Introduction

This introductory chapter sets out the book's central inquiry into how China's political economy operates under Xi Jinping by tracing the rise and decline of the professional football industry between 2015 and 2025. It presents football as a revealing site of policy implementation, showing how top-level directives triggered a wave of private investment often motivated by opportunities for state-business exchange. Drawing on extensive interview material, the authors conceptualise relations between firms and local state actors as strategic exchanges shaped by asymmetric resource dependence: private enterprises seek access to state-controlled resources, while local governments rely on firms to advance policy objectives. Through this analysis, the chapter introduces the book's focal actors – private firms and local governments – and the mechanisms through which firms navigate and adapt to China's evolving political-economic environment.