Chinese fans riot at ref's foul decision

John Gittings in Shanghai
Thursday March 28, 2002
The Guardian

Football hooliganism and corrupt referees have made national headlines in China after a case which resulted yesterday in a first division club being banned from its own stadium.
Home fans of the Shaanxi province team ran amok on Sunday after the referee allowed the visiting team from Qingdao to equalise through a penalty allegedly beyond the end of injury time.

There were immediate accusations that he was blowing a "black whistle" - the phrase used to describe corrupt refereeing which many claim has spread like a plague through Chinese football.

The angry fans burned seats at the stadium in the provincial capital, Xian, and then stormed outside where they smashed police van windows and set a bus on fire during a riot which lasted for more than three hours.

Pictures of the fires, the damage and of players being escorted off the pitch - one of the visiting players with a bloody forehead - were splashed next day across newspapers which usually avoid reporting civil unrest.

Nothing has been printed so far on the thousands of laid-off workers who blockaded factory gates in several industrial cities last week. A demonstration in Beijing yesterday also failed to make the news last night. But, with public anger over football corruption already running high, the media is being given a free rein to report the incident.

The China Football Association (CFA) fined Shaanxi 100,000 yuan (£8,700) yesterday and imposed an indefinite ban on home matches in Xian. A similar ban was imposed on Shaanxi after an earlier riot two years ago.

The CFA cleared referee Zhou Weixin of misconduct, saying that he had been correct in extending the extra time - which allowed Qing dao to equalise - after one of the Shaanxi players "fell over".

However, the belief that all referees are crooked is now being openly aired in the press, amid feverish speculation about another football official now in police custody.

International referee Gong Jianping has been held for the past 10 days at a police station in Beijing which was besieged by journalists. A story that he was arrested for "trying to buy sex" is being dismissed as a smokescreen for a likely inquiry into alleged corruption.

An unnamed colleague has told journalists that all referees take bribes, and that Mr Gong's appetite is more modest than most. "It needs money... to get to the international level, "an anonymous informant is quoted as saying in the Guangzhou Daily.

He added that the successful candidate needed to learn how to play cards, "so that you can 'lose 'at the table to the [officials] who have promoted you".The outlay then had to be recouped by taking bribes.

Public comment has run the whole range of traditional responses to football violence familiar in other soccer-playing cultures. "If football hooligans are now in vogue," said one angry website comment, "we should wipe them out like rats crossing the road."

"The real loser is Chinese football," said a pained editorial in China Soccer.

Some reports accuse the CFA of also being infected by corruption. In January it called a special press conference "to make clear its attitude towards black whistlers". However, it said that guilty referees who made "a voluntary confession and reimbursed [the bribes] "would remain on the active list and would not be "exposed to the public".