Top Chinese players 100 times more expensive after 20 yrs, bubbles feared

Corinthians are the Brazilian outfit that have suffered most from China's thirst for world-class players.

The 2015 Brazilian Serie A champions have already lost Jadson and Renato Augusto in the past month with Alexandre Pato, Ralf, Elias and Cassio also considering offers from Super League sides.

"We have been surprised by their departures," Corinthians president Roberto de Andrade said.

"Chinese clubs work differently. They offer huge salaries and there is no way to prevent players from leaving. We could lose five, six or seven of them."

The clubs also reached out for players in European clubs.

On Tuesday, newly promoted CSL club Hebei announced that Cote d'Ivoire international Gervais Yao Kouassi joined them from Italian Serie A side Roma.

"Spending, spending and spending. Whether bubbles or prosperity, China's CSL has definitely become the most noticeable league in the world, although the national team is still struggling to qualify for the next phase of the 2018 World Cup Asian Zone qualifying round," said the New Cultural newspaper on Tuesday.

The overflowing money in Chinese soccer came as a result of investment enthusiasm which has grown rapidly since 2011 following China's crackdown on match-fixing and corruption in the sport.

The investment started to pick up its pace and gradually turned feverish as China mapped out a plan of speeding up its sports industry in 2014 and launched an profound reform in early 2015 in order to develop soccer.

The lucrative prospect of sports industry, whose overall scale is expected to reach 5 trillion yuan in 2025, compounding the downturn of the property market as well as slowing down in other industries, indicates a seemingly inevitable investment frenzy which may be called the "bubbles".