On Thursday, the English football club Sheffield United announced that Hao Haidong's move there from Dalian Shide had at last been finalized.
They had signed China's most famous football forward in late December for a nominal transfer fee of one pound. On January 17, it was reported that a work permit had been secured for the 35-year-old international to be player-coach with the team known as the Blades.
But a Xinhua correspondent had learnt from Beijing Dongcheng District People's Court on January 14 that restrictions had been imposed on Hao's departure.
The problems were related to a legal case dating from last June, in which Beijing-based Gweat Sports Goods Co charged Dalian Coastal Boots Manufacturing Co with refusing to pay a debt of 4.3 million yuan (US$518,072). Hao, chairman of the board of directors for the boots company, naturally became the defendant in the case.
The plaintiff said Hao's company borrowed the money from them on December 9, 2002, agreeing to repay it within eight days. However, even after a court ruling last August, they still failed to do so. To safeguard the creditor's claim, the court had imposed restrictions on Hao's movements in accordance with entry and exit regulations.
Hao is now set to leave later this month after resolving the issue. "We have worked tremendously hard on this deal and are pleased that we have now got the green light to bring Hao over here," the Blades' chairman, Terry Robinson, was quoted as saying on their website. "Hao is just waiting for a visa to give him UK residency, which will be granted after the Chinese New Year."
Another sportsperson who has got into trouble for business reasons is the Olympic champion Tian Liang, who was excluded from the national diving squad on January 26. This was apparently for getting involved in too many commercial deals since his Athens success.
Increasing awareness of athletes' involvement in moneymaking activities has aroused nationwide attention. Due to the country's special athlete-training system, many sports stars consider joining the business world as a way out after retirement.
Indeed, a number of retired athletes have become successful businesspeople. Li Ning, China's "prince of gymnastics" and three times gold medal winner in the 1984 Olympics, retired from competitive sport in 1988 and established Li Ning Sports Goods Co a year later. Besides engaging professional administrative personnel to run it, Li himself went to Peking University to take economic management training.
But it is rare for sportspeople to engage in business while still competing as Hao Haidong has done, comments Bao Mingxiao, a research fellow with the General Administration of Sport's Institute of Physical Science and executive member of the Beijing Olympic Economy Institute.
Usually, from childhood China's athletes are enrolled in sports school for skills training. As a result, they are often "handicapped" in literacy and awareness of the law, says Bao. So there is nothing new about their being debt-ridden after venturing into the business world.
All in all, according to Bao, the root cause of the above phenomenon is an immature sports system and industry policies. In developed countries, as a rule, agents take charge of athletes' daily affairs, so that the latter can concentrate on training and competing.
With the nation's rapid economic growth and reform, sport and commercial concerns are increasingly interconnected. However, the sports industry is still relatively new in China. For example, sports agents have only just made a start here, says Bao.
He points out that the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will provide good opportunities for the development of the industry. Along with further structural reform, professional managerial personnel will come to the fore in large numbers, and hopefully, fewer active athletes' sports careers will be endangered by their business activities.
(China.org.cn by Dhanesh Dileepa Ratnaike and Shao Da, February 4, 2005)
