing the soccer industry into pure marketization," Duan said. "But China's soccer didn't rise up. Instead, it has been on a downturn ever since."

Despite China’s overwhelming performance at the Olympic Games and other world sport events, the country has only ever qualified for the World Cup once, in 2002, when the team was eliminated in the group stage without scoring a single goal. Its most recent humiliating performance was a 5-1 loss to Thailand's under-23 team in 2013.

"We must develop and revitalize soccer to ensure our status as a strong nation of sports," the central reform leading group statement read. "It is the desperate desire of the people as well."

"Soccer is a human spiritual and cultural product, not a material product. We can set standards for material products, but sports are played by human beings, who have their own culture, spirit, limits and pursuit of profit," Duan said. He pointed out that some sports which have not been reformed and were not marketized have soared high in international games under the guidance of the national system.

"China's soccer system has many problems, and it was not mature enough to be marketized in 1992," Duan explained. "You may see other countries have success in opening their sports industry to the market, but China is different. Other countries have mature laws and regulations, mature systems, mature markets and high work ethics. China doesn't have such good conditions."

Duan asserted that a mature market will guarantee that players, referees, coaches and even fans do their jobs well, but in China, many soccer players earn big money without trying hard to train and challenge themselves. "Because they are now in clubs, which are actually enterprises, they are not in a national system anymore, and they feel different. They may feel deeply embarrassed at the courtyard of the General Administration of Sport because they don't have good standing in the world, but now they have big egos because the bosses of the clubs see them and treat them like they are big stars. Without pressure and restraint, where can they find the urgency and impetus they need?"

The reserve of young soccer talents don't have enough training, and clubs only have eyes on first-tier players, paying them big salaries and ignoring second- and third-tier players. Many first-tier players with big salaries grow egotistical and lazy as a result, and they only think about going to other clubs offering them higher salaries. "This is a vicious cycle – it is a bad result due to bad training and a poor education system," Duan added.

In the past few months, a high-level government working group has been set up to tackle the problem. The Ministry of Education declared soccer a compulsory part of the national physical education curriculum last November. About 20,000 soccer schools are to open by 2017, with the goal of producing more than 100,000 players. Study abroad programs for soccer training have also been rolled out.

The former sports head said the Chinese market environment doesn't follow development rules. "You have to make your best effort to get a good world ranking, but, now Chinese clubs are hiring many foreign players and coaches to help. Many Chinese players then become bench players and don’t have enough chances to develop their skills. But when our national team plays in international matches, the foreign players can't help anymore, and then China's national team doesn’t get good results."

Duan was also worried about the players' training and team collaboration, as well as the quality of the referees and whether the investors are rational. He said that partial reform will never suffice, and that only systematic reform in every part of the industry will work.

Duan Shijie hopes to see the new reform integrate the market system and the national system. "The market has its advantages and can provide better benefits for players. But the current market also has its bad parts, which don’t do enough to restrain and educate players in order to get good results in international games," he said. "But we can't expect everything to turn out very good in a very short time in the future, since the last reform on soccer was more than 20 years ago and didn't have great results. We have researched and studied reform for years, and we have to resolve problems one by one. Then we can still have hope."

"Sport is a spiritual need for Chinese citizens. Soccer cannot fulfill the public's national pride, so it is time to move forward fast with directives from the central government," he added.