According to a statement released on Thursday, China’s football organization fined 13 elite professional clubs for match-fixing and corruption and banned 73 individuals for life, including former national team head coach Li Tie.
Chinese football has had an anti-corruption campaign under President Xi Jinping in recent years, which has exposed the professional game’s unethical practices.
Numerous players have been suspended for gambling and match-fixing, and several senior officials in the Chinese Football Association have been removed from their positions.
The most recent match-fixing incident’s date and method were not mentioned in Thursday’s statement.
The CFA stated on its official social media account on Thursday that the penalties were imposed following a “systematic review” and were necessary “to enforce industry discipline, purify the football environment, and maintain fair competition.”
Li, a former Everton player who captained the national team from 2019 to 2021, was sentenced in December 2024 to 20 years in jail for bribery.
Along with 72 others, he has been permanently barred from any football-related activity, according to the CFA statement.
Chen Xuyuan, the former chairman of the CFA, is one of them; he is currently serving a life sentence for collecting $11 million in bribes.
The football teams that will be penalized are likewise well-known.
Eleven of the sixteen teams who participated in the nation’s premier Chinese Super League (CSL) in 2025 will lose points and face fines.
This implies that nine teams will have negative point totals when the 2026 CSL season begins in March due to relegations.
With 10-point penalties and fines of one million yuan ($144,000), Tianjin Jinmen Tiger and Shanghai Shenhua, who finished second in the previous season, are subject to the harshest penalties.
Shanghai Port, the winners of the previous three seasons, will receive the same penalty as Beijing Guoan—a five-point reduction and a fine of 400,000 yuan.
The CFA stated that the club’s offenses were related to “match-fixing, gambling, and bribery” and that the penalties were “based on the amount, circumstances, nature, and social impact of the improper transactions involved,” without going into specifics.
The CFA declared, “We will always maintain a zero-tolerance deterrent and high-pressure punitive force, and investigate and deal with any violations of discipline or regulations in football as soon as they are discovered, without any leniency or tolerance.”
Numerous professional clubs in China are already struggling financially.
The most prosperous team in the CSL’s history, Guangzhou FC, dissolved in 2025 after failing to pay off its debts in time for the upcoming season.
As a football enthusiast, President Xi has stated that he hopes China would host and win the World Cup in the future.
China was not selected for this summer’s World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
