When China tackles something, it changes sustainably – this is currently also true for soccer. In the CEO Talk with China.Table, the local head of BVB talks about the interests of Dortmund fans in China. They are also becoming more and more economically important for a traditional German club. Benjamin Wahl explains: In China, as in Germany, it is the special emotional bond with the club that accounts for its success. But even though China itself has enough former steel and coal regions, the clientele there is quite different from that in the Ruhrpott; it is comparatively more international and more female. Wahl also assesses the prospects of success for Chinese football for us. He also talks about the different training methods in a country where teachers are still real persons of respect.
Xi Jinping, meanwhile, spoke on the phone with Joe Biden and Angela Merkel in quick succession. Among the topics discussed in both chief talks were Afghanistan, Covid, climate protection, and trade. All parties know each other. As vice-president under Obama, Biden has been in meetings with Xi as long as their presidencies have overlapped – most recently in 2015.
But with their many years of experience in China, that’s where the similarities, at the moment, end. Merkel has maintained a fundamentally positive attitude towards China and, over the years, has developed a certain understanding of the conditions there. In the process, she has repeatedly made it clear how difficult she imagines it would be to administer such a large and diverse country effectively. Biden, on the other hand, is currently continuing on the course of his predecessor, positioning himself as an adversary of China. His long experience has not nurtured understanding, but frustration.
This is somewhat reminiscent of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan, which he wrote off as a hopeless case based on his first-and experiences. Therefore, he made no effort to turn the matter into a success in the end. China, on the other hand, has not transformed itself into a democratic partner of the US through free world trade as hoped; it has remained loyal to its system and is defending it more aggressively than ever. Biden witnessed all this as an active politician. Now his disappointment is great, and US policy is finally swinging counter wise to the American course before Trump: even with Biden, there is a tendency towards protectionism and mistrust. Unfortunately, Merkel is now stepping down from the world stage as a counterweight to such a course.
I hope your week starts well,
Disclaimer: This interview has been translated into English and is not considered an official translation by any party involved in the interview.
Benjamin Wahl, 39, is basically the country manager of a German medium-sized company with 450 million euros in sales. Not a hidden champion, but a highly visible champion that almost every child in Germany knows. The company logo sports the colors yellow and black. The company has employees from the USA, Brazil, Norway, or Portugal, but unfortunately not yet from China. Nevertheless, the company ranks among the world’s best: it is in the top ten of the UEFA rankings. It won the DFB Cup last season and came 3rd in the Bundesliga: Borussia Dortmund (BVB).
Wahl was born into a BVB colored family from Schwelm near Dortmund and studied business informatics in Gießen and in the US. After that, he had an affair for ten years: he was Bayer Leverkusen’s representative in China until BVB poached him in 2017. Transfer fee unknown. Since then, he’s living with his family in Shanghai and is helping to develop Chinese soccer and spreading BVB’s renown.
How much Western development aid does Chinese soccer need?
In any case, China is open to international cooperation. It is a state goal to become a world soccer power. Therefore, soccer is a huge topic. The government wants to build 70,000 soccer fields by 2025. Soccer will be compulsory in primary, middle, and secondary schools. By 2030, they want to successfully participate in a World Cup. And finally, by 2050, China should shoot up to become one of the world’s leading soccer nations.
Can this be planned as easily as the entry into e-mobility?
That is the key question. After all, the experience of the past five-year plans is that China usually gets what it sets out to do. But you’re right, of course: soccer is something special. In any case, it won’t be easy: this is a generational issue and one of systematic youth development. There’s no shortcut, and the Chinese have only been at it for a few years. So far, Chinese soccer is on the right track, but it’s not yet where it wants to be.
Is there a ray of hope?
No question: the curve is already pointing steeply upwards. The Chinese league has been restructured. Now young soccer players have better chances. And importantly, those who are good at soccer, that make it to the top in the tournaments and the training camps, get extra points for the gaokao, the university entrance exam, the biggest hurdle in a student’s life. The exam is held on the same day nationwide. That’s when China holds its breath, so to speak. This clearly shows how important the topic of soccer has become for politicians.
However, no Chinese player has made it into the German Bundesliga as a regular, respected player yet. The Chinese have not yet arrived in Europe, the Mecca of world soccer. Isn’t that amazing, with a pool of 1.4 billion people?
Not necessarily. Even exceptional talents have to train a lot. If they don’t have the opportunity, they won’t make it. Soccer wasn’t in the spotlight for a long time. The most popular sport was basketball. Every kindergarten, college, and corporate campus has a basketball court. And NBA stars like Yao Ming have made it a boom. The important thing now is to incorporate soccer into the curriculum. The fact that students now have to do less homework, as was recently decided, creates the scope for this. Beijing now wants to push back the expensive private soccer schools and instead expand state school sports. That will help.
Don’t you need both in China?
I think so. But the private sports sector is already a big and profitable business. However, it’s not necessarily the best who make it there, but those with enough money to afford the expensive training. That’s why the state element is so important.
How does BVB, as a private German soccer club, fit into this development?
We have been here since 2017. We opened our first office in Asia in 2014, in Singapore. At that time, our colleagues there took care of China and independent market research quickly discovered that 80 million Chinese know the BVB. We wanted and still want to have special global proximity to our fans. That’s why the office in Shanghai was opened in 2017.
80 million people is as many as the total population of Germany. But they are not all BVB fans, are they?
No. Of course, not all of them walk around in a black and yellow scarf here. But they know and identify with the brand. We have around three million fans on Weibo alone, the Chinese mix of Twitter and Facebook. Our focus in China is, therefore, on fan work. We found fan clubs, we travel to them, and we organize parties for our fans. We create unique experiences. And we maintain social media accounts and expand them. At the same time, we offer our know-how. Borussia Dortmund is world-famous for its successful youth soccer. We can help with that, and that’s why we also have numerous coaches here in the country.
How is the offer accepted?
Very well. They even ask if we can’t send another 500 coaches. But of course, we can’t do that.
And your coaches are looking for the first top player for the Bundesliga on the side, aren’t they?
This would be a huge asset for any club in terms of reach and marketing; you saw this with Wu Lei, who played for Espanyol Barcelona for a few years and sold hundreds of thousands of shirts in China.
He ended up sitting on the bench a lot.
I didn’t follow his career in detail until the end. Signing a player purely for marketing purposes and then benching him is not BVB’s approach. We scout young, promising talents around the world.
And do you already have someone in the pipeline?
Two years ago, we were in intensive talks with a very young player. In line with our philosophy, we wouldn’t bring in a player who was nearing the end of his career. Unfortunately, the talks fell through due to Olympic participation. I would be happy to welcome a “Chinese talent” to Dortmund.
In what way are Chinese fans different from BVB fans, which in turn are very special fans in Germany?
The great common ground is, first of all, that every fan has their own story of why they became a fan – regardless of whether he is German or Chinese. You have to give these stories space. That’s why we try to get close to the Chinese fans, and that is also rewarded. They then tell us: The players from other clubs didn’t even wave on their tour of China; they just played their game. That was different at BVB; they go to the fan corner, they sign autographs. Players to touch.
But they rarely come. And at the moment, not at all because of COVID-19.
Yes, and that’s why my team and I go to a different city every other weekend and visit the fans there. We host a soccer tournament. Party together. Get to know each other. And on Saturday nights, we watch the game together via livestream. With the time difference, usually right on time at 9:30 pm.
But it takes a long time to supply the 80 million fans.
Not if you have a camera team with you and stream the experiences at the same time. BVB has a reach of five million fans on social media in China alone. And the trend is rising fast.
But what’s missing either way, on-site or digitally, is the “Ruhrpott feeling”, the sense of belonging. But that’s what BVB lives on. That can be hardly internationalized.
That’s right. We, therefore, have to find other forms of bonding that can be realized digitally. You can see that we have found them in the fan structure in China. Unlike in Germany, where we have 80 percent male fans and 20 percent female fans, about half of the fans in China are female.
Why?
In addition to exciting, fast, and, in the best case, very successful soccer, we also offer impressions, “behind-the-scenes” and lifestyle stories of our young team. This kind of fan culture can also be transported digitally over great distances. Which player has a new girlfriend? Who is walking his new dog? What is he doing for Valentine’s Day? What new clothes is he wearing? Erling Haaland recently posted a selfie with very fancy clothes by a Norwegian fjord. This also creates a sense of belonging…
…but much more playful and with more pop culture…
…yes, you can sum it up like that. Emma the bee, our mascot, also fits this description. She has her own Weibo account and now has several tens of thousands of followers. We are young, fresh, a bit different from other clubs on social media. Our very young fan community in China – 70 percent of our fans are under 30 – really appreciates that we also play out a lot of content on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok).
However, clubs like Manchester United and FC Barcelona have been active in the Chinese market for much longer. The Germans are lagging behind in this regard. How do you plan to catch up?
Manchester United has been here for 25 years. They are an incredibly strong brand, even if they haven’t won any titles for a few years. That’s why we have to be all the more authentic. That’s the only way. It’s the emotions, memories, shared celebrations, shared defeats that connect the fans to us. The full stadiums in the Bundesliga, the fan culture, the large groups of away fans are something special in Germany. It’s not unusual for 10 or 20,000 fans to travel from Dortmund to Berlin for an away game on the weekend. We have over 80,000 fans in the stadium every match day. Although we don’t have the biggest stadium in Europe in terms of capacity, we have the highest occupancy rate in soccer worldwide. Signal Iduna Park is always sold out. Many other stadiums abroad are not. Our fan culture in Germany and especially in Dortmund is something special and very intense. That’s also one reason why, on average, around 1,000 British fans visit Dortmund on match days. They have their English club, but they come because we have acceptable ticket rates, there’s a unique atmosphere, the beer is still cheap, and of course, we play great soccer. The UK, in particular, is now synonymous with a high degree of commercialization of soccer. We have this development in the entire soccer environment. In Germany, we have managed to maintain a reasonable balance. And that doesn’t go unnoticed by the Chinese.
However, the atmosphere in Chinese stadiums is also getting better and better.
China has also had a great soccer fan culture for decades. I regularly visit the stadium in Shanghai. There’s an atmosphere there. There is singing. There’s dancing in the subway afterward. Goosebumps. Here in Beijing, fans walk the streets with green and white drums. The attendance varies greatly from club to club, but Shanghai Shenhua, Shandong Taishan, and Beijing Guoan also attract around 40,000 viewers per match.
In order to get more people interested in soccer, they tried for a while to buy especially expensive players from the West to push the level of the teams.
That didn’t work, and they’ve steered strongly against it recently. Now there is a 100 percent tax on every transfer, which is invested in youth soccer. The old, fat, and sometimes slightly overweight players have not given the desired impetus in China. These were also excesses, isolated cases from which lessons were quickly learned. Some players were previously transferred to China for extremely high sums.
…yes, between 50 and 60 million euros. And now it’s time to slowly build up the young Chinese. What are the problems for BVB coaches?
We come with a holistic approach. In addition to tactical and technical skills, it’s about developing strong characters, about nutrition, about being a role model. Developing players who make their own creative decisions on the pitch. Our biggest problem is the language. There’s always a translator in between. But finding good soccer interpreters is not easy. It is also important that the children enjoy soccer. This must not be forced from the outside.
Why do Chinese politicians want more soccer, apart from the fact that state and party leader Xi Jinping is considered a soccer fan?
Educating children early on about sports, and especially sports where you don’t just reel something off, but where it’s fun, and you have to be tactically smart, will, of course, help these kids get through life better later on. Healthy eating for kids and lots of exercises are important. They are much less of a burden on the health care system later on.
What’s missing the most?
More soccer fields. If I have to drive an hour to get to a pitch, that’s too high a hurdle. Secondly, there is a lack of regularity. Many clubs have regular training, but there is only a tournament once a month. That’s too little. It needs to happen every weekend. The kids love competition. Moving up. Getting down. Fighting. Winning and losing.
Do Chinese train differently than Germans?
The whole education system works differently. The authority of a teacher or the coaches is extremely high in China. In Europe, we often let the children play first, let them decide for themselves, do they go left or right. Then we give them feedback. The situations in soccer are very variable, less to be rehearsed than in other sports. So we try to encourage that flexibility and creativity. However, I’m not saying that our approach is the absolute and only correct one: we exchange ideas closely with our Chinese coaching colleagues. We show them what works well for us and try to combine this with the local characteristics and turn it into a successful model.
You can watch the video of the whole conversation (in German) on Youtube.
The “carrier killer” is a domestic product built at the Taiwanese shipyard Lung Teh Shipbuilding. That’s reason enough for president Tsai Ing-wen to travel to the small port city of Su’ao on the island’s east coast for the commissioning of the new warship and give a short speech on her country’s defense capabilities. “We are well on our way to becoming independent in the field of national defense,” news agencies quote the president as saying. Those are strong words. The general perception is that Taiwan’s security depends mainly on U.S. protection. But Tsai now wants to at least significantly strengthen independence.
This tendency towards a two-track approach with more ties to the major alliance partner and at the same time more self-development also speaks from the report on Taiwan’s defense capabilities by the government in Taipei, which is only published every four years. Several interesting facts emerge from the second Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR):
According to analysts, Taiwan is now setting about implementing the conclusions of the defense report. “In 2021, Taiwan has begun to build and acquire military hardware that the QDR calls for,” writes Thomas J. Shattuk of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “Taiwan needs to upgrade its military capabilities today, not in 2025.” Because the ever-improving equipment of the People’s Liberation Army creates a defense gap that grows larger with each passing year. Defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng has awarded relevant research contracts to the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology.
Nicknamed the “aircraft carrier killer”, the new corvette is a key component of this new concept. Officially, it is the Tuo Chiang class 沱江 of warships. At 60 meters long, they are smaller than frigates but packed to the brim with modern technology. Its wedge shape makes it invisible on radar. Most importantly, it is equipped with Hsing Feng III anti-ship missiles, which are difficult to defend against even from aircraft carrier formations. The Ta Chiang 塔江 commissioned by Tsai on Thursday is the second of the class. Four more are to follow.
The tendency to rearm is understandable. Taiwan, in its present political form, is acutely threatened in its existence. The People’s Republic denies it the status of an independent state. It now treats the island as part of its territory, not only rhetorically but also in practical terms. Taiwan regularly appears in a list together with Hong Kong. Hong Kong has long been officially part of the national territory.
The comparison with Hong Kong leads many observers to wonder: Is Taiwan next? Concerns are heightened by military maneuvers that China – in line with its growing military capabilities – is carrying out with ever better equipment. A recent study by the US military-affiliated think tank Project 2049 evaluates what an invasion of Taiwan might look like in practice. The authors imply that the Chinese army plans to draw thousands of civilian ships into service to transport millions of soldiers to Taiwan.
But the numbers also show how difficult and ultimately unlikely such an invasion is. If it were a matter of mere victory against an enemy country, the case would be clear: the People’s Liberation Army would quickly have military supremacy with bombs and missiles. But an attack with heavy artillery is out of the question: according to the People’s Republic, the island’s inhabitants are considered its own citizens. According to this logic, they are just as much under the protection of the communist government as the mainland population. So at least little should happen to the civilians.
Conquest must therefore be carried out with infantry – street by street, house by house. And this in a country where almost all adult males were in the military and hardly anyone wants to live under Chinese rule. The endeavor alone to bring the country’s “enemy ports” (the name of the Project 2049 study) under control is likely to pose considerable problems for the admiralty of the People’s Liberation Army. And it is of no help that Chinese troops could take out the Taiwanese air force and large parts of the navy comparatively quickly.
President Tsai and Taiwan’s allies know that they must not make things easy for China. Signs of weakness would upset the existing balance just as much as exaggerated threatening gestures. A gap in Taiwan’s defenses would virtually force Xi to seize the opportunity. After all, some hardliners among the people and the leadership are certainly pushing to correct the perceived shame of the split.
This makes the balance of power vital to those displaying aggression in the People’s Republic, but want to avoid a real war. But as China upgrades roughly steadily with its technological and economic development, Taiwan also needs more and more modern weapons. Analysts have therefore long noticed a certain connection between the increase in China’s defense budget and US arms deliveries to Taiwan.
According to this logic, the commissioning of the new stealth corvette Ta Chiang is only logical. After all, China has several of its own aircraft carriers laid down. Currently, the third and largest of the ships is under construction. If the other side builds a new aircraft carrier, Tsai will send a new aircraft carrier killer into its waters.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that there is a particularly stable equilibrium. There is too much going on in world politics at the moment, and that also affects Taiwan:
But even the hawks at the American RAND Research Institute are not calling for excessive rearmament. They, too, advise keeping up with China’s rising capabilities, not surpassing them.
Taiwan must now succeed in making the following points credible:
So far, all three points are a given. Japan, too, has ramped up its expressions of solidarity in recent weeks. Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi has made it clear that Taiwan’s security belongs to Japan’s very own interests. Tokyo usually speaks such clear words in coordination with Washington.
All this makes speculation by analysts in America and Taiwan about Xi as an attacker seem unrealistic for now. Even the strong man cannot convincingly present the logic of an attack to his party. But the prerequisite is that the threat backdrop remains credible. The new killer ships, guided missiles, and drones serve this purpose.
In analyses on Taiwan, we use the local transcription based on Wade-Giles instead of Pinyin where appropriate.
Evelyne Gebhardt is a true European. The visitor notices this as soon as she greets her. The 67-year-old speaks perfect German – with an unmistakable French accent. Her love of German studies and a German man brought her from Île-de-France to Baden-Württemberg when she was very young. And it is this European spirit that also carries her political commitment to human rights. “Civil rights, illimitability, overcoming war have always been very important to me,” explains the politician, who lives in the German city of Schwäbisch Hall. This is the reason why she became an MEP in the first place: “Fundamental rights are what make up our European identity, and I want people in other countries to be able to enjoy the freedoms that accompany them. So when the Chinese government tells us that human rights in China are none of our business, I say clearly that that is not true. We have to get involved.”
When the China delegation last traveled to the Middle Kingdom around three years ago, Gebhardt was not with them. She dates her last visit to China eight to nine years back. “The country has a fascinating history with a great peace dividend. I think it is a pity that China does not continue this but acts harshly against its own people,” says the SPD politician, citing a few examples: “The unacceptable camps in which the Uyghurs are forced to give up their religion and their own way of life. The national security law by Beijing, which practically puts the second system of Hong Kong, ad acta. The hostility with which the Xi Jinping government is currently targeting Taiwan.”
Gebhardt is convinced that relations with China have never been as bad as they are right now. And who could assess this better than her, who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1994? “Cooperation has deteriorated, of course,” she says. And at the moment, it is “not opportune” to try to travel there as an MEP. Yet it would be so important to have good relations with this global player – Gebhardt also notices this in her daily work in the Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament. “China has great initiatives like the Silk Road or their engagement in Africa. It is important that we accompany that and shape our own strategies in this relationship.” This is why Gebhardt talks on a daily basis to experts, human rights activists, and journalists who report on the situation in China. And she appeals to the government to re-engage with the European Parliament: “Beijing must lift sanctions against MEPs and the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee.” Janna Degener-Storr
When China tackles something, it changes sustainably – this is currently also true for soccer. In the CEO Talk with China.Table, the local head of BVB talks about the interests of Dortmund fans in China. They are also becoming more and more economically important for a traditional German club. Benjamin Wahl explains: In China, as in Germany, it is the special emotional bond with the club that accounts for its success. But even though China itself has enough former steel and coal regions, the clientele there is quite different from that in the Ruhrpott; it is comparatively more international and more female. Wahl also assesses the prospects of success for Chinese football for us. He also talks about the different training methods in a country where teachers are still real persons of respect.
Xi Jinping, meanwhile, spoke on the phone with Joe Biden and Angela Merkel in quick succession. Among the topics discussed in both chief talks were Afghanistan, Covid, climate protection, and trade. All parties know each other. As vice-president under Obama, Biden has been in meetings with Xi as long as their presidencies have overlapped – most recently in 2015.
But with their many years of experience in China, that’s where the similarities, at the moment, end. Merkel has maintained a fundamentally positive attitude towards China and, over the years, has developed a certain understanding of the conditions there. In the process, she has repeatedly made it clear how difficult she imagines it would be to administer such a large and diverse country effectively. Biden, on the other hand, is currently continuing on the course of his predecessor, positioning himself as an adversary of China. His long experience has not nurtured understanding, but frustration.
This is somewhat reminiscent of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan, which he wrote off as a hopeless case based on his first-and experiences. Therefore, he made no effort to turn the matter into a success in the end. China, on the other hand, has not transformed itself into a democratic partner of the US through free world trade as hoped; it has remained loyal to its system and is defending it more aggressively than ever. Biden witnessed all this as an active politician. Now his disappointment is great, and US policy is finally swinging counter wise to the American course before Trump: even with Biden, there is a tendency towards protectionism and mistrust. Unfortunately, Merkel is now stepping down from the world stage as a counterweight to such a course.
I hope your week starts well,
Disclaimer: This interview has been translated into English and is not considered an official translation by any party involved in the interview.
Benjamin Wahl, 39, is basically the country manager of a German medium-sized company with 450 million euros in sales. Not a hidden champion, but a highly visible champion that almost every child in Germany knows. The company logo sports the colors yellow and black. The company has employees from the USA, Brazil, Norway, or Portugal, but unfortunately not yet from China. Nevertheless, the company ranks among the world’s best: it is in the top ten of the UEFA rankings. It won the DFB Cup last season and came 3rd in the Bundesliga: Borussia Dortmund (BVB).
Wahl was born into a BVB colored family from Schwelm near Dortmund and studied business informatics in Gießen and in the US. After that, he had an affair for ten years: he was Bayer Leverkusen’s representative in China until BVB poached him in 2017. Transfer fee unknown. Since then, he’s living with his family in Shanghai and is helping to develop Chinese soccer and spreading BVB’s renown.
How much Western development aid does Chinese soccer need?
In any case, China is open to international cooperation. It is a state goal to become a world soccer power. Therefore, soccer is a huge topic. The government wants to build 70,000 soccer fields by 2025. Soccer will be compulsory in primary, middle, and secondary schools. By 2030, they want to successfully participate in a World Cup. And finally, by 2050, China should shoot up to become one of the world’s leading soccer nations.
Can this be planned as easily as the entry into e-mobility?
That is the key question. After all, the experience of the past five-year plans is that China usually gets what it sets out to do. But you’re right, of course: soccer is something special. In any case, it won’t be easy: this is a generational issue and one of systematic youth development. There’s no shortcut, and the Chinese have only been at it for a few years. So far, Chinese soccer is on the right track, but it’s not yet where it wants to be.
Is there a ray of hope?
No question: the curve is already pointing steeply upwards. The Chinese league has been restructured. Now young soccer players have better chances. And importantly, those who are good at soccer, that make it to the top in the tournaments and the training camps, get extra points for the gaokao, the university entrance exam, the biggest hurdle in a student’s life. The exam is held on the same day nationwide. That’s when China holds its breath, so to speak. This clearly shows how important the topic of soccer has become for politicians.
However, no Chinese player has made it into the German Bundesliga as a regular, respected player yet. The Chinese have not yet arrived in Europe, the Mecca of world soccer. Isn’t that amazing, with a pool of 1.4 billion people?
Not necessarily. Even exceptional talents have to train a lot. If they don’t have the opportunity, they won’t make it. Soccer wasn’t in the spotlight for a long time. The most popular sport was basketball. Every kindergarten, college, and corporate campus has a basketball court. And NBA stars like Yao Ming have made it a boom. The important thing now is to incorporate soccer into the curriculum. The fact that students now have to do less homework, as was recently decided, creates the scope for this. Beijing now wants to push back the expensive private soccer schools and instead expand state school sports. That will help.
Don’t you need both in China?
I think so. But the private sports sector is already a big and profitable business. However, it’s not necessarily the best who make it there, but those with enough money to afford the expensive training. That’s why the state element is so important.
How does BVB, as a private German soccer club, fit into this development?
We have been here since 2017. We opened our first office in Asia in 2014, in Singapore. At that time, our colleagues there took care of China and independent market research quickly discovered that 80 million Chinese know the BVB. We wanted and still want to have special global proximity to our fans. That’s why the office in Shanghai was opened in 2017.
80 million people is as many as the total population of Germany. But they are not all BVB fans, are they?
No. Of course, not all of them walk around in a black and yellow scarf here. But they know and identify with the brand. We have around three million fans on Weibo alone, the Chinese mix of Twitter and Facebook. Our focus in China is, therefore, on fan work. We found fan clubs, we travel to them, and we organize parties for our fans. We create unique experiences. And we maintain social media accounts and expand them. At the same time, we offer our know-how. Borussia Dortmund is world-famous for its successful youth soccer. We can help with that, and that’s why we also have numerous coaches here in the country.
How is the offer accepted?
Very well. They even ask if we can’t send another 500 coaches. But of course, we can’t do that.
And your coaches are looking for the first top player for the Bundesliga on the side, aren’t they?
This would be a huge asset for any club in terms of reach and marketing; you saw this with Wu Lei, who played for Espanyol Barcelona for a few years and sold hundreds of thousands of shirts in China.
He ended up sitting on the bench a lot.
I didn’t follow his career in detail until the end. Signing a player purely for marketing purposes and then benching him is not BVB’s approach. We scout young, promising talents around the world.
And do you already have someone in the pipeline?
Two years ago, we were in intensive talks with a very young player. In line with our philosophy, we wouldn’t bring in a player who was nearing the end of his career. Unfortunately, the talks fell through due to Olympic participation. I would be happy to welcome a “Chinese talent” to Dortmund.
In what way are Chinese fans different from BVB fans, which in turn are very special fans in Germany?
The great common ground is, first of all, that every fan has their own story of why they became a fan – regardless of whether he is German or Chinese. You have to give these stories space. That’s why we try to get close to the Chinese fans, and that is also rewarded. They then tell us: The players from other clubs didn’t even wave on their tour of China; they just played their game. That was different at BVB; they go to the fan corner, they sign autographs. Players to touch.
But they rarely come. And at the moment, not at all because of COVID-19.
Yes, and that’s why my team and I go to a different city every other weekend and visit the fans there. We host a soccer tournament. Party together. Get to know each other. And on Saturday nights, we watch the game together via livestream. With the time difference, usually right on time at 9:30 pm.
But it takes a long time to supply the 80 million fans.
Not if you have a camera team with you and stream the experiences at the same time. BVB has a reach of five million fans on social media in China alone. And the trend is rising fast.
But what’s missing either way, on-site or digitally, is the “Ruhrpott feeling”, the sense of belonging. But that’s what BVB lives on. That can be hardly internationalized.
That’s right. We, therefore, have to find other forms of bonding that can be realized digitally. You can see that we have found them in the fan structure in China. Unlike in Germany, where we have 80 percent male fans and 20 percent female fans, about half of the fans in China are female.
Why?
In addition to exciting, fast, and, in the best case, very successful soccer, we also offer impressions, “behind-the-scenes” and lifestyle stories of our young team. This kind of fan culture can also be transported digitally over great distances. Which player has a new girlfriend? Who is walking his new dog? What is he doing for Valentine’s Day? What new clothes is he wearing? Erling Haaland recently posted a selfie with very fancy clothes by a Norwegian fjord. This also creates a sense of belonging…
…but much more playful and with more pop culture…
…yes, you can sum it up like that. Emma the bee, our mascot, also fits this description. She has her own Weibo account and now has several tens of thousands of followers. We are young, fresh, a bit different from other clubs on social media. Our very young fan community in China – 70 percent of our fans are under 30 – really appreciates that we also play out a lot of content on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok).
However, clubs like Manchester United and FC Barcelona have been active in the Chinese market for much longer. The Germans are lagging behind in this regard. How do you plan to catch up?
Manchester United has been here for 25 years. They are an incredibly strong brand, even if they haven’t won any titles for a few years. That’s why we have to be all the more authentic. That’s the only way. It’s the emotions, memories, shared celebrations, shared defeats that connect the fans to us. The full stadiums in the Bundesliga, the fan culture, the large groups of away fans are something special in Germany. It’s not unusual for 10 or 20,000 fans to travel from Dortmund to Berlin for an away game on the weekend. We have over 80,000 fans in the stadium every match day. Although we don’t have the biggest stadium in Europe in terms of capacity, we have the highest occupancy rate in soccer worldwide. Signal Iduna Park is always sold out. Many other stadiums abroad are not. Our fan culture in Germany and especially in Dortmund is something special and very intense. That’s also one reason why, on average, around 1,000 British fans visit Dortmund on match days. They have their English club, but they come because we have acceptable ticket rates, there’s a unique atmosphere, the beer is still cheap, and of course, we play great soccer. The UK, in particular, is now synonymous with a high degree of commercialization of soccer. We have this development in the entire soccer environment. In Germany, we have managed to maintain a reasonable balance. And that doesn’t go unnoticed by the Chinese.
However, the atmosphere in Chinese stadiums is also getting better and better.
China has also had a great soccer fan culture for decades. I regularly visit the stadium in Shanghai. There’s an atmosphere there. There is singing. There’s dancing in the subway afterward. Goosebumps. Here in Beijing, fans walk the streets with green and white drums. The attendance varies greatly from club to club, but Shanghai Shenhua, Shandong Taishan, and Beijing Guoan also attract around 40,000 viewers per match.
In order to get more people interested in soccer, they tried for a while to buy especially expensive players from the West to push the level of the teams.
That didn’t work, and they’ve steered strongly against it recently. Now there is a 100 percent tax on every transfer, which is invested in youth soccer. The old, fat, and sometimes slightly overweight players have not given the desired impetus in China. These were also excesses, isolated cases from which lessons were quickly learned. Some players were previously transferred to China for extremely high sums.
…yes, between 50 and 60 million euros. And now it’s time to slowly build up the young Chinese. What are the problems for BVB coaches?
We come with a holistic approach. In addition to tactical and technical skills, it’s about developing strong characters, about nutrition, about being a role model. Developing players who make their own creative decisions on the pitch. Our biggest problem is the language. There’s always a translator in between. But finding good soccer interpreters is not easy. It is also important that the children enjoy soccer. This must not be forced from the outside.
Why do Chinese politicians want more soccer, apart from the fact that state and party leader Xi Jinping is considered a soccer fan?
Educating children early on about sports, and especially sports where you don’t just reel something off, but where it’s fun, and you have to be tactically smart, will, of course, help these kids get through life better later on. Healthy eating for kids and lots of exercises are important. They are much less of a burden on the health care system later on.
What’s missing the most?
More soccer fields. If I have to drive an hour to get to a pitch, that’s too high a hurdle. Secondly, there is a lack of regularity. Many clubs have regular training, but there is only a tournament once a month. That’s too little. It needs to happen every weekend. The kids love competition. Moving up. Getting down. Fighting. Winning and losing.
Do Chinese train differently than Germans?
The whole education system works differently. The authority of a teacher or the coaches is extremely high in China. In Europe, we often let the children play first, let them decide for themselves, do they go left or right. Then we give them feedback. The situations in soccer are very variable, less to be rehearsed than in other sports. So we try to encourage that flexibility and creativity. However, I’m not saying that our approach is the absolute and only correct one: we exchange ideas closely with our Chinese coaching colleagues. We show them what works well for us and try to combine this with the local characteristics and turn it into a successful model.
You can watch the video of the whole conversation (in German) on Youtube.
The “carrier killer” is a domestic product built at the Taiwanese shipyard Lung Teh Shipbuilding. That’s reason enough for president Tsai Ing-wen to travel to the small port city of Su’ao on the island’s east coast for the commissioning of the new warship and give a short speech on her country’s defense capabilities. “We are well on our way to becoming independent in the field of national defense,” news agencies quote the president as saying. Those are strong words. The general perception is that Taiwan’s security depends mainly on U.S. protection. But Tsai now wants to at least significantly strengthen independence.
This tendency towards a two-track approach with more ties to the major alliance partner and at the same time more self-development also speaks from the report on Taiwan’s defense capabilities by the government in Taipei, which is only published every four years. Several interesting facts emerge from the second Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR):
According to analysts, Taiwan is now setting about implementing the conclusions of the defense report. “In 2021, Taiwan has begun to build and acquire military hardware that the QDR calls for,” writes Thomas J. Shattuk of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “Taiwan needs to upgrade its military capabilities today, not in 2025.” Because the ever-improving equipment of the People’s Liberation Army creates a defense gap that grows larger with each passing year. Defense minister Chiu Kuo-cheng has awarded relevant research contracts to the National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology.
Nicknamed the “aircraft carrier killer”, the new corvette is a key component of this new concept. Officially, it is the Tuo Chiang class 沱江 of warships. At 60 meters long, they are smaller than frigates but packed to the brim with modern technology. Its wedge shape makes it invisible on radar. Most importantly, it is equipped with Hsing Feng III anti-ship missiles, which are difficult to defend against even from aircraft carrier formations. The Ta Chiang 塔江 commissioned by Tsai on Thursday is the second of the class. Four more are to follow.
The tendency to rearm is understandable. Taiwan, in its present political form, is acutely threatened in its existence. The People’s Republic denies it the status of an independent state. It now treats the island as part of its territory, not only rhetorically but also in practical terms. Taiwan regularly appears in a list together with Hong Kong. Hong Kong has long been officially part of the national territory.
The comparison with Hong Kong leads many observers to wonder: Is Taiwan next? Concerns are heightened by military maneuvers that China – in line with its growing military capabilities – is carrying out with ever better equipment. A recent study by the US military-affiliated think tank Project 2049 evaluates what an invasion of Taiwan might look like in practice. The authors imply that the Chinese army plans to draw thousands of civilian ships into service to transport millions of soldiers to Taiwan.
But the numbers also show how difficult and ultimately unlikely such an invasion is. If it were a matter of mere victory against an enemy country, the case would be clear: the People’s Liberation Army would quickly have military supremacy with bombs and missiles. But an attack with heavy artillery is out of the question: according to the People’s Republic, the island’s inhabitants are considered its own citizens. According to this logic, they are just as much under the protection of the communist government as the mainland population. So at least little should happen to the civilians.
Conquest must therefore be carried out with infantry – street by street, house by house. And this in a country where almost all adult males were in the military and hardly anyone wants to live under Chinese rule. The endeavor alone to bring the country’s “enemy ports” (the name of the Project 2049 study) under control is likely to pose considerable problems for the admiralty of the People’s Liberation Army. And it is of no help that Chinese troops could take out the Taiwanese air force and large parts of the navy comparatively quickly.
President Tsai and Taiwan’s allies know that they must not make things easy for China. Signs of weakness would upset the existing balance just as much as exaggerated threatening gestures. A gap in Taiwan’s defenses would virtually force Xi to seize the opportunity. After all, some hardliners among the people and the leadership are certainly pushing to correct the perceived shame of the split.
This makes the balance of power vital to those displaying aggression in the People’s Republic, but want to avoid a real war. But as China upgrades roughly steadily with its technological and economic development, Taiwan also needs more and more modern weapons. Analysts have therefore long noticed a certain connection between the increase in China’s defense budget and US arms deliveries to Taiwan.
According to this logic, the commissioning of the new stealth corvette Ta Chiang is only logical. After all, China has several of its own aircraft carriers laid down. Currently, the third and largest of the ships is under construction. If the other side builds a new aircraft carrier, Tsai will send a new aircraft carrier killer into its waters.
Unfortunately, this does not mean that there is a particularly stable equilibrium. There is too much going on in world politics at the moment, and that also affects Taiwan:
But even the hawks at the American RAND Research Institute are not calling for excessive rearmament. They, too, advise keeping up with China’s rising capabilities, not surpassing them.
Taiwan must now succeed in making the following points credible:
So far, all three points are a given. Japan, too, has ramped up its expressions of solidarity in recent weeks. Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi has made it clear that Taiwan’s security belongs to Japan’s very own interests. Tokyo usually speaks such clear words in coordination with Washington.
All this makes speculation by analysts in America and Taiwan about Xi as an attacker seem unrealistic for now. Even the strong man cannot convincingly present the logic of an attack to his party. But the prerequisite is that the threat backdrop remains credible. The new killer ships, guided missiles, and drones serve this purpose.
In analyses on Taiwan, we use the local transcription based on Wade-Giles instead of Pinyin where appropriate.
Evelyne Gebhardt is a true European. The visitor notices this as soon as she greets her. The 67-year-old speaks perfect German – with an unmistakable French accent. Her love of German studies and a German man brought her from Île-de-France to Baden-Württemberg when she was very young. And it is this European spirit that also carries her political commitment to human rights. “Civil rights, illimitability, overcoming war have always been very important to me,” explains the politician, who lives in the German city of Schwäbisch Hall. This is the reason why she became an MEP in the first place: “Fundamental rights are what make up our European identity, and I want people in other countries to be able to enjoy the freedoms that accompany them. So when the Chinese government tells us that human rights in China are none of our business, I say clearly that that is not true. We have to get involved.”
When the China delegation last traveled to the Middle Kingdom around three years ago, Gebhardt was not with them. She dates her last visit to China eight to nine years back. “The country has a fascinating history with a great peace dividend. I think it is a pity that China does not continue this but acts harshly against its own people,” says the SPD politician, citing a few examples: “The unacceptable camps in which the Uyghurs are forced to give up their religion and their own way of life. The national security law by Beijing, which practically puts the second system of Hong Kong, ad acta. The hostility with which the Xi Jinping government is currently targeting Taiwan.”
Gebhardt is convinced that relations with China have never been as bad as they are right now. And who could assess this better than her, who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1994? “Cooperation has deteriorated, of course,” she says. And at the moment, it is “not opportune” to try to travel there as an MEP. Yet it would be so important to have good relations with this global player – Gebhardt also notices this in her daily work in the Internal Market Committee of the European Parliament. “China has great initiatives like the Silk Road or their engagement in Africa. It is important that we accompany that and shape our own strategies in this relationship.” This is why Gebhardt talks on a daily basis to experts, human rights activists, and journalists who report on the situation in China. And she appeals to the government to re-engage with the European Parliament: “Beijing must lift sanctions against MEPs and the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee.” Janna Degener-Storr
